ASUS H81I-Plus/CSM Overclocking?

[RealNeil]

Hello, I have an ASUS H81I-Plus/CSM motherboard with an i5-4670K CPU in it.
I have two Crucial 8GB DDR3-1600MHz Low Profile RAM sticks in it and a pair of SSD Drives. (480GB and 120GB)
My Power supply is 750W Modular Gold rated.

I have been all through the BIOS (Version 2105) and can't find any way to unlock the multiplier on my CPU for a mild OC.
I have read that some of these H81 chipset ASUS motherboards have a BIOS revision that allows for overclocking.
Does this one have such a BIOS available? If not, will there be one?

I like this motherboard. Everything works well. But I want to OC my CPU. If I can't with this board, I have an MSI board that will do it. I'd rather not rebuild my computer though.

Thanks for your time and effort in this matter.

RealNeil

[parsec]

Re: ASUS H81I-Plus/CSM Overclocking?

I think you might be a little behind the curve here.

Last year, some mother board manufactures announced that they had BIOS versions that allowed H81 chipset boards to over clock CPUs by changing the multiplier. Asus was one of them. They found a way around the locked multiplier restriction of the H81 chipset.

That was against the specs and policy of Intel's chipset family, only the 'Z' chipset boards, with an appropriate CPU, allowed over clocking via the core multipliers. PC hardware review web sites wondered how long Intel would tolerate this, since Intel can literally choose to not do business with anyone that ignores their rules and regulations.

It wasn't to long until Intel cracked down on this, and even provided (forced?) CPU microcode updates (part of a BIOS/UEFI) that would disallow the work around the mobo manufactures knew about. The mobo manufactures no longer talk about this special feature. They certainly won't be adding a new BIOS to work around the block Intel added to the first work around, if that is even possible.

If you check the description of the first BIOS version for your board, we see this:

H81I-PLUS BIOS 0213
First release Bios

*Note: Support Unlocked CPU OC (This motherboard supports unlocked CPU depending on Intel chipset, CPU and firmware.)

Although it is not stated in later BIOS versions, that capability was quietly removed. The same thing applies to other mobo manufactures. I have no idea what BIOS version your board came with, but if it had 0213 in it from the factory, you updated it to a BIOS that does not allow any CPU OC. Changing to 0213 now probably won't change the OC ability, since the CPU microcode is not always updated in a BIOS update. Of course we don't know which BIOS has the microcode update that locks out any CPU OC.

No idea what chipset your MSI board uses, but if it is not a Z87 and it can OC your CPU, I would not update the BIOS to the latest or even some earlier versions, since you will loose the ability to OC.