B660 & 13th Gen Overclocking? MSI Makes It Possible With Its B660M Mortar MAX WIFI Motherboard, Up To 5.8 GHz OC Achieved on Intel Core i5-13600K
So let me tell you first why this news is big for existing MSI B660M Mortar MAX WIFI Motherboard owners. When Intel launched its 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs, they were only overclockable on the Z790 or Z690 motherboards. Owners of the mainstream B660 series motherboards, despite having clock-gen support on a few models, weren’t able to overclock the latest chips due to a BIOS lock. In the following screenshot that we were able to acquire, you can note that the BCLK can be adjusted up to 125 MHz: Users could only go as far as 102.9 MHz (BCLK) however MSI has a Special BIOS which will let the user surpass that limit with ease. The Special BIOS is ‘E7D97IMS.123U24’ and can be downloaded directly from our cloud hosting link below (you can alternatively download it from the Google Drive link here too).
MSI B660M Mortar MAX WIFI Motherboard Special BIOS ‘Download’ E7D97IMS.123U24
With the default BIOS, the CPU will only support a BCLK of up to 102.9 MHz or a 5.25 GHz clock frequency so if you use anything above that BCLK, the motherboard will simply revert to the older version of the CPU microcode (that doesn’t support 13th Gen CPUs). MSI MAG B660M Mortar Max WIFI + Intel Core i5-13600K BIOS Stock (Image Credits: HKEPC): MSI MAG B660M Mortar Max WIFI + Intel Core i5-13600K BIOS OC (Image Credits: HKEPC): With the Special BIOS, however, the MSI B660M Mortar MAX WIFI motherboard can hit a maximum of 113 MHz BCLK with auto voltage, allowing for a 5.76 GHz P-Core and 4.40 GHz E-Core frequency on Intel’s Core i5-13600K CPU. That’s a +660 MHz P-Core and a +500 MHz E-Core clock bump with 1.25 Volts. With slightly higher voltage, users can even surpass 5.8 GHz P-Core & 4.44 GHz E-Core clocks which are truly impressive. Only at 115 MHz did the performance start to deteriorate since the CPU was hitting its TjMax but it did post 5.86 GHz P-Core and 4.48 GHz E-Core clocks. MSI MAG B660M Mortar Max WIFI + Intel Core i5-13600K Frequencies (Image Credits: HKEPC): HKEPC provides the following guide if you want to plan an Intel 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPU such as the Core i5-13600K on the MSI B660M Mortar MAX WIFI motherboard: We can already understand why overclocking is locked for Intel’s 13th Gen Raptor Lake CPUs on the older B660 motherboards. Having OC enabled on the previous-gen mainstream products will give users no reason to invest in a higher-end and more expensive Z790 or Z690 motherboard. They’ll get the same overclocking capabilities and performance out of their existing and cheaper boards. The only downside is that the MSI MAG B660M Mortar MAX WIFI is limited to DDR4 at the moment and we have really started to see the benefits of DDR5 in the 13th Gen lineup. Maybe we’ll see MSI launch a successor to the B660M Mortar MAX WIFI based on the B760 chipset early next year with similar overclocking support at a fantastic price? Who knows?
