As highlighted previously whilst having a closer look at this board, there are considerably less power phases to what is normally found on a high end board and when we translate this to overclocking potential, it does of course mean that there is a dramatically less change of going near to the 5GHz barrier. This is expected though and if you’re looking to hit that mark, then look for a higher class of board that is geared for that job.
Irrespective though, the UEFI BIOS on this board does have all the required features need to do a bit of overclocking, albeit some voltage adjustment features have been left out from this revision. This does mean that there is space to give the board some extra speed and in turn a bit more for the money, but as I’ve said don’t expect mega clocks from a lower end mainstream board.
Targeting the CPU ratio directly, I had in my mind a target of getting to 4.6GHz, which based on similar boards from the past is where I’ve ended up and with out even throwing a fuss back at me the board was more than happy to run at this level, this means that there has to be a little more in it and upping the ration to 47x was also a success. Pushing the chip further to 48x however resulted in a no-boot scenario and even mixing the ration and BCLK to get a 4.8GHz speed out of the chip proved fruitless. This is due to the lack to power phases and voltage control on this particular board, but regardless getting to 4.7GHz is still a very good level to be at.
Lack of heat-sink over VRM could be concern for 24X7 overclocking systems..
Otherwise good board and very good review. 🙂