At stock default settings, we would normally find our CPU would boost to 3.5GHz when placed under load and this is what we use when running our suite of benchmarks. The only settings we generally change are the memory bandwidth and timings to match our kit. For some reason our Corsair kits XMP profiles either overclock the memory kit past the SPD settings or if we leave it at default the kit is set to 2133MHz. As our kit is rated to run at 2666MHz with timings of 16-17-17-35 we have to manually adjust the BIOS to these settings.
The GIGABYTE SOC FORCE was no different in this respect. However, what we did find was that the CPU rarely boosted to 3.5GHZ, it would only boost to 3.3GHz. A little tweaking in the settings freed up this anomaly but it is something worth remembering should you purchase this motherboard, not that you will keep you CPU at stock speeds with this component of course!!
Overclocking our 5960X with the GIGABYTE SOC FORCE was made as easy or difficult as we wanted the process to be. On the one hand we pretty much knew what basic settings were required to get to our previous maximum and of course, the GIGABYTE motherboard duly obliged, hitting rock solid stability with ease. We then tried lowering the vcore little by little and managed to get it down a full 0.04v on our previous best effort which had a soothing effect on the CPU core temperatures.
This isn't the end of the story though. Many benchmarks would run at 4.87 GHz with a little more tweaking and this astounded as as this motherboard allowed us to break through boundaries that were previously impassable. Sadly, our standard HyperPI 32m test failed (albeit much later in the process than previous) so we had to settle for 4.75GHz which was a shame but the signs were definitely there for increasing on our previous best overclock. Given better cooling we are certain that a stable higher overclock could be within our reach.
We did try using the OC Buttons but found it very odd in that to get them to work correctly we had to reset the BIOS to defaults. One would have though it would have been useful to use the buttons, especially the baseclock adjustments for fine tuning to build upon any settings within the BIOS but it seemed in our limited testing that this wasn't possible. You have to start from scratch in the BIOS and work from there once in windows which is less than ideal, especially if you are adjusting the CPU frequency ratio to say 125 or 166!
Clearly then, the GIGABYTE X99 SOC FORCE has both the onboard components and BIOS capability to extract the absolute maximum from whatever CPU you opt to use. Overclocking with the GIGBAYTE was a pleasure and despite the odd OC button anomaly, we were very impressed indeed with its capabilities. If overclocking is your bag then the the SOC Force will see you pass many hours while tinkering in the BIOS which GIGABYTE have made so much fun to do.
