Gadgetory

last month I put together the first Intel Schaick 9k overclocking video to hit YouTube and you guys really seemed to like it I've since received a number of requests to create an overclocking guide based on my experiences with the core i5 6400 so there's my last point of business in 2015 I bring you the hardware unbox skylake 9k overclocking guide ads with the original video I'll still be using the fatalities ad 170 gaming K 6 plus but this guide really applies to any asrock said 170 motherboard including their most affordable model the z170 pro 4s since breaking the news of their sky OCT technology the only other motherboard manufacturer to make a similar announcement is Biostar with what they call their hyper OC technology at this point there are only non official biases for the select msi seuss and gigabyte motherboards as these companies are yet to make an official announcement it's also important to note that you must have the correct motherboard BIOS installed to use this new overclocking feature and now rock has conveniently listed the supporting version for each of their z170 motherboards on their website in the case of the fatalities at 170 gaming k-6 plus we required the bios version 1.9 3 to enable the non k overclocking the bios can be downloaded in one of three flavors for either a DOS based flash a windows-based flash or the instant flash the dos flash is the least convenient option and typically we try to avoid flashing the BIOS within windows the asrock instant flash method by the BIOS works rather well it's very convenient and probably the safest method and only requires a USB thumb drive the first step is to download the correct BIOS version from the asrock website and copy it to a USB thumb drive that's been formatted using the fat32 file system the buyers won't detect thumb drives that have been formatted using NTFS the bias is less than 10 megabytes in size so literally any size thumb drive will do once the correct bias has been copied make sure the thumb drive is connected to a USB port on the system your flashing and then restart enter the BIOS on startup by pressing f2 or the Delete key by default the fatalities at 170 in kx+ and most asrock said 170 motherboards for that matter load into the easy mode setup you want to switch to the advanced mode by pressing f6 and then enter the next step is to navigate to the tool menu and scroll down to the instant flash utility if you receive the error message no image file detected that means a thumb drive is either not formatted correctly or the BIOS simply isn't on the drive alternatively we suggest trying a different USB port perhaps the USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port for example if all goes well the instant flash tool will detect the new BIOS and the thumb drive and give you the option to install it from this point forward you want to sit back and do nothing for a few minutes until the process is complete it's imperative that you do not reset the system or lose power at this point as it will likely result in your system becoming unusable that said in the case of the fatalities ded 170 gaming K 6 + there is a secondary BIOS which you can switch over to this will help avoid having to make warranty claim the entire process takes around 30 to 40 seconds but it can take longer once complete the install flash utility notified us of the success and then reset the system after a quick reboot we're now using the new 1.93 BIOS and it's time to start overclocking to confirm you are in fact using the correct BIOS check the main menu which lists the motherboard model and bios version as well as the processor tire speed and memory configurations all the overclocking action takes place in the OC Tweaker menu first let's jump into the DRAM configuration menu the first thing you want to do here is load the XMP memory profile I suggest loading the most aggressive memory frequency setting which in our case was XMP 2.0 profile 1 the ddr4 3000 if you load the memory profile after making all the overclocking adjustments it will reset everything back to default now the XMP profile has been loaded manually set the DRAM frequency back down to say 20 133 megahertz to allow for some overclocking Headroom in our case we can safely go as high as 3,000 megahertz without a compromising memory stability next adjust the B CLK or base clock frequency which by default is been set to auto which translates to 100 megahertz previously I found core i5 6400 sample could reach 160 megahertz for an operating frequency of four point three two gigahertz a nice 60 percent overclock rather than jump to 160 megahertz we began overclocking in 10 mega heard increments and continued doing so until we hit a limitation it was then that we played around with memory frequencies and CPU voltages to try and continue on overclocking is always done best in baby steps this better helps you understand what the limitations are and more importantly what might be causing them with that said begin by increasing the base clock to 110 mega Hertz and this small step will already add 270 megahertz to your core i5 6400 operating frequency at the 110 mega Hertz base clock we find that the ddr4 memory is jumped up from 20 133 megahertz to 2346 megahertz which is still well within the operating parameters now we're going to save and exit the BIOS reboot the system and see if it poses it should upon success weari entered the BIOS and push the base clock up to 120 megahertz which resulted in a 20 percent overclock for a cpu frequency of 3.2 4 gigahertz and a memory speed of 25 59 megahertz this process was repeated all the way up to a 150 mega base clock at which point we needed to reduce the memory frequency from 3199 megahertz down to 3000 megahertz then finally at 160 megahertz the memory frequency again needed to be reduced from thirty 200 megahertz back to 2987 megahertz for one to eight ratio obviously if you only have ddr4 2400 memory for example you need to ensure that the memory frequency stays below 24 hundred megahertz using the 160 megahertz base clock with the 2987 megahertz memory speed the core i5 6400 with load windows 10 happily at 4.30 2 gigahertz without any voltage adjustments that said stressful applications would occasionally crashed causing us to increase the V core voltage to 1.3 5 volts at this voltage the system was a hundred percent stable and survived any stress test that we threw at it for testing how stable and overclocked is we recommend using prime 95 which allows you to run a torture test that places 100 percent load on all caused if you just want to quickly check an overclock run this test for ten minutes and then to ensure and overclock is stable run it for an hour given this as a one point six two gigahertz overclock we didn't feel the need to try and push the core i5 6400 any further as we're now receiving a tremendous amount of extra performance from this sub $200 quad-core processor should you mess up any bias settings along the way causing the system to fail the boot test and don't panic most asrock motherboards such as the fatalities at 170 game in k-6 plus feature boot guard and you'll find other brands offering similar features the motherboard will detect when an overclock has failed and reset the system into the BIOS under a safe mode type boot still should the overclocking friendly safeguards foul you can always clear the CMOS using either a jumper or simply by removing the motherboards battery once the mains power has been disconnected we suggest you consult you user manual to learn the best method for resetting your own motherboards BIOS so to recap make sure you have the correct bias install for non cave overclocking make sure you go up in small incremental steps and keep an eye on the resulting memory frequency getting our core i5 6400 up to 4 gigahertz was done very easily without any additional voltage once you start adding extra voltage the thermal output will increase quite dramatically and you'll want to ensure you have a decent CPU cooler and adequate case cooling to deal with that extra heat for testing we use the $30.00 cooler master hyper 2 unto Evo so you don't need to spend a lot of money to achieve these over clocks on that note please don't attempt to overclock using the standard Intel Box cooler it simply won't cope also for 24/7 usage we don't suggest using much of a 1.3 5 volts as this could shorten the life of your processor as a final note this overclocking guide not only applies to the core i5 6400 but all skylight core i5 core i3 Core i7 and even Pentium processors the only variable to really change will be the base clock CPU such as the core i5 6600 which is a much higher clock multiplier will likely be limited to a lower base clock for example to reach the same 4.2 gigahertz overclock the 6600 will only require 130 megahertz base clock speed thanks for watching this hardware unboxed overclocking guide as always if you have any questions and please let us know in the comment or in our forum a hardware unbox where we have a dedicated thread to this video you can find the link in the description or up there remember the hit like hit subscribe and I'll see you next time you