MSI X99A GODLIKE GAMING CARBON (LGA2011-3) Motherboard Review

BIOS and Overclocking

MSI’s Click BIOS 4 offers a beautiful user interface with clearly labelled departments and a host of comprehensive features. It’s also displayed at a high-resolution which makes text clearer and the navigation feel more user-friendly. Here we can see the carbon styling which looks superb and creates a sophisticated appearance throughout the BIOS. The main page allows you easily enable XMP, change the boot device priority, monitor basic temperatures and use OC Genie to acquire a performance boost.

Navigating to the Settings area displays everything you need to customise system parameters.

The System Status page outlines the BIOS version, connected SATA devices, RAM capacity and other essential information.

Here we can see the Advanced section which allows you to alter power management options, ACPI settings and more. Unless you’re an experienced tweaker, I wouldn’t change any of the default values.

It’s also possible to tweak the boot order and choose between LEGACY, UEFI, or a combination of both.

If you’re concerned about other family members causing harm to your setup, it’s possible to set an administrator password.

Next up is the exit page which allows you save any changes you’ve made, restore defaults or override the default boot priority.

The Overclocking menu is really simple and lists key settings in an easy-to-understand manner. To perform a basic overclock, simply insert the CPU Ratio, and adjust the Core Voltage. You can also set the XMP profile and manually enter the DRAM frequency.

For more advanced users, there’s a tonne of overclocking variables to alter including VCCIN, PCH 1.05 voltage, CPU RING OC1 and much more. This level of flexibility is astounding and provides you with all the tools to maximise your CPU’s potential.

The M-Flash software is used to update the BIOS from a USB stick. This is relatively straight-forward and only takes a matter of seconds. Once the BIOS update is complete, your system will reboot back into the newly refreshed BIOS.

The BIOS also has six overclocking profiles to store your custom settings, and it’s remarkably easy to switch between each configuration.

You can use the Hardware Monitor to analyse fan speed values, temperatures, and system voltages. The graph provides a fantastic visual indication of the current fan curve and outlines the RPM percentage at different thermal thresholds.

One of my favourite inclusions is the Board Explorer which informs the user when certain slots are populated and even provides a description of its running speed.

This clever addition can even identify connected devices including keyboards, mice and other commonly used equipment.

Overclocking 

Overclocking the i7-5960X was a painless process and involved a simple multiplier increase in achieving 4.5GHz. Initially, I attempted to increase the voltage to 1.355V and reach 4.6GHz but the system wouldn’t post. On another note, the Vcore reading of 1.345V is the absolute minimum required for stability since even a tiny reduction would cause the test bench to crash.