Oc ability reference – MSI Big Bang-Marshal (B3) OC Guide User Manual

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BIG BANG - MARSHAL (B3) Overclocking Guide

OC abiLitY refereNCe

Now, taking the BIG BANG MARSHAL (B3) mainboard with the Intel’s latest
Core i7 2600K CPU as an example, we will set Core Speed and Memory Fre-
quency as overclocking items to introduce some points and notices to users
for reference.

Max CPU Core Speed

Previous platforms based on the P55 and X58 chipsets can overclock up to
about 4GHz~4.2GHz with air cooling. The unlocked ratio of the LGA 1155 K
SKUs allows the new CPU to overclock even further. K CPUs depend on CPU
ratio to overclock, while using base clock to make finer adjustments. CPU
voltage can be controlled with the VCore Voltage setting. CPU I/O voltage
should also be adjusted in with respect to base clock. In addition, changing
Vdroop voltage to Low Vdroop will increase stability for systems under heav-
ing load. Extra care should be taken when using Low Vdroop, as voltage can
be erratic as well under heavy load.

Demo system configuration

Motherboard

BIG BANG MARSHAL (B3)

BIOS

V1.0G

CPU

Core i7 2600K D2 / Corei5 2500K D2

Memory

G.Skill F3-17600CL7D-4GBPIS

Graphics Card

MSI NVIDIA GeForce GTX470

HDD

Intel SSDSA2MH080G2GC

PSU

ANTEC TPQ-1200 1200W

Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate RTM 7600

Note: Although the BIOS is the Beta edition, but the function will be added into the official edition.

• CPU Voltage:1.59V

• CPU IO:Auto

• Base Clock:100MHz

• CPU Ratio:52×

Reference setting ~ 5200MHz

Max Memory frequency

Memory overclocking on the Sandy Bridge is limited by the Memory Ra-
tio. Memory frequency can only be set to 800MHz, 1066MHz, 1333MHz,
1600MHz, 1866MHz, or 2133MHz. In other words, the most stable memory
overclock that can be achieved with XMP is 2133MHz. To increase the fre-
quency even further, the Memory Ratio will need to be adjusted along with
CPU base clock and voltage.

Thanks to the quality of DDR3 modules nowadays, as long as users buy bet-
ter DDR3 modules, it will not be difficult to boost the memory frequency
to DDR3-2133. Resembling the LGA1156 platform, the DRAM Voltage is the
main item for adjusting CPU IO voltage. After changing the Base Frequency,
it may be necessary to adjust the CPU Vcore and CPU IO Voltage.

• CPU IO Voltage:Auto

• RAM Voltage:1.652V

•DRAM Frequency:2133MHz

Reference setting ~ DDR3-2133

OC abiLitY refereNCe