The last couple of years have been expensive times for PC gaming. From graphics cards to DDR5, there have been some major price increases for top-of-the-line products due to a renewed interest among many gamers for new levels of performance. However, most still prefer to buy hardware with some balance of performance and affordability. MSI might soon bring something big to the table in that regard, according to a leak which claims a redesigned MAG B660M Mortar motherboard can overclock any non-K Intel 12th gen CPU.
The leak comes from chi11eddog on Twitter, which has a reputation for leaking new MSI products in particular. Their latest post goes into detail about a new addition for the MAG B660M Mortar motherboard called a Renesas clock generator. This module, as noted in the above photo, can apparently force a BCLK overclock on any non-K Intel 12th gen CPU. Intel locks users out of overclocking as a means of product segmentation, so this new feature would be a game changer. The leak also mentions PCIe 5.0 support.
They even provided some testing data for a Core i5-12400 six-core processor, which managed an all-core frequency of 5.1 GHz. This is a major frequency uplift over the stock limit of 4.4 GHz, which also only applies to 1-2 cores at best.
26% more performance in tests
Chi11eddog also demonstrated the performance uplift difference with a synthetic Cinebench R23 benchmark, though that information has since been removed from the original tweet. Fortunately, WCCFTech was quick to snag the original screenshots. The stock CPU settings yielded a score 12,525. Once overclocked to 5.1 GHz, the score jumped to an impressive 15,843 points. That’s a performance difference of 26%, which allows this $199 CPU to compete with far more expensive processors. The same method could of course also be done on any other non-K CPU.
Six-core CPUs are great for gaming, even with modern titles. If this new MSI MAG B660M Mortar motherboard comes to market with this feature, it will offer a fantastic value proposition for anyone looking to build a new PC on a budget. Those savings could then be spent elsewhere, such as on a better graphics card.
The ability to easily overclock a non-K 12th gen Intel CPU would be welcome by many. Whether Intel would allow MSI, a major partner of Intel, to sell something like this is another matter.
#MSI MAG B660M MORTAR MAX WIFI DDR4#B660M
PCIe Gen5 clock generator from Renesas
BCLK OC = MSI OC Engine
DDR4
