TEST SETUP

Cooling NZXT Kraken X62
Motherboard MSI GAMING PRO CARBON AC
Memory 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3000MHz
Graphics Radeon RX 480 8GB
Storage Kingston HyperX 240GB
PSU Corsair RM 1000 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Monitor AOC U2879VF
Capture Device Epiphan AV.iO 4K

BENCHMARKS

Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

OTHER SOFTWARE

Temperature Analysis: RealTemp
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Performance Monitoring: MSI Afterburner

OVERCLOCKING

Much like previous generations of Intel platforms, the X299/LGA2066 allows us to apply overclocks to unlocked processors easily. Many variables can be adjusted including BCLK and ratios.

Our current record for the best overclock with Core i7-7740X is 5.2GHz. Unfortunately, our MSI motherboard wasn’t able to climb up to this great achievement – instead we settled at 5GHz. To achieve this we had to set the CPU voltage to 1.35v. Increasing the voltage beyond this to allow for an overclock beyond 5GHz simply wasn’t an option as the temperatures were already peaking out at 90C. Nevertheless, this is still a good result!

For a look at the MSI BIOS, please check out the next page for a video tour of the interface.