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initial SkyOC i3 6100OC thread

J

JNavy89GT

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Apr 25, 2001
Messages
1,843
I bought an
Asrock Fatality Gaming4 board
Intel i3 6100
2x8gb G.Skill Trident PC3000 DDR4
Hyper 212 with 2 fans aircooling
XFX Radeon 280X(stock clocks)
Thermaltake 700W bronze psu

Initial thoughts: stock bios wouldn't run memory at XMP. Updated to 2.2 and fixed that. SkyOC bios is 2.23. U have to get that one to oc the i3 as I thought the 2.2 was the newest(newest one on the product dl page). I emailed them tech question and within 30 mins had a reply and link to bios. I think you can get them linked to various PR/web announcements of the SkyOC bios though; come to think of it.

Needs 1.25v set in bios to get 115Bclk so far. Not settled on voltage, but auto failed to post windows, and both 1.2+ 1.225 failed 3dmark, with the higher vcore lasting longer before crash. Kinda excited it's working though. Here's a screening of 115bclk @1.25v set per bios,
iBawsHs.jpg


3DMark overall
kJQr0mA.jpg


3DMark Firestrike details
8xXJx1L.jpg
 
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one recommendation so far is to make smaller changes in the bios at a time. Granted, that is usually a good choice anyway to narrow down what is causing issues. However, what I'm experiencing is bios freezes if I stick around changing too many options. I'm not sure if the GUI of the bios is unstable, or if some of the changes I'm making are effecting changes on the fly. I do know that if I don't nerf the ram divider a bit, save, then re-enter bios, then I'm getting the bios freeze when I input a higher bclk; even before saving/exiting bios. If I lower the divider, save/exit, then make my bclk changes it seems to happy that way.
 
I plan on giving this a shot with an i5 after Christmas, hopefully by then I'll have a rough estimate of what to shoot for.
 
4.6ghz is a no go.
4.5ghz at 1.325v set per bios seems to be fairly stable. Will have to test further, but initial tests seem promising. Temps don't seem to go over 50C. I tried up to 1.375v in bios for 4.6 and it would lock up quickly in windows or 3dmark. Curiously, 3dmark is the test that is failing first among, AIDA, OCCT etc... I believe the errors to be memory(IMC?) related. Wondering if some of the other voltage settings need to be tweaked?

Also, something that may have been common in past boards(Z87/97 etc..) the bclk adjustments are in 0.1-0.2 increments. Meaning you can really dial in your final OC by a few MHz at a time vs one whole multiplier jump or 37mhz in my case of this i3.
 
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Tell me something, if you had a 2133 or 2400 memory, would it be too less or is it exact same thing when you put your multiplier low enough?
I was just thinking if it is necessary to get 3000+ memory since it is more $
 
I think PC2400 would be just fine. I haven't noticed much difference going to PC3000 setting, but I'm still very new to this platform. I got the PC3000 b/c it was on sale and not much more than PC2400, so I figured why not.

I have another Z170 board, the Asrock Fatality Gaming Z170 ITX/ac board for a small build I want to do. I was going to return the larger board if the small board oc'd well, but I may just buy a Pentium G4400 and see how that oc's. I still want an I5 eventually, but for the $ these budget cpus are hard to beat as long as you don't need all the power/cores. My main game, pretty much only game I play is CSGO and it's fine on a decent dual core.
 
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Thanks for your inputs and making this thread, hopefully more people can post their results!
These i3s at 4.5+ will definitely be something from a gaming standpoint, pretty sure will beat entry lvl haswell i5s. Would want to see some i5 6400 OCs to see what people actually achieve.
 
yeah I almost bought the i5, but it was a fair bit more ,and I wanted to see what I could do with an i3 first. I have a feeling the i5's will oc better as the larger die will help with the heat dissipation IMO. I was really hoping for 4.6ghz+, but I won't lose sleep if 4.5ghz proves to be stable. Or I can keep plugging at bios settings and maybe unlock some setting to get me over 4.6 :).
 
Yup, sounds pretty cool. Also a question I''d like you to answer:

I know bus overclocking turns off turns off the more advanced sleep modes. but does the CPU still throttle down to a lower multiplier when it's not doing something? Or does it always run ay the 4.5 GHz speed, even when it's doing nothing?

I seem to recall older 775 motherboards still dropping the CPU down to the idle multiplier even when overclocked. The voltage stayed at whatever you set it to, and the bus speed was whatever you set it to, but the multiplier still dropped.
 
I will have to check this, but I'm almost positive it stays at full clock the whole time.
 
Got a question for you, were you able to run XMP at 3000mhz before switching to the new BIOS? I have a similar setup although my board doesn't have an "unlocking" BIOS like this and I can't get my i3 to run 1mhz over 2133 no matter what I do.
 
yes and no re: PC3000. Stock/shipping bios I was not able to get anything over 2133. I updated to the latest POSTED bios to their product support page. That bios would not allow bclk overclocking, but DID allow PC3000 speeds and it was tested stable as I wanted to confirm the ram/cpu could do PC3000 before I started monkeying with bclk overclocking. For those bios's you need to find the PR webpage for the SKYOC and it was towards the bottom a list of boards etc.... that is where I got the bios from for bclk adjustment that works and PC3000 works, plus a bit more as I've gone to about 3050mhz or so seemingly stable.
 
JNavy89GT said:
yes and no re: PC3000. Stock/shipping bios I was not able to get anything over 2133. I updated to the latest POSTED bios to their product support page. That bios would not allow bclk overclocking, but DID allow PC3000 speeds and it was tested stable as I wanted to confirm the ram/cpu could do PC3000 before I started monkeying with bclk overclocking. For those bios's you need to find the PR webpage for the SKYOC and it was towards the bottom a list of boards etc.... that is where I got the bios from for bclk adjustment that works and PC3000 works, plus a bit more as I've gone to about 3050mhz or so seemingly stable.
Click to expand...

Okay, my board is an MSI and only has the shipping BIOS available. Just wanted to make sure the i3 could in fact enable XMP so I know its most likely a BIOS issue at this point.
 
yes sorry, "idle" speed is the set clock ie OVERCLOCK. Does not power down, or go down in MHz any.
 
So it seems she tops out at 4525mhz. The fine adjustment of the bclk really helps. The gskill trident pc3000 is ocing well at almost 3100mhz at default timings 15-16-16-x. More important, the system boots super fast and feels snappy. I've had technically faster systems, that feel slower. I know that may sound stupid, but for 99% of what I do, I don't need four cores or eight threads. I'm fairly happy with the setup.
 
I don't like it that it doesn't clock down when idle. That means more heat and therefore more noise.
 
Well for me and the hyper 212 I'm running, the system is pretty quiet. Keep in mind I came from the old school delta fan days. But tbh the system is very subtle. But I agree, I wish it would clock down as well, but this is what we have and I'm glad for the option to oc. I don't leave my systems on all the time anymore. So it doesn't really effect me as much. The heat is a non issue, at least on mine. Very very cool running. YMMV
 
It's odd that you lose the ability to clock down while idle; don't understand why SkyOC would cause the multiplier to get stuck at max. Hopefully will get fixed in some future BIOS release but still, even without that feature it is pretty great.
4500MHz is pretty damn good for a Core i3.
 
bwang said:
It's odd that you lose the ability to clock down while idle; don't understand why SkyOC would cause the multiplier to get stuck at max. Hopefully will get fixed in some future BIOS release but still, even without that feature it is pretty great.
4500MHz is pretty damn good for a Core i3.
Click to expand...

It shouldn't kill off power states but idle will be effected by base clock and voltage increases.
 
moved this machine over to become my gaming rig last night. Had to back it down to about 4.4ghz. 4.5ghz was locking up in CSGO. FPS seem as good/solid as my i5@4.6ghz.
 
@JNavy -
Can you compare your cache speed before and after OC, a guy posted that his cache went from 860 Gb/s (stock) to 210gb/s (140 bclk) or somethign like that, is this true for you too?
 
I was expecting like 100 articles on this Skylake BCLK overclocking by now, as I figured this was HUGE news. But it's amazingly hard to find info. Building a 6500 rig for a friend this week and hoping for some detailed analysis but I guess I'll be going in blind.
 
xp3nd4bl3 said:
I was expecting like 100 articles on this Skylake BCLK overclocking by now, as I figured this was HUGE news. But it's amazingly hard to find info. Building a 6500 rig for a friend this week and hoping for some detailed analysis but I guess I'll be going in blind.
Click to expand...

Same here! Damn near every Z170 board has an available unlock now and this is getting almost zero press. Go here for firmware and guides:

http://overclocking.guide/intel-skylake-non-k-overclocking-bios-list/
 
I do wonder if they are going to "fix" overclocking of non K CPUs similar to what they did with KB3064209 and over clocking on non Z motherboards.
 
this offers very impressive performance/$ but the motherboards are still very expensive today
 
sweets3450 said:
this offers very impressive performance/$ but the motherboards are still very expensive today
Click to expand...

EDIT: I linked the wrong result in my search. Apparently a hundred bucks is too much for you?

You do know that if you go much lower in price than around $100, the VRMs won't be able to handle OC, right? So there's not much point in introducing this to cheaper boards.

Higher-amperage VRMs are the first things to go in cheaper motherboards.
 
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Ocellaris said:
That's not a Z170 board.
Click to expand...

Yeah you're right, they're a hundred bucks. I searched for z170 motherboards, and got that H170 in my results :D

But for that $100 you get to overclock both memory and CPU. And you get bare-minimum VRMs capable of handling an overclcloked i3 or an i5.
 
a3venom said:
@JNavy -
Can you compare your cache speed before and after OC, a guy posted that his cache went from 860 Gb/s (stock) to 210gb/s (140 bclk) or somethign like that, is this true for you too?
Click to expand...

sorry been away a bit. What program should I use to check this. PS I'm at 4.4ghz now as it wasn't game stable at 4.5
 
I'd rather have the Core i3 overclocked than a Core i5 at the cost because I'll be able to use ECC DDR4 at the same time. Very excited!
 
sverreerik said:
I'd rather have the Core i3 overclocked than a Core i5 at the cost because I'll be able to use ECC DDR4 at the same time. Very excited!
Click to expand...

I thought you had to run the Core i3 on a workstation/server chipset board to unlock that feature?

I know Supermicro announced this on their Z170 motherboard, but did they announce this on more server-oriented boards?
 
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