Overclocking and Memory Tests
Disclaimer: Overclocking is never guaranteed, so the results may vary depending on certain conditions and various hardware configurations. I am not recommending overclocking if you do not know what are you doing. High voltages may damage hardware and it will not be covered by warranty.
We’ve tested two memory kits. 32GB Viper 4 memory kit provided by Patriot is based on single rank, Samsung B-die modules. Second one is 64GB Ballistix Elite memory kit which is based on dual rank modules and also uses Samsung B-die IC.
Single rank modules are easier to overclock but in some situations offer a bit lower performance than dual rank modules. On the other hand price of RAM is really high so I doubt that most users will spend twice as much money to see 5% higher memory performance.
As you can see on the above screenshot, we were able to overclock 32GB memory kit up to 2050MHz so DDR4-4100 at not so tight timings. The same memory kit was able to run stable at DDR4-4000 and quite tight timings of 17-17-17 at default voltage of 1.35V. This is an amazing result for quad channel memory.
One more thing worth to mention is cache/mesh frequency of 3400MHz which was our stability limit but it’s also better result than we were able to set on ASUS TUF X299 motherboard where anything above 3200MHz was causing stability issues.
One more difference between ASRock and ASUS. On ASUS motherboard it wasn’t possible to pass DDR4-3733 mark without additional training options. ASRock let to overclock past DDR4-4000 without any special options.
64GB memory kit is already a challenge for overclocking. As expected we were not able to overclock this memory above DDR4-4000 keeping full stability but results like DDR4-3733 CL15-15-15 or 3750 CL16-16-16 are still impressive.
I assume that future BIOS releases will improve already great results.
DDR4-4000 itself is possible to set but maybe our memory wasn’t able to do that. Below screenshot is showing over 100GB/s in all memory tests
Maximum CPU frequency achieved using custom water cooling was 4.9GHz. All who know how much heat generate Skylake-X processors also know these settings are not fully stable. However most benchmarks will pass without issues. Once we run any more demanding CPU stability test then temperature reaches 100°C. On the other hand it let us test if motherboard is protecting CPU from overheating. Depends on used settings CPU will throttle or PC will shut down when temperature is too high. Typical maximum value for Skylake-X is 105°C but longer work at too high temperature may damage the CPU so better don’t try that.
Full stability without thermal throttling is possible up to 4.7GHz on all CPU cores what is great result considering this is 10 core CPU. There are no issues with overheating power section as it was reported regarding competitive motherboards. On the other hand users were not reporting it on non-XE Taichi motherboard too. It’s still good that ASRock cares and releases improved products for those most demanding users.
Additional software
ASRock is adding software which helps us in various things. Overclocking enthusiasts will be happy to see A-Tuning so application which let us overclock and monitor procesor and other components.
Other application is RGB LED so pretty much the same window as we see in BIOS/UEFI. We can pick one of many lighting modes like breathing, strobe, cycling, wave or static light from the RGB palete. Those who don’t like lighting can simply turn it off.
