TheOverclocker Issue 42 | Page 8

on this very foundation , and for those like me who are using the lower core count CPUs ( who would have thought that 10 cores would be considered a lower core count ?) there ’ s no functional difference between this model and the new one you ’ re likely to see .
So how was the actual overclocking ?
Well , as with all motherboards and all platforms , one has to learn the behavior . Board behavior is easier because you ’ re dealing with a single board and can make comparisons between BIOS updates etc . However , platform familiarity comes via having used several boards from different vendors through which general rules and understanding would emerge .
With the X299 SOC-Champion you ’ re somewhat dealing with a double edged sword . GIGABYTE has always used the same UEFI on their products regardless of the SKU , so from the lowest end X99 board ( for instance ) to the most high end - the UEFI is the same where overclocking options are concerned . Barring the Socket switch on the
X99 boards , you were presented with the same options which did exactly the same thing on all boards .
The good thing about this is that you could come to be familiar with a platform on GIGABYTE ’ s more mainstream boards , practice and nail down the intricacies , then apply that knowledge almost on a 1:1 basis to the Champion board for your extreme overclocking adventures . This means that you don ’ t necessarily need to have the Champion board in front of you to get familiar with it . You can tune on the X299 GIGABYTE you have right now and , depending on the level of tuning , export those settings directly to the Champion .
The down side of this is that even though you may have extensive knowledge about the GIGABYTE X299 boards , whatever you learn there doesn ’ t necessarily mean it will apply at all to other competing boards . In fact you ’ d have to relearn and re-adjust how you tune the system for the most part .
One of the major differences between the Champion and its inevitable and obvious competitor , the APEX , is in how they deal or behave when you ’ re overclocking the Mesh frequency . With the Champion , you need significantly lower voltages for the same Mesh frequency as you would use on the APEX . Around 1.3V or at most 1.35V I found usually did the trick , whereas as per APEX overclocking guide , you ’ d want 1.4V and higher . If you only ever experienced LN2 on these two boards , you ’ d be hard pressed to make any conclusions about the platform , but you can about the boards .
That the Champion scales accordingly on air and LN2 overclocking is in many ways what makes it so easy or simple to overclock . Your limits on the mesh frequency again are going to be temperature ( at least on this particular CPU ), and you may find that the same 1.3V on air / AIO cooling nets you 3.8GHz under LN2 instead of 3.2GHz . This is but a single example , and for the actual overclocking on LN2 I found that not stressing the Mesh frequency too much was key to avoiding trouble and instability .
8 The OverClocker Issue 42 | 2017