Heya guy's, there are already all kinds of reviews out for this board so i thought i'd try something quick and interesting. This review is mainly targeted at overclockers.
Pic's of the board ready to go:
Scope Probe's and Read points soldered behind the CPU for accuracy.
Voltage Set in BIOS vs BIOS readout vs Multi Meter readout
Looks quite accurate. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Next up i tested all 10 levels of Load Line Calibration (LLC). For those who do no know, it is the motherboards way to counter loss of CPU voltage when the CPU go's under load.
CPU SET 1.3V in BIOS
1st Load line Disabled. (The default setting).
:O (Don't try this at home.. or on 1.6v)
Between LLC 4/5/6 You should get your best result / stability.
Now to test the clarity of the 24 phase beast.
I used an oscilloscope to see the fluctuation in voltage being fed to the CPU and Memory. I set my scope to .010v (10mv) per division. See below. (One block on the grid = 1 division).
I used 1.3V in the bios with LLC Level 5.
Wprime was used to stress all 8 cores.
And superpi which is considered to be light weight.
VCore
What i found very strange was at full load 8 cores Wprime the stability is incredibly. But look at how demanding single threaded superpi is??
VMem
I was curious to see if changing the PWM frequency had any visual effect.
PWM AT +42%
PWM AT -24%
Nothing really too much.
i also checked the temperature after a few hours of load testing.
Not a big change with my low ambient and that huge heatsink.
The PWM stayed very cool.
Then i did some random testing.
I wanted to see if this board is on par with the P67A-UD4-B3 in 3Dmark2001SE.
There is a visible difference, but im sure with finer tuning the gap won't be big.
System:
2600k @ 5ghz
Gtx 275 Stock
Lastly the max BLCK i achieved.
http://valid.canardpc.com/show_oc.php?id=1892751
Coolios hope you enjoyed.