Within this section you can also program the North Bridge (NB) LLC settings, not that there's much benefit from tinkering with this for the purposes of CPU overclocking, though sometimes increasing it can aid stability. From our testing Mode 4 seemed to be adequate for maintaining the input voltage set in the UEFI at a fairly constant level, Mode 5 resulted in slight reduction to the programmed voltage. The range of LLC options is extensive with Mode 1 (most aggressive) to Mode 8 (least aggressive). We expect that MSI may need to tweak the “Auto” behaviour of these advanced settings on this motherboard, as well as some of the system voltages, to prevent future issues with XMP profiles. There are an extensive array of options for secondary and tertiary DRAM timings, as well as other obscure DRAM parameters. MSI issued an updated v1.10 (build date ) BIOS after we finished our benchmarking, but this new BIOS version exhibited the same problems as the v1.0 BIOS we tested with initially. In our case the 3200MHz XMP profile on the G.Skill memory kit seemed to translate correctly in terms of major timings, frequency and the voltage, but was not stable.īy default it applied too much voltage (1.38 instead of 1.35 that it showed in the UEFI) and still wasn't stable, by manually increasing the voltage to 1.4 volts we were able to get the system stable, but even then it would increase the voltage further to 1.44v. MSI implements “A-XMP” profiles, effectively AMD XMP profiles which translates the Intel XMP profiles for the AMD system. It is advisable to toggle the “OC Explore Mode” into Expert straight away since the Normal mode does hide some useful options.

The real substance of the BIOS for most users is found in the OC tab where frequency and voltage settings related to the CPU, DRAM and other system components is found.

The Advanced entry has the most sub menus and options to play with including the ability to toggle various different compatibility modes for storage and USB devices.

Settings has a number of useful parameters for booting, integrated peripherals and onboard devices. The MSI B450 Tomahawk sports version 5 of MSI’s Click BIOS which launches into an EZ Mode splash screen with an option to head into the advanced mode with the press of F7. MSI’s UEFI has remained relatively consistent across its range of “gaming” motherboards for AMD & Intel platforms for the last few years.

B450 tomahawk fan control