Intel B460 Motherboards Could Land With Overclocking Functionality

Maxsun B460 iCraft Gaming Endless

Maxsun B460 iCraft Gaming Endless (Image credit: VideoCardz)

VideoCardz has shared photographs of Maxsun's B460 iCraft Gaming Endless (MS-iCraft B460M) motherboard. More importantly, the leaked marketing materials suggest that Intel might enable overclocking on the upcoming B460 motherboards.

Maxsun B460 iCraft Gaming Endless

Maxsun B460 iCraft Gaming Endless (Image credit: VideoCardz)

It wasn't always impossible to overclock a non-K series processor. Back in the Sandy Bridge days, you could overclock certain locked models up to four bins (400 MHz) above their advertised turbo boost clock speed. It was even possible to overclock on some non-Z series motherboards, but Intel eventually brought that to a halt. As you can see, there's a precedent of overclocking on chipsets other than the Z-series.

During our tour of Intel's secret overclocking lab, we pitched the idea of enabling overclocking on B-and H-series chipsets to Intel. The chipmaker's major concern was the quality of the power delivery subsystems on non-Z series motherboards. In all fairness, B-and H-series motherboards are aimed at budget-oriented consumers. However, some of these low-cost offerings come with questionable power delivery subsystems so we can understand Intel's hesitation.

In Maxsun's case, the B460 iCraft Gaming Endless motherboard exposes a decent-looking eight-phase power delivery subsystem. The heatsink looks pretty robust, and, according to Maxsun, it helps maximize the system. It's unrealistic to think that Intel would outright permit unconditional overclocking on B460 motherboards because that would cannablize sales of the higher-end Z490 models. In other words, if Intel does enable overclocking, there's bound to be some type of limitation.

Given the segment the B460 chipset is designed for, the corresponding Intel motherboards are bound to compete with AMD's looming B550 motherboards, which will hit the market on June 16, 2020. AMD hasn't officially confirmed if overclocking is on the table, but given the chipmaker's history, the feature should be present. B550 motherboards will support the PCIe 4.0 interface, though, so that's one feature that Intel won't be able to match.

Zhiye Liu
News Editor, RAM Reviewer & SSD Technician

Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.