Overclock Intel ME and BCLK settings.
Overclock Intel ME and BCLK settings.
BCLK overclocking was previously disabled by Intel for a while, but now it's limited to certain Kabylake and Coffee Lake non-K processors. The BIOS won't boot at all if the setting exceeds 102-103 unless you're using K-series chips. I'm curious if cleaning up the ME region in the UEFI bios file with me_cleaner will restore the BCLK option across all Intel platforms—including H, B, and Z chips—and stop the IME from blocking startup when you increase the frequency. I ran a comparison between the Z390 and H310 BIOS sections using the same ASUS and Gigabyte boards, and while most headers changed slightly, it seems the BCLK feature isn't fully hidden in the main bios area. ASUS allows read/write access to the ME region, whereas Gigabyte locks it down, requiring a SPI programmer to make changes. Since I couldn't run me_cleaner.py on Windows with either Python 2 or 3, it looks like Linux might be necessary, and I don’t have Linux installed on any drives. If anyone has tried this before, I’d appreciate their insights so I can decide whether to switch to Linux or use a Linux installation drive.
The MSI MPG Z390 GAMING EDGE runs at a default BCLK of 100.8MHz. This seems unusual because changing the BIOS settings to 100MHz and then restarting doesn’t reset it. Why did MSI set this value?
It explains how XMP defines specific timing and frequency settings
Occasionally it's unclear. I had something like that with 8700k and a BCLK of 103.5!
This value is too large and may cause issues with various components (RAM, CPU, PCI, etc.)