Overclocking with the i7-7900X - The ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe Motherboard Review: Onboard OLED and WiG

Overclocking

Experience with the ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe

Overclocking using the Prime X299-Deluxe was straightforward for all intents and purposes.

The board does include functions for 'one-touch' overclocking - when setting this to the "fast-tuning" setting, the clocks were raised on all cores to 4.3 GHz with the voltage on this CPU sample set to 1.20 V. This setting was a bit too much for our sample and cooling to handle this time around. I tried remounting the cooler and reapplying the thermal paste, but it wasn't in the cards.  

The ergonomics of the ASUS BIOS work well for me. Everything I need for overclocking is located in the Ai Tweaker Section and a few sub-headings. All the major functions like CPU Multiplier, BCLK, Memory/XMP settings, and voltages are simply a scroll of the mouse or button press away. 

The board did not run into any issues with either the DDR4-2666 or the DDR4-3200 sets of RAM we use for testing. Like the other X299 boards, it was 'set XMP and go'. We were able to overclock past the XMP settings of our 3200 sticks and reached DDR4-3600 speeds without issue. 

The Windows-based Ai Suite 3 worked well for the voltage and CPU multiplier changes they were used for. Unlike EasyTune from Gigabyte, AI Suite 3 does not have any memory overclocking options as far as timings and sub-timings go. I prefer to do my memory overclocking from the BIOS anyway. 

The true 8-phase power delivery and heatsink hung in there and peaked at 71C in our extended testing (30 mins OCCT). According to Coretemp, the CPU was drawing about 230W at that peak temperature (total system 318W+ according to the Kill-A-Watt). I was a bit worried about the overclocking side of things, but those temperatures are well within specification. Overall, the ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe is a capable overclocker like many of the boards which preceded it. 

Overclocking Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with POV-Ray and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from the previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (90ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclocking Results

The ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe topped out at 4.6 GHz using our second 7900X. This retail CPU was able to reach an additional 200 MHz higher than our first, due to the quality of its silicon. When hitting the limit, we were temperature limited in this testing no matter what was done. There was very little or no voltage drop with load line calibration.

At the top overclock of 4.6 GHz and 1.145V, the system pulled over 330W at the wall with the CPU itself claiming around 220W of that value.

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