Why is this important: If the MAG B660M Mortar Max WiFi DDR4 is launched at a decent price, it might become the new value champ as it will allow non-K Intel CPUs to be overclocked without having to use expensive DDR5 memory.
According to a new leak, MSI may soon release the MAG B660M Mortar Max WiFi DDR4 motherboard with an external clock generator made by Renesas.
A few months ago, der8auer discovered that motherboards with an external clock generator unlocked BCLK overclocking of Intel’s Alder Lake non-K (locked multiplier) processors. With the right settings, even a Celeron G6900 might be overclocked from 3.4 GHz to over 5.3 GHz.
#MSI MAG B660M MORTIER MAX WIFI DDR4#B660M
Renesas PCIe Gen5 Clock Generator
BCLK OC = MSI OC Engine
DDR4???? pic.twitter.com/7l24NFN4yT– chi11eddog (@g01d3nm4ng0) May 27, 2022
The problem is that, until now, all motherboards equipped with such a chip only supported DDR5 memory, which is still far too expensive to be paired with a budget CPU.
The MAG B660M Mortar Max WiFi DDR4 changes that, as can be inferred from its rather long name. Another benefit of the external clock generator is that it adds PCIe 5.0 support for the first expansion slot, which all other B660M Mortar models lack (confusingly there are already four variants with DDR4/DDR5 and each with/without WiFi).
Pricing for the card is currently unknown, but the non-Max version can currently be had for 160 $. The only other B660 motherboards known to support BCLK overclocking are the ASUS ROG Strix B660-G Gaming WiFi and the Wi-Fi game B660-Fboth of which cost over $200 and require much more expensive DDR5 memory.
In our B660 motherboard roundup, we found that the vanilla B660M Mortar WiFi has a very good VRM for its price class. This means that the new Max version might become a great budget option because you can overclock your non-K CPU today and have the option to upgrade to something more powerful next-gen.