MSI has now released the latest Intel 700 & 600-series motherboard BIOS which lets you disable CEP, allowing better performance at lower temps.
Is Your CPU Running Hot All The Time? MSI’s Latest Feature Let’s You Disable CEP On Intel 700 & 600-Series Motherboards For Cooler & Faster Operation
Last month, we reported that MSI was working on a new motherboard BIOS that would hit the Intel 700 & 600-series products. The BIOS is now publicly available, letting you disable CEP (Current Excursion Power) limits which helps achieve higher performance at lower temperatures, allowing for a more stable operation of your PC which is essential when playing modern-day games such as those based on Unreal Engine 4 & Unreal Engine 5 as they can stress your chip a lot during initial shader compilation runs.
So a recap on what CEP is and how it helps to achieve a better and stable operation. If the CPU voltage is insufficient, CEP will put the CPU in a “phantom throttle” mode, which can degrade performance. Furthermore, if users try to lower voltages while CEP is enabled, they will get slightly lower temperatures but at the cost of lower performance. Disabling CEP entirely does come with its benefits such as you don’t have to worry about lowering voltages & getting lower performance. These benefits include:
- Lower CPU temperatures (preventing thermal throttling and getting better performance)
- Lower CPU temperatures without performance degradation
In performance measurements run by MSI, you can see that disabling CEP positively affects both “K” and “Non-K” Intel 14th Gen CPUs. You get lower temperatures when voltages are lowered with CEP disabled and slightly better performance. Note that only 14th Gen Non-K “B0” stepping supports this feature but not “C0” stepping chips.
MSI also has other features incorporated in its latest BIOS which can deliver lower voltages & CPU temperatures. Considering how much excessive voltage is being pumped in the latest 13th & 14th Gen CPUs which leads to instability and crashes within games as recently discussed, these can be great solutions for gamers to overcome such issues.
I built a new gaming PC for myself back when the 4090 launched. I upgraded from a 12900K to a 13900K & everything ran well besides the high temperatures that were within the TjMax limit but hit 95C using a high end AIO cooler.
A few months later. I started having the same issues https://t.co/ASMgCRrFu8
— Hassan Mujtaba (@hms1193) February 21, 2024
The features include “Microcode Selection – No UVP” and “Lock BCLK 102.5” which do exactly what the naming suggests.
Following is the support list of the said features for each Intel 600/700 CPU SKU:
MSI is aware of the excessive voltages that motherboard BIOS can pump into the latest 13th & 14th Gen CPUs from Intel. There is a lot of evidence that such voltages can degrade the quality of the chip and its performance over time so such features are beneficial. The BIOS also brings 256 GB DDR5 memory support to the B760 lineup which is great too. You can grab the latest BIOS from the MSI support page here.