How To Overclock a CPU Without BIOS

Do you want to increase your system’s speed without making hardware changes? Luckily, you can overclock your CPU without much effort. 

To make the whole process easy for you, we took the time to write a detailed guide on how to overclock a CPU without using BIOS with step-by-step instructions.

Overclocking the CPU Without BIOS  

If you are wondering how to overclock the CPU without BIOS, our step-by-step method will quickly walk you through the entire process.  

Step #1: Downloading Intel XTU

First, you must download and install Intel XTU from the official site. Next, close all running apps in the background and launch the software on your PC.  

Step #2: Running Benchmark 

Before overclocking, you must test your PC for its current benchmark score. To check it, go to the “Basic Tuning” tab in the left side menu on Intel XTU.

Click the “Run Benchmark” button, which you can see in the middle window, and wait until it fetches the system stats for you. 

Step #3: Changing the CPU Power Settings 

In the next step, make a slight change to CPU power settings, so the system will get the maximum power needed. 

To do this, click on the “Advanced Tuning” tab, go to the “Turbo Boost Power Max”, and move the slider towards the right, hitting the highest limit. You might get a toggle option of “Turbo Boost Short Power Max” in some versions; if yes, click to enable it. 

The last thing you need to increase is the “Processor Current Limit” to the max, and you are good to move ahead to the next step.      

Step #4: Overclocking the System 

In this step, move back to the “Basic Tuning” tab of the software. Here you can find “Step 2: Overclock System” mentioned with slider bars of “Processor Core Ratio” and “Processor Cache Ratio”. Drag pointers on these bars to the maximum and click “Apply”. 

Check the new score by clicking “Run Benchmark” under the “Witness Performance Improvement” section. After a few moments, you can see the increased score on the screen. 

Step #5: Increasing the Multipliers 

Now it is time to increase the multipliers, so you need to switch back to the “Advanced Tuning” tab. Here, you can find a “Multipliers” setting that will allow you to increase each CPU core multiplier. 

Start increasing each core multiplier by 1x using the given slider and click “Run Benchmark”. If your system doesn’t crash, click on the “Profiles” tab and save this current profile. 

Now increase core multipliers by 1x again, along with “Run Benchmark” and saving profiles until your system crashes. Eventually, when the system crashes, you can reboot the PC and use the latest profile you saved that did not lead to the crash. 

Step #6: Increasing the Voltage 

In this step, you need to increase CPU voltage, which will require more power for speedy processes. For this, use the “Core Voltage Offset” slider to increase the voltage, as it will adjust the voltage according to system needs. 

You can also increase voltage using the “Core Voltage” option but only increase it by 0.1 every time. After increasing the voltage core, click “Run Benchmark” to check if the system works.

Now, you are done with CPU overclocking; however, move towards one final step to ensure its stability. 

Step #7: Running the Stress Test 

In the last step, you will run a stress test to check system stability and performance with an overclocked CPU. Go to the “Stress Test” tab and select which component to test from “CPU”, “Integrated Graphics”, or “Memory”. 

Next, you will get durations of 5 minutes, 30 minutes, and 3 to 5 hours for testing. Select the one as per your preference and click “Start Testing”. 

The test results will conclude the successful CPU overclocking and its performance stability.

Summary 

In this guide, we’ve discussed how to overclock a CPU without BIOS using Intel XTU software on your Windows PC.   

Hopefully, your question has been answered in this article, and you can now stretch your system’s capabilities within safe limits. 

Frequently Asked Questions