THE LITTLE CPU THAT COULD!
CORE i3 OC
Last issue, we delved into the topic of affordable
overclocking and all the related players that may benefit
from such a SKU, be it INTEL or AMD for that matter.
It is all good and well talking or writing about it given
the situation we are currently faced with. The pressing
question however is - what can one do right now to get
into overclocking if the funds just aren’t there for
the high end products which we often take for granted?
Well, Non-K SKU overclocking which came to light
roughly 7 months ago may be the answer to that very
question.
With just a tiny budget of around
$299 you can get into some relatively interesting overclocking scenarios at the amateur/rookie level.
You can go about this any number
ways, but the most direct way to get
into this is of course a cheap Z170
motherboard and Core i3-6300/6320
CPU. Naturally it would be better
if we could do this with an H170
chipset board, but H170, does not
support external clock generators
and as such is out of the question.
Since the vast majority of the amateur overclockers are by and large
those still very active and involved
in gaming, it stands to reason that
given all the constraints involved,
the hardware must meet all criteria,
over and above tuning ability and
performance. Primarily it must also
be viable within this context.
This is exactly where it gets interesting. As professional and elite
overclockers have shown over several months, the ASUS MAXIMUS
VIII IMPACT and perhaps even better
than ASRock Z170M OC Formula are
the motherboards to choose from
when dealing with Non-K SKU overclocking. The simple truth is that at
such a price, they are out of reach
for most. As such, your options are
going to be the $120 to $150
boards that virtually every vendor
has, assuming you don't have one
that is. Of course this is
14 The OverClocker Issue 38 | 2016
not a sanctioned exercise
by INTEL and one that is
not only unsupported but
discouraged by INTEL and
its partners (at least in the
official sense). We can all
appreciate that, but overclocking was never about
doing what is sanctioned
with our computers. That
was never the point and it’s
actually been a long time
since overclocking spoke
true to its roots. When it
was simply a matter of extracting additional performance from your chosen
hardware, when financial
resources just weren’t
there to buy the most capable components. If you
only have $300 to your
name for this endeavour,
you would think overclocking and taking part in the
HWBOT competitions and
others is not feasible. Well,
that is not necessarily true.
Had it not been the lack of any
overclocking capability on the H
chipset boards, there are several
feature rich H170 alternatives that
are better featured than the entry
level Z170 alternatives you are likely
to find at this price point. Again this
just isn’t possible so budget Z170 is
the only viable option. This means