The BIOS:
As far as the BIOS is concerned, at first glance you’ll recognize that this is MSI. Those familiar with the brand will have no trouble finding their way around. As a reminder, the tab that will interest us most is “Overclocking”. Before we start, we’d like to remind you that it’s essential to regularly update your BIOS. For our tests, we tested several versions.
Flash BIOS of this MSI B850 MPOWER :
As we’ve said, the first thing to avoid unpleasant surprises is to update your BIOS. We’d like to remind you of the simple procedure for flashing your BIOS, which is essential if you want to maintain a perfectly stable configuration.
Go to the MSI website and the page for your motherboard – in our case, the B850 MPOWER – to download the latest BIOS. We place it on a key and insert it into a USB port on the motherboard. Restart the PC, press and hold the “DEL” or “Suppr” key to access the BIOS parameters. Go to the “M-Flash” tab. Your PC will reboot before giving you access to the flash interface. Choose the BIOS location on your flash drive and you’re ready to update your BIOS.
The inner workings of the BIOS :
The first page to appear is EZ Mode, the simplified BIOS mode. It contains the main parameters a novice might need. There’s no voltage here, but you can choose your boot sequence, activate the EXPO profile with a single click, choose your processor management profile, activate a profile, flash your BIOS and even set your fan parameters.
Press the “F7” key to access all BIOS parameters. They are divided into six different categories: System Status, Advanced, Overclocking, Security, Boot and Save & Exit. The one we’ll be using most often is the ” Overclocking ” tab. This is where you’ll find most of the settings. The ” System Status ” tab gives you an overview of the various peripherals connected to your motherboard. The second, ” Advanced “, lets you configure the motherboard’s various connectors (PCIe, USB, Thunderbolt, NVMe, etc.).
Now we come to the most important section for us, ” Overclocking “. Make sure you’re in ” Expert ” mode. Don’t forget to activate your kit’s EXPO profile. In the “Memory Try It!” section, you’ll find a series of memory profiles, which is excellent news and a real plus compared to other motherboards. We’ll talk more about this in the overclocking section, as well as the Latency Killer, High-Efficiency Mode and Memory Timing Preset parameters.
Next come all the voltages that can be adjusted. Some will adjust automatically according to the profile you have activated.
Don’t forget to save your profiles:
Finally, saving profiles is highly recommended when you’re running tests. It saves time. You can also save them on a USB key. Don’t hesitate to do this regularly to keep track of the potential of your components, which will always come in handy at some point.
Finally, you can access the BIOS Log Review at any time. This shows you the changes you have made. For example, if you activate a memory profile via Memory Try It! to test it, you can check the BIOS Log Review to see all the changes that have been made to your original profile.
