MSI Kombo Strike For AM4 500-Series Motherboards Released: Up To 5% Performance Uplift & Undervolting Support For AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU Through BIOS
Kombo Strike is a brand new feature that’s being introduced by MSI for its AM4 500-series boards. The feature comes packaged in the latest BIOS for MSI’s 500-series motherboards which not only add the Kombo Strike feature for the Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU but also unlock undervolting support for the chip. So what is the Kombo Strike feature? Based on the description, it looks like MSI unlocked a higher power limit for the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D as they state that the performance gain may depend on the cooling solution used. A premium CPU cooler is recommended which means that under AIO, a performance uplift of up to 5% can be gained. The feature can be found within the Overclocking / Advanced CPU Configuration panel and has four options: Disabled, 1, 2, and 3. The bigger number obviously means better performance but it also means that you need a better cooling solution to take full advantage of your chip. We have some performance numbers too in Cinebench R23 where the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D gains a slight improvement in single-threaded performance but a 5% improvement if we compare the stock chip with the one boosted by Kombo Strike on MSI’s AM4 500-series motherboards. The other feature that’s being added to MSI’s AM4 500-series motherboard is BIOS undervolting support. The new BIOS adds a ‘CPU Offset Voltage’ option with a (-) offset which can be used to undervolt the AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D CPU. We have seen that undervolting the 3D V-Cache chip delivers similar performance with lower power consumption and lower temperatures. MSI warns that too much lower CPU voltage can lead to system instability. The following motherboards have already received the new BIOS which is available from their respective product page:
