Good news for Intel Core Ultra 200S gamers: some major gaming PC builders say the new Boost profile won't void your warranty

Yesterday Intel announced a free performance boost for its 200S processors in the form of a Boost Overclocking Profile that you can enable in the BIOS. But while boxed processors permit enabling this without breaking warranty, Intel pointed out that warranties for PC purchases through system builders and OEMs are "provided exclusively" by those companies, not Intel.

The obvious question here is whether OEMs and system builders will honour warranties if this new Boost profile is enabled on systems bought from them. It's basically overclocking, after all.

I asked some companies and the responses so far seem promising, both in the US and the UK. Both iBuyPower and Overclockers UK say enabling this profile won't void your warranty.

First up, iBuyPower says: "If a customer purchases an iBuyPower PC with the 200S Boost Profile advertised, then it will be covered by our total system warranty. For systems purchased without this service, or before the feature was implemented, iBuyPower PC will continue to honor the original system warranty if the profile is enabled in BIOS by the end user.

"Overclocking beyond this pre-configured profile, or pushing beyond Intel's specification, may cause the warranty to be voided. Additionally, iBuyPower PC does not guarantee stability or performance when the 200S Boost Profile is enabled by an end user in the field."

On the UK side, we have a similarly positive response from Overclockers UK:

"As per our PC System warranty, customers are free to modify and upgrade their PC as they wish. However, if it is discovered a fault develops as a result of modifications then the PC will be fixed and returned in the state that it was originally sold to them.

"In the case of the Intel Core Ultra 200S overclocking profile, customers who purchased a PC from Overclockers UK featuring this CPU are free to apply the Intel provided profile, however we cannot guarantee results with the PC configuration purchased. In the event the PC subsequently develops a fault, such as overheating or incompatibility, then the customer will be covered under our warranty where we will restore their PC to the default settings."

In other words, then, warranties in both cases will be upheld. In the latter case this will involve restoring the PC to the pre-Boost configuration if there are faults (assuming it was purchased without that configuration), but that's in-line with OCUK's warranty.

As for whether it's worth enabling the Boost profile in the first place, we can pretty confidently say 'yes'.

Our Nick has been testing it in a few games and has found that in some games it gives a decent uptick in frames. In some games, the 1% lows increase dramatically, and he even saw an increase of over 40% in 1% low frame rates in one game.

Not all games seem to have improved performance, mind, but in those that do see improvements it's worth it, even if it does mean more power consumption—it's still far less power consumption than with Intel 13th and 14th Gen chips.

Given this, it makes little sense to have it disabled. And now we know that if you've bought from iBuyPower or Overclockers UK, there's no need to worry about the warranty, either. Hopefully that'll be the case for systems bought from other OEMs and system builders, too. We've reached out to more for comment and will keep you posted if we hear back.