What just happened? Intel has released a new overclocking tool called “200S Boost” that can increase performance on select Intel systems without voiding the warranty. The utility is specifically designed for Core Ultra 200S series processors, which received a mixed response from reviewers following their launch late last year.

The new feature offers a simple overclocking option for systems powered by unlocked Arrow Lake chips when paired with compatible Z890 motherboards and supported memory modules. It will be available via a BIOS update on motherboards from Asrock, Asus, MSI, Gigabyte, and other major vendors.

200S Boost will reportedly allow users to achieve higher fabric, die-to-die, and memory frequencies, resulting in performance gains for low-latency workloads such as gaming. Intel claims the feature can increase inter-die fabric frequencies on 200S-series processors from 2.6GHz to 3.2GHz (VccSA ≤ 1.2V), and die-to-die frequencies from 2.1GHz to 3.2GHz (VccSA ≤ 1.20V). It can also help overclock DDR5 memory from 6,400 MT/s to 8,000 MT/s.

The best part about 200S Boost is that using it to tune your PC won’t void your warranty if something goes wrong with the CPU. That’s because Intel continues to offer its standard three-year limited warranty on processors, regardless of whether they’ve been overclocked using this feature or run at default settings without any modifications.

Supported CPUs include:

• Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
• Intel Core Ultra 7 265K
• Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF
• Intel Core Ultra 5 245K
• Intel Core Ultra 5 245KF

Tom’s Hardware tested the new tool and found that it delivers an average performance boost of around 7.5%. Their test system featured a Core Ultra 9 285K CPU, an MSI MEG Z890 ACE motherboard, and an RTX 5090 Founders Edition graphics card.

On the memory side, six configurations and three memory speeds were tested across 16 games at 1080p. Moving from 6400 MT/s to 8000 MT/s, Baldur’s Gate 3 saw the largest performance gain at 11.6 percent, while A Plague Tale: Requiem showed a more modest 3.7 percent improvement.

Tom’s also noted that relatively affordable DDR5-7200 memory kits delivered nearly the same performance in most games and applications, potentially making them a better choice for improved system stability.

The publication additionally benchmarked several productivity applications to evaluate the impact of the new overclocking tool. It found that software known to benefit from overclocked hardware saw slight performance gains, while other applications remained largely unaffected.