Asus ROG Strix X99 Gaming Review

Overclocking

We've found that our test CPU - Intel's Core i7-6850K, usually maxes out at 4.4GHz and even slapping some custom water cooling on it, while reducing the temperatures considerably, only saw it reach 4.5GHz. So for our all-in-one liquid cooler, it's likely 4.4GHz will be the maximum.

Thankfully the ROG Strix X99 Gaming managed this easily and only needed a vcore of 1.34V, which is a little lower than some of the other boards we've looked at recently. We did have one small hiccup where the board failed to boot after applying some settings and the lack of a CMOS clear button here did prove to be a bit annoying.

Software

The ROG Strix X99 Gaming's software includes most of the usual ROG titles, including the Aura lighting tweaking program but also RAMCache and Sonic Radar II as well as the usual AISuite, which sports the latest version of the Fan Xpert software, Turbo Core (a Turbo Boost Max 3.0-like feature) plus various overclocking and power sections.

EFI

Like us, you'll probably prefer to do your overclocking in the EFI and this is mostly unchanged from recent ROG offerings. It's well laid out, clear, if a little bitty and fragmented maybe compared to the slick MSI EFIs, but once you're used to the layout it's a joy to use. You get favourites and profiles for easy overclocking, Secure Erase built in for wiping your SSDs and the fan control suite is the best out there. As we've mentioned earlier, the pump header is set to 100 percent as standard, allowing you to tune it down for lower noise and avoiding cooling issues that may occur if it's set lower. You're also able to turn chassis fans off completely - something that Asus's competitors lack the ability to do.












Head over the page to see the Performance Analysis, Conclusion and Scores.