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Supermicro’s SuperO Booster software is the main software package for the Supermicro C9Z390-CG-IW. It is a somewhat similar idea to the likes of ASUS AI Suite, ASRock A-Tuning/F-Stream, Gigabyte EasyTune and MSI Command Center, except better unified. Supermicro earns credit for convenience since all its relevant and useful functionality sits inside this single software package.
It can be difficult to find the download option since it wasn't on the SuperO product page, but there is a direct download link to the SuperO Booster utility on the Supermicro product page for this product.
The SuperO Booster software looks a lot like the Supermicro UEFI. It has a similar set of tabbed displays for different themes and users can change a whole host of settings in Windows such as CPU and memory performance parameters and fan speeds.
The Profile section has some pre-defined overclocking profiles and an auto-tuning function.
The CPU section permits on-the-fly adjustments to the multiplier and base clock.
Using the software to illustrate, Supermicro's “optimised defaults” profile for the i9 9900K sets 1 & 2 core Turbo to 5GHz, 3 cores to 4.9GHz, 4 and 5 cores to 4.8GHz and 6 to 8 cores to 4.7GHz. That said, this is still subject to the PL1 and PL2 power limits explained in the UEFI section, so the actual clock speed can end up being lower. Typically, after the PL2 turbo duration expires the 8 core frequency is 4.3GHz, rather than 4.7GHz.
The fan speed controls, available under the Thermal section, are still the same 4 speed steps but the software does have a range of pre-defined profiles to choose from on a per-fan basis that the UEFI didn’t have.
The memory section allows for adjustment to memory frequency and timings on-the-fly.
The voltage section is as it sounds, and allows for on-the-fly adjustments to the various key voltages used by the system. If the software displays blank values upon start-up, which it did for us on a couple of occasions, then it needs to be restarted.
Luminous is the part of the software that allows for the customisation of the onboard RGB LEDs using a range of presets. These apply to both the single onboard RGB lighting zone and the optional RGB strip. It is not possible to customise these independently of each other. There's a decent selection of lighting modes and colours, though full RGB customisation, i.e. 16.6 million colours from 255*255*255, is not available.
The BIOS Update section allows the UEFI to be updated directly from the Supermicro website within Windows. However, we noticed it didn't recognise when the version on the Supermicro website was already installed on the motherboard and it would “update” to the same version i.e. 1.0b to 1.0b. It should be smarter and detect when the version on the website is the same as the version already installed, and simply give a message saying “Your BIOS is up to date”.
