In a world where every company seems to be thinking only about how much it can make selling to data centers, Intel keeps making surprisingly pro-consumer business decisions. Along with announcing the intention to improve socket longevity and launch big-cache CPUs with more cores later this year, it's now promising to improve overclocking access in its CPUs. This means overclocking will no longer be locked exclusively to the K versions on high-end motherboards.
For over a decade, Intel has allowed full CPU overclocking (that is, multiplier adjustment) only on its high-end K-series processors, and only then when combined with a Zx90 motherboard from the generation it was part of. Although Intel did allow memory and BCLK overclocking, those didn't have the same effect and stood in stark contrast to AMD, which allowed full overclocking on almost any CPU and motherboard.
Now Intel looks set to adopt a little of Team Red's strategy.
I still remember managing a 500MHz OC on my beloved 4690k.Credit: Intel
In a recent interview with PCGamesHardware.de, Intel's VP and general manager of enthusiast business channels, Robert Hallock, said of people spending less than $500 on a CPU: "...They are still PC enthusiasts, and they deserve the same level of features, and that is what we intend to deliver in our roadmap." Hallock also said we will see "more and more unlocked SKUs over time" from the company.
Building new CPUs that are both affordable and overclockable would be very welcome. It's unlikely to be something it kickstarts with Nova Lake, but in future generations, maybe we could see a return to the heavily overclockable Intel CPUs of its long and storied history. Some of my most beloved overclocking memories were with Intel CPUs.
It's not clear whether Intel would reduce the barriers to overclocking entry by expanding the scope of unlocked CPUs and chipsets or by launching more K-series models. Either way, consider us much more excited for Intel's next couple of chip generations than we've been in years.
Considering Hallock was at AMD during its Ryzen resurgence years, it would be awesome to see something similar happen at Intel.
