Yesterday we broke some exciting news about Asrock’s progress in overclocking non-K Skylake CPUs. The company demonstrated that it had made great strides in unlocking new-found potential in an i5-6600 Skylake processor while using a Z170 chipset motherboard. Today, ASRock released SKY OC, a new feature in the BIOS that allows anyone to do the same.
Asrock’s SKY OC is available on its Z170 motherboards and can be enabled with a simple BIOS update, which is available from the company’s website (See table below for links). It enables you to adjust the BCLK to overclock locked CPUs to their full potential. Asrock showed off CPU-Z screenshots of its i5-6600 overclock. The company also claimed to have attained a 60% overclock on an i5-6400, as well.
In our preview, Michael Justin Allen Sexton astutely noticed that Turbo Boost has been disabled on the i5-6600 overclock based on the clock speeds being attained. Asrock said that this is one of the limitations to overclocking non-K Skylake processors: Turbo Boost and C-State are disabled with SKY OC is applied. The company also explained that the integrated Intel graphics has to be disabled as well, meaning you’ll need a discrete GPU in the system.
The following motherboards are supported. You can find the link to their respective BIOS updates in the table.
| Model | BIOS |
|---|---|
| Z170 OC Formula | L1.92 |
| Z170 Extreme7+ | L2.17 |
| Z170 Extreme6+ | L1.82 |
| Z170 Extreme6 | L1.82 |
| Z170 Extreme4+ | L2.01 |
| Z170 Extreme4 | L2.43 |
| Z170 Extreme3 | L1.61 |
| Z170M Extreme4 | L1.35 |
| Z170 Pro4 | L2.83 |
| Z170 Pro4/D3 | L1.74 |
| Z170 Pro4S | L2.73 |
| Z170M Pro4 | L2.23 |
| Z170M Pro4S | L2.23 |
| Z170M-ITX/ac | L1.83 |
| Z170A-X1/3.1 | L1.31 |
| Z170 Professional Gaming i7 | L1.14 |
| Z170 Gaming K6+ | L1.93 |
| Z170 Gaming K6 | L1.92 |
| Z170 Gaming K4 | L2.23 |
| Z170 Gaming K4/D3 | L1.51 |
| Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac | L1.54 |
Asrock said that SKY OC will work with i3, i5, i7 and Pentium non-K CPUs. Currently, only Z170 chipsets support the feature, but the company seemingly hinted at the possibility of that changing in the future: “…have faith in Asrock’s skillfull engineers, sooner or later, more Christmas gifts from Asrock are going to be delivered.”
______________________________________________________________________
Kevin Carbotte joined Tom’s Hardware in early 2015. He writes GPU and VR hardware reviews and contributes to the news channel in the areas of computer graphics, water cooling, VR and other immersive technology. Kevin’s personal interests include technology advancements, fast cars and collecting video games that he doesn't have time to play.
Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us on Facebook, Google+, RSS, Twitter and YouTube.