It looks like Intel will finally introduce memory overclocking support on non-Z motherboards, starting with the 500-series. By enabling memory overclocking support, systems equipped with H570 or B560 motherboards will allow memory modules to operate above their official specifications for increased performance.

Unlike AMD, which offers overclocking support on almost all of its chipsets, Intel has, up until now, been locking memory overclocking behind its “Z” chipsets. Now it seems Intel has finally changed this position and will introduce memory overclocking to its mid-tier motherboards.

With the Comet Lake-S platform, the Intel Core i9 and i7 CPUs supported DDR4-2933 memory, but the i5, i3, and Pentium chips could only be paired with up to DDR4-2666 memory. Due to the lack of memory overclocking, H470 and B460 motherboards would only run memory at a maximum of DDR4-2933. As per @momomo_us‘ post (via Tom’s Hardware), the Rocket Lake-S platform is expected to be arranged differently from Comet Lake-S, with the Core i9, i7, and i5 supporting up to DDR4-3200, while the Core-i3 and Pentium processors would be maxed at DDR4-2666.

The fact that different maximum supported memory speeds depends on the processor families, might be a sign that the 11th Gen Core processors lineup consists of Rocket Lake-S processors and refresh Comet Lake-S processors. The CPUs supporting up to DDR4-3200 would be Rocket Lake-S processors (Core i9 to i5), while the CPUs featuring a maximum memory speed of DDR4-2666 could be the refreshed Comet Lake-S parts.

Given that users will need at least a Core i5 processor to run DDR4-3200 memory, it is expected that H570 and B560 motherboards will only be capable of memory overclocking when paired with Core i9/i7/i5 CPUs.

KitGuru says: Are you glad to see that Intel has finally started to introduce overclocking features to non-Z motherboards? 

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