help with b85m-itx motherboard
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Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: Intel Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock Intel Motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=184
Printed Date: 25 Dec 2024 at 1:30am
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Topic: help with b85m-itx motherboard
Posted By: kitalor
Subject: help with b85m-itx motherboard
Date Posted: 26 May 2015 at 12:57pm
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Hello I have recently built a htpc/light gaming machine with a g3258 and b85m-itx (bios 2.20). I have a stable overclock of 4.2 with 1.215 vcore. I can't seem to get the voltage set to adaptive. In the bios there's an information panel on the right explaining the various core voltage modes; auto, adaptive and override However the drop down box only gives options for auto and override. Am I missing something? The core clock isn't static when I look with hwmonitor but the volts are. I can tell hwmonitor is giving me correct reading because at stock settings the voltage varies. Any help greatly appreciated 
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Replies:
Posted By: ASRock_TSD
Date Posted: 26 May 2015 at 7:18pm
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Greetings, this is ASRock Technical Supports Department. Please be noted that for better compatibility on B85 chipset motherboard, the voltage will fix at the high value when overclocking CPU. If you would like to set the voltage as adaptive, please load BIOS to default. Kindest regards, ASRock TSD |
Posted By: kitalor
Date Posted: 12 Jun 2015 at 10:29am
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Ok thank you asrock tsd, PROBLEMS PART 2  So if I accept that limitation and am now regretting purchasing such a limited board my next problem is that the overclock does not stick. Everything is stable upon first boot but upon reboot the clock speed reverts to stock speed. I have tried a new battery but makes no difference. The settings are still retained in the bios - the voltages stay 'fixed' as they are set for the overclock - but I don't get the overclock speed until I reboot from the bios. Any idea what might be causing this? I can't find much online because the terminology and the options on this mobo aren't very common. Thanks |
Posted By: kitalor
Date Posted: 12 Jun 2015 at 10:31am
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Also I got rid of the asrock a-tuning program in windows to make sure that wasn't interfering - doing it all from the bios |
Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 12 Jun 2015 at 3:22pm
You lost me on this: Everything is stable upon first boot but upon reboot the clock speed reverts to stock speed. And this: but I don't get the overclock speed until I reboot from the bios. So from a cold start/boot, your OC settings are applied and shown by your monitoring program. But if you restart the PC directly back into Windows, your OC settings are lost according to the monitoring program. If you then restart into the BIOS, where all your settings are right, and save and exit (or even just exit?) the BIOS, you then get your OC back according to the monitoring program. Is this all correct? Given some of the owner reviews I've read about this board, if you are checking Windows Performance monitor, or other Windows programs, you won't see your OC shown correctly. That is an old Windows bug that remains unfixed. A-Tuning will show your OC correctly, or a program like HWiNFO. Tough Reality Check: Any B85 (or any Intel 'B') chipset board will be the most anti-over clocking Intel board you can buy. 'B' = Business in this case, including the board supporting the Intel Small Business Advantage 2.0 software. You are also not going to get options like Adaptive voltage (which is generally not used by most over clocking enthusiasts) on a board like this. Tips about this: If you want your CPU voltage to be reduced at idle, be sure the CPU power saving options are enabled (EIST, C States) and that you edit the minimum processor state in your Windows Power Plan, Advanced settings. Set it to 5% or less, which it won't be with the High Performance power plan. Even after doing the above, you still won't see the CPU VCore going down at idle without Adaptive voltage. That's because most monitoring programs don't display the VCore of Haswell processors, they display VIDs. Core voltages are created internally with Haswell CPUs, and must be read from the processor itself. Only one or two programs can do that, if the board's sensor chip will allow it. HWiNFO might show your VCore, but I doubt it, it will with ASRock Z97 boards. OTOH, the same owner reviews mention the "one click OC" capability of this board. If you start to set things yourself instead of using the auto OC options on this board, that might be the issue. You are trying to get into options that aren't available on a non-Z chipset board, sorry to say. |
kitalor wrote:Posted By: kitalor
Date Posted: 12 Jun 2015 at 4:05pm
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Hi thanks for replying, I am using HWmonitor to monitor speed. basically if i save and boot from bios I get the overclock. Any other boot gets stock speeds. Sometimes it will revert without boot after a long period of time (like overnight) I am getting the adaptive core speeds with reasonable temps. I would be happy if it stayed. I am only altering the 'one click o.c' by lowering vcore from 1.3 to 1.215. The lowest it goes for prime 95 to run for half an hour (haven't had a chance to test longer at this stage). I'll double check the one click oc and see if it reverts but from memory i think it did the same thing(and more heat) With hindsight I can see it's the wrong combo but various marketing conned me into thinking all this would work ( I'm looking at you asrock non-z overclock hype) Had I known I would have either set my sights lower i.e just building a machine for torrenting and video and nothing else, cheaper cpu and not wasting money on an aftermarket cooler. Or higher with the z board etc... |
Posted By: Xaltar
Date Posted: 12 Jun 2015 at 7:53pm
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From all my reading on the matter, which is extensive, the B85 based boards regardless of manufacturer do not support adaptive voltage unless all voltage settings are left at auto. I have tested the theory myself, with my cpu at stock (Pentium G3258) I see my voltage scale with power states. As soon as I apply an overclock that requires more than stock voltage (3.8ghz in my case), even with voltage still set to auto, it stops scaling. This is a known issue or shall we say non issue with the b85 chipset across all manufacturers. Non Z overclocking is basically a bios hack job to allow a feature that was purposefully disabled by intel. While all 8 series chipsets are in essence the same with features disabled further for each tier under Z87 these changes are not merely software. While I have heard about some B85/H81 boards that support adaptive modes I have seen no proof of these claims. Sadly you and I made a poor choice for an overclocking board. In my case I planned to upgrade to a Xeon as my build was for a 3d workstation so it will cease to be an issue for me when I can afford my E3 1241. As for not retaining your settings I find that very odd, I have never had that happen on my B85 Anniversary. Is it possible you are not entirely stable and when the system reboots after a BSOD the bios has loaded defaults? My advice is set the default OC and leave it at 1.3v (it will not hurt your system) and see if the problem persists. I never use 1 click OC functions on my systems because I have been OCing for over 20 years and prefer to fiddle with things myself so I have not really tried it out
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Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 14 Jun 2015 at 12:33pm
The non-Z OC feature was offered by several motherboard manufactures. That feature broke the Intel rules of the chipset capabilities/features. Intel was not happy about that, and encouraged those manufactures to remove that capability in future BIOS updates. IIRC, Intel provided them with a microcode update that will permanently defeat the non-Z OC BIOS trick. Since you are using a UEFI/BIOS version that is well beyond the original 1.40 non-Z OC version, the behavior of your OC settings might be explained by all this.  Also, is the Pentium G3258 a 'K' type processor? By its name, no, by its OC capability it fits the definition of a 'K' processor, with one exception. It does not have Turbo boost. But try to OC one with Turbo disabled or no Turbo option.  A possible workaround for your problem is something you no longer use, A-Tuning. A-Tuning will not change the settings in the UEFI/BIOS, but does change the same registers and data that creates an OC. That is done in the same way that the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility allows on the fly over clocking in the Windows environment. If you can successfully set up your OC with A-Tuning, you then can configure it to run automatically when Windows boots. The OC settings will be applied every time you start the PC. I mentioned the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, which all mother boards do not support. You could try to use it with your PC, but I don't know if it will work: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-" rel="nofollow - https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU- |
Posted By: kitalor
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 8:32am
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Thanks for replying guys. I appreciate it. Perhaps this is a non-issue. What I have just discovered is if I reboot from Windows I lose my oc everytime. However if I shut down and power back up all my chosen settings remain in place. A windows 8.1 issue? boot sequence? Like I said I am seeing no signs of instability, bsod or otherwise I think I can live with this. I have an i7 desktop video editing machine for real work and a ps4 for games. Essentially this is a htpc that i will use for movies, browsing, torrents and cpu-gpu light and older games. Still wanting to squeeze as much performance but also energy efficiency as I can out of it as it will be left on and downloading for long periods. Right now with my oc of 4.2 the pc is consuming 50w idling (800mhz in hwmonitor) and up to 90w full throttle (4200 mhz) with prime 95 torture test (measured through a plug in power meter). 500w silverstone strider psu. Is this good? the best I can hope for? |
Posted By: kitalor
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 8:43am
Anybody able to comment on my settings or point me towards an oc methodology/guide that would make sense with this board?
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Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 1:32pm
I've never used a non-Z OC board, so without direct experience I can only speculate. Something that may be a coincidence with the way you lose your OC settings on a restart but not on a cold boot, is the Windows 8.1 Fast Startup feature. Enabled by default, this feature works only from a cold boot/start, it is not active on restarts. Regarding power consumption, 50W is good, you seem to have all the CPU power saving options enabled, such as C States. The Windows Power Plan settings are important with Haswell CPUs. You should check the Advanced Settings of your Power Plan and check settings related to power usage, such as Hard disk, Turn off drive after X minutes, PCI Express Link State Power Management, and Processor Power Management, which should be at 5% or less for the Minimum. Your PSU is 80+ Bronze certified, so about 75% efficient at an idle power draw of 50W. Don't forget that power usage figure includes the loss of power due to the inefficiency of the PSU. The PC itself (minus PSU) is not using 50W, it is using about 38W. A newer 80+ Gold or Platinum PSU would increase your efficiency, but at low loads of 50W (10% of 500W) you'll only get up to about 80% PSU efficiency. |
Posted By: parsec
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 1:45pm
At the very top of your UEFI pictures, I see non-Z OC set to Disabled. Why? Using the XMP memory setting on your memory can cause other UEFI settings besides memory to be set. Some of those settings may not be visible to us. XMP is really a convenience feature, but has the added side affect of other setting being set that may not help us. Since you are stuck at 1400 anyway, disable XMP and set your memory manually. |
Posted By: kitalor
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 3:18pm
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Thanks Parsec. The Nonz-OC drop down only gives pre configured options , 3.8, 4.0, 4.2 and so on. This is one of the things I have tested extensivley i.e straight preconfigured o.c vs slight alterations vs manual configuration. No difference in this boot issue. disabling the xmp or leaving it on also doesn't make a difference I'm aware of. Do you mean for me to go in and do the timings as well? Can I change the windows fast boot settings? there are some in the bios which also don't make a difference. One thing I notice is I can't access boot options by holding down f11 at startup. Here are some shots of hwinfo whilst running prime 95 in both states (with overclock working from cold boot and not working from reboot). Interestingly I can't see any difference in numbers except in the cpu window at the top right.   |
Posted By: Xaltar
Date Posted: 15 Jun 2015 at 11:01pm
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So from cold boot the OC is in place and reboot from windows disables it..... That sounds like something coming from the OS rather than the board itself. An easy test would be to create a linux USB key and boot from that, restart from linux and see if the OC is still there on a linux install. I typically make a Ubuntu USB installation and keep it on hand for data recovery and fault finding, you can get http://www.linuxliveusb.com/" rel="nofollow - LinuxLive USB Creator and download a linux ISO and have it set up in minutes. If linux does not reproduce the problem then windows is your culprit and I suspect it may have something to do with an incomplete or only partial uninstall of A-Tuning interfering with the bios.
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Posted By: kitalor
Date Posted: 09 Jan 2016 at 9:41am
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Just thought I'd update this for anyone else searching for a solution to the problem. I gave up on the OC as I wasn't doing anything particularly demanding with the pc at the time (reverted to stock). Recently I upgraded my gpu and did a fresh install of windows 10 (up from 8.1). For whatever reason the OC that I was trying at the time now works as it should with the speedstep. Weird that I could never find out whether this was even possible with this board
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Posted By: wardog
Date Posted: 09 Jan 2016 at 4:02pm
You can thank ASRock for that BIOS update you probably performed between Windows 8.1 and 10 https://www.google.com/search?num=20&q=g3258+microsoft+asrock" rel="nofollow - https://www.google.com/search?num=20&q=g3258+microsoft+asrock |