Intel will begin supporting overclocking on mid-range motherboards with Rocket Lake, it was confirmed today. Previously limited to enthusiast motherboards with high-end chipsets, such as the existing Z490 chipset for 10th generation Comet Lake chips, Intel now seems intent on introducing overclocking to more affordable options.

With previous generations of Intel chips, at least as far as it is worth discussing, only high-end motherboards with top chipsets supported overclocking, and only K-series processors supported overclocking; even Rocket Lake still requires K series processors, but more affordable midrange motherboards will soon be able to overclock.

Intel did not provide details on which boards will be capable of overclocking, but it is assumed that they mean the 500 series, which is the equivalent of Intel's existing B460 chipset.

Intel confirmed yesterday that it will announce a new lineup of 500 series motherboards along with Rocket Lake CPUs next year.

We are also told that Rocket Lake will be supported on existing 400 series motherboards since Rocket Lake and Comet Lake 10th generation processors share the LGA 1200 socket. Intel could not say whether overclocking will be patched retroactively to B460 motherboards, suggesting that it may be implemented by specific motherboard manufacturers.

If you plan to overclock your CPU, you will want a decent VRM regardless of which board you use. The performance of the motherboard components will certainly influence any decision by the motherboard manufacturer, and older, cheaper boards may or may not support overclocking.

According to an Intel spokesperson, Rocket Lake has other new overclocking features. These include per-core frequency states (no per-core voltages), AVX512 offset settings, and AVX disable/enable options.

According to Intel, all of this should help users get a little more out of their chips if they so desire.

That said, it remains to be seen how good an overclocker the 11th generation Rocket Lake chips will be; Comet Lake has proven to be not very good at overclocking, at least without overclocking equipment for enthusiasts

Rocket Lake is a very good overclocker.

Rocket Lake, perhaps, could be a bit different, given that it is an entirely new architecture. However, it uses the same 14nm process node, and one would expect Intel to want to clock it as high as possible to ensure the best performance in front of the AMD Ryzen 5000 processor.

At least some unwritten rules are changing with Rocket Lake. High-end motherboards are no longer necessary for overclocking, architectures and process nodes need not be intrinsically linked, and it may become the second cheapest option after AMD Ryzen.

Intel Rocket Lake will be available in Q1 2020. After that, Intel will focus on Alder Lake, which will integrate a hybrid architecture of Golden Cove and Gracemont cores, an even more dramatic change for the company's desktop processors.