TheOverclocker Issue 47

ISSUE 47 2019

THE WORLD’S BEST OV ERCLOCKING ONLINE M AGA ZINE. A LWAYS. F E AT U R E D

EVGA Z390 DARK T H E

F I N E S T

O F

T H E M

A L L

AORUS GAMING SERIES

E D ’ S N O T E //

One More Time

I

ssue 47 is finally published. A good four months after the previous edition. Don’t ask why it took so long, it’s always taken a long time. That said, Issue 47 is genuinely our second last issue. We had wanted to go to 50, but that won’t be happening it seems, so this is literally the pan ultimate edition of TheOverclocker Magazine.

After which, all content will be on the site, as the magazine stops publishing.

It’s been an interesting journey, from Issue 11 which was the first one we did with myself at the helm, right up to this one. Not once did I ever think we would manage to push out five issues let alone 30 plus. During that time, overclocking has changed so much, along with the community, benchmarks and more.

I'm glad to see it embraced by all sorts of media which previously didn't even consider overclocking an actual thing.

Throughout this journey we’ve seen vendors and trends come and go and this time it’s the magazine which must go.

Throughout all the issues, we’ve had opportunity to chat with so many good people, who above all are pure fans of hardware and overclocking, be it they were participating directly or otherwise. As with so many hobbies it can bring the oddest people together and I’ve personally made some epic friends because of overclocking.

It’s still something close to my heart and with the print magazine ending, I will hopefully have more time to do even more overclocking for the site along with pursuing other technical endeavours I previously couldn’t because of my obligations to the publication.

Interestingly enough, between Savage the art director and myself, the decision to end the publication at issue 48 came organically.

Wasn’t dramatic or anything of the sort, we just came to realize that this window has closed. He has other obligations and I myself have taken on different adventures where I can best apply my mind. The magazine isn’t that place or space anymore which is why it doesn’t make sense to continue with it as is.

Besides the monetary commitments and stresses that come with publishing (anyone who has ever worked in print should know this), just the time it takes alone is no longer justifiable. For the vendors who we had partnered and worked with, the delay between product announcement and editorial is just too long with a magazine. This is

It’s been an interesting journey, from Issue 11 which was the first one we did with myself at the helm, right up to this one. Not once did I ever think we would manage to push out five issues let alone 30 plus.

true for a monthly magazine let alone one that’s bi-monthly in theory and quarterly in practice. The same holds true for you our friends as well. In the tech space, things are time sensitive and a magazine, digital or otherwise can’t respond appropriately to this, whereas video and more so - web can.

That said, all previous issues will remain available on both Joomag and ISSUE (These editions need updating) near indefinitely.

As and when one finds time, we will be refining the issues already published, fixing the typos and all sorts of things we had previously let slide. The original Issue #1 through to ten should also be available. Should you choose to, you can look through all the issues from 2007 right up till now for your retro fix.

Until next time, stay safe and keep pushing. It’s been a blast and thank you to each and everyone of you who ever downloaded, shared, read or even just paged through the magazine. It is deeply and profoundly appreciated.

One! - Neo

Issue 47 | 2019 The OverClocker 03

R C EO VNITEEWN T/ /S X/ X / X

3

EDITOR’S NOTE

6

XOC FEATURE // GALAX 5TH ANNIVERSARY OC LAB CELEBRATION

12

COVER FEATURE // EVGA Z390 DARK

REVIEW // ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI APEX REVIEW // AORUS RTX 2080 TI XTREME

GAME TIME // COOLER MASTER MASTERCASE SL600M

GAME TIME // CORSAIR DOMINATOR RGB

The Overclocker is published by OCL-Media (cc).

Editor Neo Sibeko Art Director Chris Savides Copy-Editor Jonothan Horn For editorial please contact: neo@theoverclocker.com

04 The OverClocker Issue 47 | 2019

AORUS RGB MEMORY · DDR4-3200 MHz 16GB Memory Kit · 2x RGB Infused Demo Module

AORUS M5 · Real 16000 DPI Optical Sensor · Weight Distribution System- from 118g to 130.5g

AORUS P750W 80+ GOLD Modular · 80 PLUS Gold certified: Above 90% Efficiency at 50% Load · High Quality 100% Japanese Capacitors

AORUS K7 · Cherry MX Mechanical Gaming Switch · Full-range anti-ghosting capability · Set any key to any macro or combination

F E A T U R E // G A L A X - M O U N T I N G A C H A L L E N G E T O T H E T I T A N R T X

GALAX

Mounting a challenge to the TITAN RTX HALL OF FAME SERIES CONTINUE TO SMASH OVERCLOCKING WORLD RECORDS

G

ALAX has been sparing no effort to promote the development of computer hardware, and has been actively developing overclocking activities for more than ten years. The GALAX Overclocking Lab is where the magic happens, with overclockers including GALAX's own Mad Tse battling it out for world records using the best hardware available at the time.

Each year, GALAX invites the best overclockers from around the world to vie for as many records as possible with nearly limitless resources at their disposal. It isn't just in the name of fun and games, however, as developments in the OC Lab often lead to improvements in the production of future products.

Through March 22 to March 30 2019, GALAX OC Lab invited overclockers from countries including China, Greece, Sweden, Italy, and Brazil to a 9-day event.

The main goal was to beat records currently held by the NVIDIA TITAN RTX using GALAX GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Hall of Fame graphics cards, thereby showing

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that the products they have to offer can beat the fastest card in NVIDIA's current SKU stack.

HWBOT and 3DMark Hall of Fame leader board positions were in the overclockers' sites as they set out to dethrone the current king of GPUs. A culmination of more than a decade's experience in extreme overclocking went into the design of the GTX 2080 Ti HOF card, but would that be enough to beat a card which is about 20% faster in theory?

The NVIDIA TITAN RTX certainly has the GTX 2080 Ti beaten on

paper, sporting 4,608 CUDA cores compared to the lesser card's 4,352.

The GTX 2080 Ti does come with a much more palatable price tag starting at US$ 1,200 compared to the TITAN RTX's US$ 3,000, so it would be quite a feat to beat a card that has a price almost three times higher.

In addition to the GTX 2080 Ti HOF graphics cards, the top overclockers from each country had use of GALAX Hall of Fame OC Lab DDR4 memory, and a slew of other hardware for their overclocking platforms.

“THE NVIDIA TITAN RTX CERTAINLY HAS THE GTX 2080 TI BEATEN ON PAPER, SPORTING 4,608 CUDA CORES COMPARED TO THE LESSER CARD'S 4,352.”

For processors there was the Xeon X-3175X, Core i9-9980XE and Core Core i9-9900K and Core i7-9600K. Motherboards were covered by a range of boards using the Intel C621, X299 and Z390 chipsets, and power delivery was taken care of by the massive 2,000-watt Zhenhua LEADEX P2000 Platinum flagship PSU. In addition to this, there was also the option of a 4-way SLI platform using four GALAX GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Hall of Fame cards. This is a configuration that is no longer available with new cards, as the GeForce RTX range of cards doesn't support 4-way configurations.

On the first two days of the event, the overclockers binned a multitude of graphics cards and processors in order to select the best of the best for each benchmark. After two days of non-stop binning and testing, each overclocker found the specific hardware they would use for their world record attempts.

Prior to the event, multiple world records in the HWBOT and 3DMark Hall of Fame rankings were dominated by the NVIDIA TITAN RTX. If GALAX OC Lab managed to use GeForce RTX 2080 Ti cards to break the records held by the TITAN RTX, it would prove that the Hall of Fame OC Lab series graphics

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cards have massive headroom for extreme overclocking. Additionally, it would also show that overclockers can leapfrog the performance of a faster card in the SKU stack when using the correct hardware.

After the two days of testing, the overclockers set to work on the world records in 3DMark, and achieved remarkable results.

Among them, rsannino from Italy used a single GALAX GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Hall of Fame OC Lab graphics card together with the Intel Xeon W-3175X processor and C621 motherboard. After almost ten hours of continuously tweaking the setup he finally scored 10,521 points in the 3DMark Time Spy Extreme with a GPU core frequency of 2,730 MHz and a CPU frequency of 5.6GHz. The score not only successfully surpassed the record held by the NVIDIA TITAN RTX, but he was also the first overclocker in the world to exceed 10,000 points in the 3DMark Time Spy. That is quite a milestone and no small feat.

Next up were Phil and OGS from Team Greece, who also scored some brilliant results. They too used the RTX 2080 Ti HOF OC Lab graphics card, which they successfully overclocked to a core frequency of 2,805 MHz and the memory at 2,125 MHz. This increased the

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“AFTER THE TWO DAYS OF TESTING, THE OVERCLOCKERS SET TO WORK ON THE WORLD RECORDS IN 3DMARK, AND ACHIEVED REMARKABLE RESULTS.� performance of the card by more than 100% when compared to running it at its reference base speed of 1,350 MHz. The card was paired with an Intel Core i9-9900K and Z390 motherboard, and they managed to score 24,187 points in the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme.

This was indeed enough to break the world record held by the NVIDIA TITAN RTX. As importantly (and if not more so, to be honest), this is the first GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card to successfully break through the 2,800 MHz barrier with stability to complete a full run of 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme.

Swedish master Rauf also secured

some time under the spotlight, using a single RTX 2080 Ti HOF OC Lab graphics card running at 2,745 MHz on the GPU core for a score of 12,363 in 3DMark's latest ray tracing benchmark, Port Royal. This too was enough to uncrown the NVIDIA TITAN RTX and solidify the brilliance of the GALAX graphics card.

Chinese overclocker ZeRO_Dan shone like diamond during the event, using GALAX Hall of Fame memory running at DDR4-4758 CL14 and an Intel Core i9-9900K at 7,038 MHz to set a GeekBench 3 world record of 55,881 points.

This score surpassed the existing world record, which was previously

held by Korean overclockers.

In addition to this, rsannino, Phil, OGS, Rauf, Ronaldo and overclockerZeRO_Dan have chalked up several HWBOT and 3DMark Hall of Fame leader board records. The results came rapidly, with record after record falling over the duration of the event.

Using a single RTX 2080 Ti HOF OC Lab card, the 3DMark Fire Strike record was set at 42,397 points. The card was run at a massive 2,775

MHz on the core and 2,125 MHz on the memory. 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra was up next, where we saw the record being set at 12,625 point with the card running at a slightly lower 2,760 MHz and 2,113 MHz on the core and memory respectively.

3DMark Time Spy saw the record moving up to 55,081 points with the core running at 2,730 MHz and memory at 2,100 MHz, and 3DMark Time Spy Extreme moved up to 10,521 with the

core and memory at 2,730 MHz and 2,095 MHz respectively.

Next up, the Unigine Heaven result of 12,563 points was done with the card at 2,715 MHz on the core and 2,125 MHz on the memory, while the Core i9-9900K was pushed to 7,164 MHz. Lastly on the single card results was GPUPI 1b, which had the most impressive frequency at a frankly unbelievable 2,940 MHz on the core. This gave a score of 2.691 seconds, and is comparable to

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scores set with multiple older cards.

Catzilla was next up, where a single card running at 2,670 MHz and 2,100 MHz managed 36,281 points at 1440p. The GPU was backed by a Core i9-7980XE at 5,600 MHz and RAM at DDR43400 CL14 in quad channel.

Lastly there was 3DMark Superposition. With a single card running at 2,595 MHz and 2,042 MHz on the core and memory the overclockers managed a score of 7,453 points running the 8K Optimized test. Bumping the core speed up to 2,640 MHz and the

memory down a notch to 2,050 MHz resulted in 13,073 points in the 1080p Extreme test.

Moving onto the dual card results, results were certainly fewer and far between. This is not so much a reflection of the cards but rather the difficulty of running SLI setups subzero (or really SLI in general). This is an effect which is exacerbated by performing at an event rather than being able to take your time alone. Given enough time it's probable that many more records would have fallen.

The results of the event were

3DMark Time Spy at 35,791 points with the cores at 2,655 MHz and memory at 2,088 MHz. 3DMark 11 also saw an impeccable score of 66,989 points by running the cards at 2,595 MHz and 2,100 MHz on the cores and memory.

On the CPU side of things there was one record set, and that was Geekbench 3. Running a Core i99900K at 7,038 MHz on an ASUS ROG MAXIMUS XI APEX motherboard and GALAX Hall of Fame OC Lab memory at DDR4-4758 CL14 we saw a single-core score of 7,860 points and a multi-core score of 55,881 points.

Overall, GALAX OC Lab is happy to announce that they have triumphantly broken no less than 17 world records in the world of overclocking!

MAD Tse, the chief consultant of GALAX OC Lab, is of the belief that "there are always more solutions than problems." Overclockers face numerous unexpected issues when overclocking under extreme conditions, and it is necessary to identify the root of the problems and implement the relevant changes on the fly. This is much more difficult when overclocking under the spotlight at events, so for this group of overclockers to set a massive number of world records at a single event reinforces their talent and the abilities of GALAX OC Lab hardware.

The Overclocker

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EVGA Z39 0 DARK

THE FINEST OF THEM ALL

H

ere it is arguably the best motherboard to ever come from EVGA in the modern era.

At the very least the Z390 Dark is a contender for the finest Z390 board money can buy. This is of course a subjective position, but the time I spent with the motherboard for this review has, if you will, made me a believer. Initially and perhaps even now still, I find it hard to justify a $500 motherboard, especially if it’s an overclocking orientated board.

There are probably technical and therefor valid reasons why the price is so high, but that doesn’t change that it’s a hard pill to swallow for a two DIMM board.

That said, the price doesn’t change how surprisingly wonderful the Z390 Dark is to overclock with. In as far as overclocking motherboard features are concerned, I literally can’t think of anything missing here. The proficiency with which any part of this is executed may be debatable, but there’s no denying that the Z390 Dark is sublime.

What follows are my experiences with the EVGA Z390 Dark. Hopefully it’ll go a long way into giving you insight into the board, outside of just running through a features list which you can easily do on the official page here. What’s in here then is what it’s like actually using the board on a daily basis, be it for overclocking, gaming or whatever else you may use it for.

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Here’s hoping that the Z390 Dark isn’t a single moment of brilliance.

EVGA is clearly capable of producing the best or one of the two best offerings on the market. As such, they’ve set a high bar and their next offerings, at least form my side, will be measured against the Z390 Dark.

With the waffle out the way - let’s get into it.

ON BOARD FEATURES

As the price suggests, the Z390 Dark in terms of comparisons to other boards is a throw back to the old Rampage Extreme or Maximus Extreme, when these two boards were the pinnacle of extreme overclocking and gaming boards from ROG. The Dark has plenty of functionality you’d not expect on a pure XOC board, but it is this functionality that make it so attractive as a daily driver in

as much as it is for overclocking.

Focusing only on the important bits, the Z390 Dark has a built in USB port right on the board near the 24-pin ATX power connector. This adds so much convenience when overclocking as saving scores, updating the bios loading profiles or software is a breeze and you need not reach around to the rear IO of to find an enabled or working USB port. A small thing that will not be useful for daily computing, but worthwhile for extreme overclocking or when using the system in an open bench table as I did for this very review.

The Z390 Dark has not one, or two but three BIOS chips. One which is removable so you can recover from a bad flash or any other misfortune that may befall

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the BIOS. The great thing here is that you’ll not get any of that auto switching between failed POST or BOOT attempts as on some other boards. There’s an LED which lets you know which UEFI you’ve selected and are using. Again, an insignificant thing for everyday use, but meaningful for overclocking or those emergencies.

CPU to the lowest multiplier (x8), useful for overclocking where stability may be compromised when taking screen shots etc. due to an excessively high CPU frequency.

The rest of the on-board components aren’t really concerned with overclocking barring the PCI-Express 6-pin plug for SLI extreme overclocking.

In addition to the Power, Reset and ClrCmos buttons. The Dark has a Safeboot button and dual Q-Code LED output (Post Code orientation can be changed in one direction).

For the gamers and daily users, this board has everything a gaming board should have and more. This is Bluetooth and Wifi (courtesy of the chipset), an additional ASmedia USB 3.1 controller (you’ll also need this for Windows 7 USB support), the best motherboard audio controller right now (Creative Labs Sound Core), dual M.2 sockets and believe it or not, a U.2 SAS controller. I have yet to see a single drive with this form of interface, but should you have one for whatever reason, the EVGA Z390 Dark supports it.

These are in a single corner on the top right of the board, a moderate distance away from any condensation or ice build up that may occur during XOC sessions.

It is around here as well where EVGA has placed the two 8-pin 12V CPU power plugs along with the 24-pin ATX plug, all parallel to the PCB in typical EVGA fashion.

Other features on the board including a 4-way DIP-switch which allows you to turn on and off different PCI-Express slots. Useful for diagnosing issues or dealing with SLI overclocking. Right above that is where you’ll find one more switch which is a slow mode setting essentially. This locks the

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THE UEFI | BIOS

EVGA’s UEFI or BIOS as we still call it, is in one word – fantastic!

Honestly, I think this one in terms of functionality, ease of use and presentation is perhaps my favorite on this latest generation of boards.

It’s laid out in an obvious manner with easy to read tabs that a are

simply a breeze to navigate.

The font is sharp and the descriptions where they are available are written in a coherent and informative manner. This is particularly great for overclocking because navigating your way is quick and painless even if you’ve not used an EVGA board before.

In the Extras drop down menu, EVGA has some useful tools, including a stress test, the typical automated overclocking feature (OC ROBOT) and OC profiles.

This is where you can update the BIOS as well. Not the most obvious place to look at first, but its placement does make sense when one think s about it.

Regarding the OC profiles, there are only four unfortunately and at that, not descriptive at all. I’m unsure if this is due to character limitations or some other reason, but all you have are basic descriptions of the memory settings and little else. There’s a Generic LN2 setting for 4133 C12, a daily 4300 C14 setting for slightly above average B-die memory and of course two settings from KIngP|N for A2 PCB B-die kits (4800MHz C14 etc). I would have liked to see a more flashed out explanation or detail as to what it is that is being

set, but the profiles that are there seem to work as they should.

There is a small issue though with the UEFI, and it has to do with how one inputs values. This part is surely an oversight as there’s no reason for one to have to scroll all the way down to the base value and scroll once more again to reach

the AUTO setting. While you can key in numeric figures directly, you can’t input alphabets as you will get an invalid input message (As you would by pressing ‘A’ which on all other boards changes to the AUTO setting). This makes switching to AUTO settings rather tedious especially if you’re adjusting

the built-in profile settings.

When it comes to user profiles, again EVGA is leading the pack. The Dark allows one to input fairly lengthy descriptions and save them without typical character limitations which prevent you from any semblance of useful naming. For

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instance, you on ROG board you can only input 16 characters at most, the Dark allows for more than double that amount. So, it’s possible to save for instance ‘9900K 5.2Ghz DDR4 4300 C14 1.5v wPrime AVX stable 24/7 setting’. On the ROG boards for instance that would be ‘9900K 5.2Ghz’. If you have many profiles, this added flexibility comes in handy Outside of that, I truly do believe this may possibly the most pleasant UEFI to use. Visually it won’t win any awards, but it is perhaps this simplicity that makes it such a pleasure to use. EVGA deserves top marks here, this UEFI is pure - WIN!

THE EVERYDAY EXPERIENCE

Generally, one doesn’t come across oddities with a motherboard in everyday computing environments. The Dark is no exception apart from the fact that unlike several other motherboards I was testing at the time, it can sleep and hibernate properly. What I mean by that is, a number of boards (at least the ones I had at the time of testing) were not able to resume from a 24hour sleep or standby cycle. The OS would either crash or the system would have to POST again almost as if from a cold boot. The resume would fail and a restart would be in order.

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This was not the case with the Z390 Dark and I’ve yet to experience any such issues at all.

Curiously though, I suspect the EVGA Z390 Dark to be an efficient board when it comes to performance. Consistently at the default settings (only X.M.P enabled) it resulted in slightly better performance than all the other boards. This was not only in memory bandwidth tests, but in the heavy multi-threaded tests such as CineBench R20. The Z390 Dark was 20 to 40 pts higher than the rest. This however was not so obvious when all motherboards were overclocked to the same setting (Same VRM switching frequency, memory timings, North Bridge etc.). That said, I can't imagine why someone would buy this board to just run it at the regular AUTO settings. So that advantage isn’t necessarily worth factoring into your purchasing decision, I think.

Where the Z390 Dark does stand out is in the tuning profiles, specifically the one from Luumi (please subscribe to this man’s channel, he is an incredible overclocker and his stuff is highly informative) which sets 4300MHz C14 1.5v. After all this time working from the ROG DRAM profiles, it is refreshing to see a brand new highly tuned DRAM profile. It’s configured

right down to the RTL’s and IOL’s.

If you have capable memory, it’ll deliver the goods and I’d even say you’ll not be able to get better performance than this profile.

It’s unfortunate that you cannot load the DRAM memory profile on its own and for some reason it must be tied to a CPU overclock (5.2GHz) but none the less you can easily adjust this to the particular abilities of your CPU. The performance (memory bandwidth and latency) is so good, that this is the setting I will be using going forward for all testing. AIDA64 reports under 38ns in memory latency, and over 60GB/s right across memory read, write and copy.

SOFTWARE

There isn’t much to write about here as EVGA is rather thin on the software part. What you get are the standard Intel chipset drivers, EVGA’s Audio driver and package and that’s pretty much it. In fact, the E-Leet program must be downloaded separately (isn’t included with the USB drive) and at that you’ll need to pick the right version. There’s one that’s fundamentally a super version of CPU-Z and the other more relevant to overclocking doesn’t need to be installed. It allows tuning of the CPU clock, North Bridge clock, voltage, clock, control short cuts etc. The great thing about both versions is that you can assign programs to threads etc, so you get a Process

Lasso of sorts (obviously without all the functionality). Outside of this there’s not much else. Since the board isn’t in any shape, way or form playing the RGB game, there is no such application.

Unfortunately missing as well is an EVGA Fan control profile program. Either I missed it or there isn’t one at all, but you may have to resort to 3rd party programs for this functionality within windows.

DRY ICE OVERCLOCKING

On other motherboards built for overclocking, one typically loads the LN2 profile but adjusts it accordingly for the limitations of dry ice and off you go. However, on the Z390 Dark, that would not be a

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winning strategy as I found out.

If you load the LN2 profile (4133Mhz C12, 5.5Ghz Uncore, 6GHz CPU core, 1.6v Vcore, 1.45V System Agent and VCCIO etc.) you’ll find that the temps are far too high for the CPU under load. This can be quite frustrating especially if you have a lemon of a CPU which was the case with this particular 9900K capable of only 5.8GHz for Multi-threaded tests (Vs. the 5.9GHz sample when I was testing the Gene). Quite a low clock even for Dry Ice, given that chilled water can get a good CPU to 5.5GHz. Despite all this, efficiency again on this board is incredible. At 5.8Ghz, the GeekBench 3 MultiCore result (46598) is literally the best one there is at 5.8Ghz and below on HWBOT. That’s to say, any other

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score higher on HWBOT is from a CPU with a higher clock frequency.

So, despite the OS and low clock CPU, the board still manages to deliver the excellent efficiency.

That said, getting the right combination that allows you to keep the DRAM performance (again these are tied to the CPU overclocks and not accessible independently) but more appropriate settings for Dry Ice may take some figuring out. To that end it actually turns out that you’re better off leaving nearly all CPU settings on AUTO, save for Load line calibration and Vcore. You’re not likely to need any of the advanced or extended voltage ranges for the CPU, but you do need to enable this for memory voltages above 1.6V. In the end the best settings for

this CPU and memory combination were the 4133MHz C12 settings but with the CPU side of things pretty much as one would have them under regular operation, save for a slightly higher VCCIO voltage of 1.4 to 1.45v which is necessary for 5.3GHz+ North Bridge frequency and the limitations of Dry Ice cooling.

At every turn I was amazed at just how solid the performance is on the Z390 Dark. Despite the fact that I was running an OS that needed cleaning up along with little no tweaking, the results were fairly good. (For the given clock speed the efficiency was better than it would have been on the other boards under the same conditions) A single and slightly annoying downside when overclocking the Z390 Dark is that despite the presence of an additional ASMedia USB3.1 controller which is fortunately Windows 7 compatible. EVGA doesn't

does not provide this driver at all and when you do find one because only one port is Type-A, you need a hub of sorts to use both your mouse and keyboard under this OS. One would assume the additional controller was added specifically for Windows 7 and perhaps Windows XP support (This motherboard actually supports this OS via a BIOS on the EVGA forums), but for some reason you have one Type-A port to use as the other is Type-C. Overall, I’m more impressed at what the Z390 Dark is capable of delivering. As a result of the cooling one couldn’t test the board with a full pot and push the CPU and board to the limits, but at the temperatures and conditions that were tested, I think this is easily the fastest or rather most efficient Z390 board I’ve come across.

I’m not sure through what magic EVGA has managed this, but it’s

mighty impressive and I do believe this is likely the best board EVGA has produced possibly ever.

IN-CLOSING

I had heard, read and seen videos about the Z390 Dark, but prior to actually using the board I wasn’t convinced. On paper it looked great, maybe even over spec’d and the price was not compelling whatsoever. After first hand experience though directly against the Maximus XI Apex, I’m convinced that between these two there is a valid claim for the best Z390 board around, at least where overclocking is concerned. I’m so thoroughly impressed that despite the needlessly high price, it is deserving of my highest praises.

Even against the best motherboards money can buy, EVGA’s Z390 Dark is exceptional deserving of all the praise it receives.

The Overclocker

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TESTING CONFIGURATION

INTEL Core i7 8700K @ 6GHz G.Skill Trident F4 DDR4 3200 C14 @ 4133 C12 WD BLUE 250Gb SSD CORSAIR AX1500i Windows 7 x64 (BIOS 0905)

OC GEAR AWARD HARDWARE AWARD

ROG MAXIMUS XI APEX ERP $468.22 | WEBSITE ROG.A SUS.COM

A

nother year brings us another APEX board. Much like all the others with the APEX designation, this is a pure overclocking board by all accounts. Sure enough you find the gamer friendly stuff, but these have become ubiquitous features which we all expect at anything close to this price.

That said, nothing prevents one from using the APEX XI as a daily driver, perhaps after it has been retired as your extreme overclocking platform.

Before all of this however, what I’m here to share are my experiences with the MAXIMUS XI APEX in two distinct environments. Everyday computing and obviously, how it does in overclocking.

Firstly, however, let’s get through 20 The OverClocker Issue 47 | 2019

the mundane and run through all the features which are of interest here.

At a glance the board appears to be a standard ATX motherboard with two DIMM slots (the third slot is a DIMM.2 slot for NVMe storage) and a sparse selection of PCI-Express slots. It has all the usual features you’d expect, such as a total of nine USB 3.1 Type-A ports of which three are Gen2, a single USB 3.1 Type-C port, Gigabit Ethernet, wireless antenna connectors (the Z390 chipset includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth), PS/2 ports for both keyboard and mouse for extreme overclocking, and 7.1 audio with optical out.

Expansion slots are taken care of by two PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots, one PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and one x1 slot.

Storage is what you’d expect of a

consumer grade board, with six SATA 3.0 ports and M.2 taken care of by the DIMM.2 expansion card.

Aesthetically, the board looks much like a gaming board. It even has RGB lighting and an RGB header. Sadly, the unique PCB shape of older APEX boards is a thing of the past, as it now sports the standard rectangular design. All of these features mean that other than being a board for extreme overclocking, it can also be used as a daily driver.

On the motherboard power phase layout. Several videos exist on-line from AHOC, covering various aspects of the power phases. If you’re interested, you’d do well to check these out. Especially if for some reason you were under the impression

that the APEX is perhaps just a slightly larger Gene (I was of this mind when the announcement of this board was made). This VRM power phase design is naturally more capable than the one featured on the Gene. If it makes any difference at all to CPU overclocking, I couldn’t tell. What I can say however is that this upgraded power phase can only help your overclocking, especially given just how power hungry the Core i9 9900K can be at high frequencies.

Compared to its direct predecessor, the MAXIMUS X APEX, what we have here is a minor bump in feature set and even where overclocking is concerned these boards deliver similar overclocking with the 8700K and 8086K. It is only with the 9900K that there may be some minor differences.

With the Core i9-9900K the newer board consistently delivered better performance. What would otherwise be within the margin of error was consistent throughout several benchmarks. As such, I’m inclined to say that the latest board most likely delivers better support due to the improved, or superior if you will, power phase system.

Such a thing is difficult to state conclusively given the small sample size of all components involved. Suffice to say, with the previous generation i7-8700K, the there was no meaningful difference between the two.

Concerning the software side of the MAXIMUS XI APEX, you’re literally dealing with exactly what’s been on offer for the last few generations. It’s

the familiar UEFI, with some added options. The A.I training has become standard across the ROG boards and the APEX is no exception. What hasn’t been updated, unfortunately, are the DRAM profiles. These have remained the same for a number of generations and they don’t always translate into valid options when loaded. I have previously experienced a situation where the values in the input fields are obviously incorrect. When this happens, you have to go through all the options in all the various performance tuning menus to fix all such instances.

They work for the most part, but they are due for some updates.

Where the Windows software is concerned, you’re again dealing with the familiar AI Suite and myriad of Issue 47 | 2019 The OverClocker 21

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other applications. Most of them offering functionality that’s available in AI Suite in some form or another. That said, this is still the better application when it comes to motherboard utilities. Most motherboard vendor applications have substandard UI and puzzling design choices. The ROG software isn’t free of all such infractions, but manages them so you’re presented with a somewhat accessible application. Functionality is particularly impressive as there’s

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literally nothing you can’t monitor or configure within AI suite on the board. The Asus power bar proving to be indispensable for convenient fan profile switching.

DRY ICE

To truly test the limits of this board in a remotely sensible way, one really does need LN2. The issue here is that this is not readily available at present, but dry ice is always there 24/7. As such, the overclocking performed is

not really indicative of any particular characteristic of the board as such. It’s much like trying to articulate the difference between the road and track versions of the same performance car by driving to the local library. There’s only so much you can tell, and that much is the dry ice overclocking that I did for this motherboard evaluation.

Using the Core i7-8700K, overclocking was as you’d expect simple. In fact, it took significantly

longer finding a solution for installing Windows 7 than it did to reach a 6GHz clock. Similarly, the cache line frequency was good for 6GHz. This was made that much easier by the “New Samsung B-Die 8×2GB” sub-menus profiles. These – as mentioned earlier – required some minor changes, but nothing that isn’t obvious at first glance (I had to adjust RTL & IOL values on some profiles). One doesn’t even need LN2 mode to be enabled, as this works just fine with many of the Auto rules.

Truly it is that simple with the APEX. There’s little for you to do and most of the fun is actually in tuning memory for performance, frequency or both.

Thanks to the profiles, even that part is minimized to some degree as it’s tough beating the performance of C12-11-1128 4133 as made evident by virtually all HWBOT submissions using this very memory setting and frequency.

In as far as dry ice overclocking is concerned, it’s so simple that overclocking for daily use is more of a challenge. Balancing the right load line calibration setting with the right Vcore for a particular max power draw and temperature will take far longer than it did to record all the benchmarks herein.

The ease with which one can overclock these ROG boards never ceases to amaze, especially so at the amateur level where one would be

using water cooling or dry ice. I'm not sure if it’s possible to add to this in any meaningful way which would partially explain how many of these APEX boards have largely remained the same for several generations.

The MAXIMUS XI APEX then, much like its predecessors, continues to set the pace by which all other extreme overclocking boards are measured.

This generation we have the likes of the Dark which could objectively claim to match the APEX at the very least, and in some instances is perhaps better. That is neither here nor there as what ultimately matters are the performance figures you get with the board.

For everyday use I would have liked to see some updates which obviously extend into other areas of the board.

Much of it remains identical to what was on the APEX X, which itself was similar to the APEX IX. There’s only so much one can put on a motherboard, but these APEX boards are eerily similar with this latest model offering the most refined experience of the lot as you’d expect.

If you have an APEX X, perhaps this motherboard may not be a vast improvement for you, but if you are seeking a competent overclocking motherboard then there aren’t many if any that you’ll find better than this one.

If you’re seeking it for

gaming PC purposes, it’s still superior to many mid-range boards of course, but does have the drawback of only allowing two DIMMs and its high price. I for one would and am more than willing to live with this minor sacrifice, especially as it means one can run DRAM frequencies upwards of 4500MHz all day every day This is something which would not be possible on most gaming motherboards, or at the very least would prove difficult to achieve.

The Overclocker

SUMMARY Had one to score this board, it would be near perfect among its peers. In comparison to what ROG has produced before, it isn’t that drastic an improvement. Overall, the MAXIMUS XI APEX has the minerals to push any and all Z390 CPUs and DRAM kits to the very edge and really that’s all you want from an XOC motherboard. You need not take our word for it though, simply look at all the high scores and records set with the Apex XI. The motherboard is possibly the best Z390 XOC board on the market or at the least shares this spot with the Z390 Dark.

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TESTING CONFIGURATION

INTEL Core i7 8700K @ 5.2GHz ROG MAXIMUS XI GENE G.Skill Trident F4 DDR4 3200 C14 @ 4500MHZ C16 CORSAIR Force LE 960GB SSD CORSAIR AX1500i Windows 10 x64 (BIOS 0905)

GAMING GEAR AWARD

AORUS GEFORCE RTX 2080 TI XTREME ERP $1299.99 | WEBSITE w w w.aorus.com

I

t’s been almost eight months since NVIDIA brought to us the most powerful RTX GPU (barring the TITAN SKU). In that time, we’ve seen all sort so variations on the founder’s edition, all claiming to offer better performance at the same or sometimes lower price.

Gigabyte with the Xtreme model is making similar if not identical claims with their version of what is undoubtedly the most powerful gaming graphics card money can buy at present.

That said, we’ve had several drivers since release and of course performance and stability has improved. That’s to say, the RTX 2080 Ti today performs measurably better than it did upon release so even these

24 The OverClocker Issue 47 | 2019

figures within this review are only representing a moment in time.

Performance will continue to improve .

Now that we have that out the way, let’s talk about the AORUS RTX 2080 Ti Xtreme. Much like the other Xtreme models, this is the 2nd most expensive SKU from GIGABYTE, with only the waterforce SKU commanding a higher price. If that is a little too steep for you maybe this one will do.

Instead of just selling the reference or founder’s edition model with a better cooling complex, GIGABYTE has partially redesigned the PCB. What you get for that is two PCI-Express 8-pin power connectors, one would have expected maybe three power plugs given that this is the Xtreme model, but this configuration curbs the card's

draw to a maximum of 375Watts (limited to 366W via software slider).

Plenty of power for the TU104 GPU, but when you crank up the clocks (especially with adequate cooling), you may hit that limit sooner than you’d think as the GPU draws a tremendous amount of power.

As you’d expect, a UP9512 VRM controller drives 16 power stages.

Standard affair and what you find on the vast majority of cards including the founder’s edition. There aren’t any readily available tools for this controller but you could try out Elmor’ labs EVC tool which with some modifications on the card may allow you Vcore control via the software.

You’ll not get far though, if only because of the power limits

imposed on the card, so for extreme overclocking this isn’t the one for you.

For your gaming needs however, this should do the trick because it really doesn’t get much faster than this.

So why then wold you want the AORUS RTX 2080 Ti instead of any other brand? Well let’s start with the cooling complex. You’ve likely seen this cooler before but that doesn’t mean it’s not capable. It uses a combination of direct heat pipes through a dense fin stack that's cooled by three 100mm fans. These fans are arranged so that the fan blades on the left and right actually overlap the center fan blades.

This central fan spins in the opposite direction to the ones on either side.

According to GIGABYTE this reduces turbulence and improves cooling

capabilities.

It’s hard to measure this given that one would have to compare a more traditional in-line fan system against this one to tell. What one can sat is that the AORUS card runs relatively quiet.

Maybe too much so as the operating temperature is almost always 79’C, but more about that later on.

Cooling the DRAM and MOSFETS is done with a single plate, which is attached to the fin stack and heat pipes. Naturally this means if you remove the GPU cooler, all other cooling comes off as well. Not ideal for those who only have a GPU block as another way of cooling the MOSFETs will be required.

I would much rather a two-piece configuration similar to what you

find on some of this generation’s cards (FTW3 comes to mind).

As such, regarding cooling, this isn’t anything to write home about.

What is of greater interest perhaps are the aesthetic elements of the card should you care for that kind of thing. The AORUS Xtreme looks fantastic, easily among the best looking RTX cards on the market.

The plastics aren’t obvious at first glance, but they do sell ‘the look’ well. With the ability to customize each of the fan’s RGB LEDs you can make some truly unique patterns.

As customary with high end AORUS cards, specific mention must be made to the number of display outputs on offer. The card has a total of seven outputs of which

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you can use a maximum of five at one given time. Great for surround gaming, but you may want to go SLI if you truly plan to go that route.

This brings us to another point, if indeed SLI is appealing for your, do note that space between the two cards will be limited. The Xtreme card is technically 2.5 slots in width, but for all intents and purposes it’s a three-slot card.

A big feature or at least one of the big features on this card is the RGB component of it. There are three lighting zones in total, including the rear of the card (AORUS LED 26 The OverClocker Issue 47 | 2019

logo), the top where GIGABYTE logo is located and of course the three fans. All these can be controlled independently with RGB Fusion. As you may be well aware, the software isn’t great (come to think of it, not a single VGA card vendor makes great software. It’s all adequate at best but not great, especially where UX is concerned) but it’ll get the job done.

When it comes to performance, well what can be said? It remains the most powerful GPU on the market and that means gaming at maximum or highest detail at 50 to 60FPS at 4K resolutions depending on the game. In

RTX enabled titles, one will need to use DLSS to maintain that high frame rate at this resolution, but for none DXR titles it should be able to maintain such high frame rates with relative ease.

As has been the case for this generation and the last, overclocking is rather limited. At least more so where the core is concerned. Between NVIDIA’s Turbo algorithms, power management and temperatures, overclocking the core may not yield much, but increasing the power limits, fan speeds and memory clocks seems to do the trick.

As stated earlier, operating

“For the purpose of delivering what is ultimately the best gaming experience on the PC, it isn't going to get much better than this.”

SUMMARY temperatures under full load (synthetic tests) tops out at 79 degrees.

The clock at this temperature is around 1845MHz and at this frequency, believe it or not, GPU-Z still reports power as the primary performance inhibitor. So, if you’re thinking about extracting the most from this card, definitely consider a full coverage water block and perhaps a shunt mod to get a little more out of the card.

Memory comes from Micron, which overclocks fairly well able to do +800Mhz, but can’t match what Samsung ICs on some other RTX cards which regularly exceed +1200MHz.

This isn’t going to make much if any difference to your gaming whatsoever, but it will show up in the competitive benchmark results. That said, this isn’t an overclocking graphics card, but rather a high-end gaming one.

For the purpose of delivering what is ultimately the best gaming experience on the PC, it isn't going to get much better than this. Depending on the price where you are, do consider the AORUS RTX 2080 Ti Xtreme.

The Overclocker

In as far as gaming graphics cards go, there isn’t much to this card, but also not much to dislike either. You get a fairly thin package outside of the VGA holder and a sticker. Then again, all the money seems to have gone into producing a capable and competent card.

Won’t break any overclocking records but will deliver butter smooth frame rates for gaming at just about any setting you can think of.

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COOLER MASTER MASTERCASE SL600M ERP $202.99 | WEBSITE w w w.coolermaster.com

A

computer case can make or break your build. There are many things that need to be taken into consideration, and the aesthetic is only one of them. Will your graphics card fit?

What about your cooler – will it fit? Does the case support enough fans? These are just some of the questions you have to ask yourself when choosing a case. The Cooler Master MasterCase SL600M is a large case that should support enough hardware for most people.

All of the above points can be measured objectively, which is what this review will cover. The aesthetic, on the other hand, is subjective and entirely up to the reader. The images included in the

28 The OverClocker Issue 47 | 2019

review should give you an idea of whether the looks are for you or not.

Physical Characteristics To begin with, the MasterCase SL600M comes in a generic brown cardboard box with a line drawing of the case itself. This is the same type of packaging that all but the highest end cases use. On the side of the box is a list of some of the specifications listed on the previous page. The box does little to prepare you for the beauty of what’s inside.

The case itself is an ATX midi tower with a large tempered glass side panel on one side. On the opposite side is a solid black sheet of metal, while the front and top are silver with black accents. At the front top of the case are a variety

of USB ports including two each of USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. In addition to these there is a single USB 3.1 Type-C port. To one side of the USB Type-C port you will find the audio in and out jacks and a 4-speed fan controller. Above all of these there is a Cooler Master logo which doubles as the power button and LED. Lastly, a white drive activity LED is nestled between the USB ports.

The front of the case is a solid silver sheet of metal with very little styling. Other than a Cooler Master logo about a third of the way up the case there is no styling apart from the angled edges. Overall it is a very elegant and inconspicuous design. Thankfully the finish on the MasterCase SL600M is rather

resilient to fingerprints and dust.

This means that you won’t have to wipe it down after every touch, and dust simply blows away.

INSIDE THE CASE

Two thumb screws at the back of the case keep the tempered glass side panel in place. With the panel being tempered glass you’ll want to be careful with it. Tempered glass is stronger than normal glass, but it can still easily shatter. Once these screws have been loosened, sliding the panel back and then folding it down removes it from the case. Once loosened, the thumb screws remain attached to the side panel so you won’t lose them. After removing the side panel, you find a large cavity for installation of the motherboard and connected hardware. Moving forward from that is a cage that spans the entire height of the case. Inside this cage go the frontmounted PSU (more on this shortly), mechanical drives and SSDs. Behind the large metal plate that runs floor to ceiling is the cover for

the PSU. This cover is divided into two parts, with one covering the back of the PSU and screwing in place. The other can have its position adjusted and covers the front half and whatever cables you have attached. You will want to attach any modular cables prior to installing the PSU, as it is far easier that way.

Due to the PSU positioning, the case is empty top to bottom other than the cage at the front.

This means that even though the case doesn’t support front or back fans there is plenty of room for liquid cooling. Both the top and bottom of the case support radiators of up to either 280 or 360 mm in size, allowing for up to 720 mm of cooling power. Something interesting is in place of the rear fan is a multipurpose mounting mechanism. You can use this to install a 2.5/3.5″ drive, water pump or even 120 mm radiator.

EXPANSION SLOTS

The MasterCase SL600M supports up to 9 expansion cards, so E-ATX

motherboards with more than 7 slots are supported. Alternatively, you could install a multi-slot card in the bottom PCI-Express slot on your motherboard without a problem. Furthermore, this entire panel can be rotated 90 degrees.

This means that multiple cards can be installed in a vertical orientation.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS – CONTINUED

At the top of the case is a heightadjustable metal cover which covers the top fans. This allows you to leave a gap for airflow to said fans. Should you wish, you can even remove this panel altogether. This allows for maximum airflow, although the case loses its elegant look somewhat.

Moving to the other side of the case, the side panel’s black finish isn’t as resilient to fingerprints as the rest of the case. As with the tempered glass panel, it is held in place using two thumb screws which remain attached panel once loosened. The motherboard mounting plate is solid for the

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most part, with a trio of cutouts for cable management to the board. It’s worth noting that they will be largely inaccessible when using an E-ATX motherboard.

can be replaced by up to three 120 mm fans or two 140 mm fans, and of course can fit a radiator of any of these sizes.

FAN CONTROLLER AND CABLE MANAGEMENT

Building into the case was a rather unique affair. You might think that with the hardware locations being so different from the norm it would be a challenge. Normally you’d be right, but Cooler Master has put a lot of thought into the design and it works well. Cable management was easy enough thanks to the large space behind the motherboard tray. Routing has been well thought out for the most part, and the PSU cover really helps round things off. With a little bit of effort, a completed build exudes the same elegance as the case itself.

Drives can be installed in several locations, so they’re not all in one spot. This makes for a build that’s quite interesting to look at if you have more than two or three

Furthermore, the pre-installed fan controller is hidden behind this panel. This allows up to four PWM fans to be controlled by the sliding switch at the front of the case. Lastly, there are a number of channels and routing options for cable management, and 22 metal tabs for cables to be zip tied in place. This is a rather large number, and far higher than what you’ll find on most other cases.

Coupled with the fan controller being cantered on this side of the case it is really a good thing.

At the bottom of the case are two pre-installed 200 mm PWM fans with a speed range of 400800 RPM. Alternatively, the fans

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BUILDING INTO THE CASE

drives. Firstly, you can install two drives on the panel which hides the PSU. Secondly, a further two can be installed behind the motherboard tray in sleds. Here I noticed something interesting which isn’t advertised. If you screw the SSDs to the top of the sled you can still fit SSDs inside the sleds.

This allows for the installation of two drives more than advertised. If that’s not enough, two more can be attached where front intake fans are normally located. Lastly, another drive can be installed where you’d normally expect to find the rear fan.

CONCLUSION

The Cooler Master MasterCase SL600M is a beautifully elegant chassis with a superb built quality.

The cable management options have been well thought out with all the routing options you could need. Additionally, the inclusion of a USB 3.0 Type-C port and fan controller are a welcome touch.

The addition of four USB ports means that you won’t often need to reach to the back of your case, but two of them being USB 2.0 seems shortsighted. With more and more boards only including a single USB 2.0 header it will likely be taken by an AIO cooler, RGB controller or otherwise. There are USB 2.0 splitters available, but given that you will likely need one it would have been nice to see one included. With only two standard 200 mm fans included and no RGB options whatsoever, case is an empty framework for you to customize as you please.

If you’re after elegance and don’t necessarily want RGB LEDs everywhere this case is worth consideration. Additionally, the ability to have multiple vertically installed expansion cards is a desirable feature, especially if you’re going to be water cooling. Without front of rear fan support you will probably be looking at water cooling in this case, so it’s clear that thought went into the overall design.

Due to all the above fairly unique features, we can’t rate the Cooler Master MasterCase SL600M poorly. The emotions evoked when seeing it are akin to sitting in a Mercedes or BMW.

Jonathan Horne

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G A M E T I M E // C O R S A I R D O M I N A T O R P L A T I N U M R G B 3 2 0 0 C 1 6 1 6 G B

CORSAIR DOMINATOR GAMING GEAR AWARD PLATINUM RGB 3200C16 16GB ERP $154.99 | WEBSITE www.corsair.com | TIMINGS 16-18-18-36 1.35v | FREQUENCY 3200MT/s

R

egardless of what Corsair may state officially or others say, I do truly believe that with each generation, the Dominator Platinum memory kits look the best. One need only look at the special edition DRAM series to see just what the minds at Corsair are capable of producing at their best.

Since RGB LED lighting took the PC DIY space by storm though, the Dominator range has been lagged behind. Or at the very least, it wasn’t always possible to put together the ultimate gaming machine with Dominator memory if you had a specific look in mind.

At best we had the white LED DRAM from the Contrast kit, but even that kit would look out

32 The OverClocker Issue 47 | 2019

of place when everything else in the machine is going through its RGB rainbow effect dance.

At the beginning of this year, Corsair remedied this by offering the very first Dominator Platinum RGB memory kits. Nothing special in terms of DRAM frequency or timings but aesthetically, these are simply incredible. As with most things RGB, the multiple colours can in some instances cheapen the look, but with the Dominator Platinum RGB, the kit looks exquisite. Dare I say it looks better when lit with a single colour as opposed to multiple colours. This is especially true for the breathing effect that you can select for the LEDs. If it seems odd that a DRAM

kit is in the Game time section instead of the main reviews section, allow me to explain.

The reason here is that while this DRAM kit is capable of some respectable overclocking for a gaming kit, it simply isn’t anywhere near where all previous Dominator kits were that I’ve looked at before. This isn’t to do with poor PCB quality or anything of the sort, to the contrary this is a 10-layer PCB, perhaps one of the finest in the industry.

The issue is the DRAM IC’s used, which in this SKU come from Hynix.

This memory at best will reach frequencies as high as 3733MT/s.

Yes 3,800 and sometimes even 3933 would post, but these were unstable

regardless of the settings or voltage.

However, at 3,733MTs using only 1.4v one did manage 18-19-19-39. Of course, these aren’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but with tuning of the secondary and tertiary timings, there’s some performance to be extracted here. Limited to this frequency and primary timings, one was still able to manage a 53GB/s memory read, a 57GB/s memory write and a 49GB/s Memory copy figure in AIDA 64. Not bad at all considering just how much lower the performance is from the X.M.P profile. Oddly enough, there’s nothing preventing you from tightening the X.M.P profile down a little as Corsair’s X.M.P timings are loose as per usual.

Again, this isn’t a judgment on the entire line up of Dominator Platinum RGB kits, but specifically the 3200 C16 kit which while affordable, does not have the ICs to match the looks.

All that aside, what the Dominator Platinum RGB is offering is a first for the range and it’s well executed for a first attempt. Control is naturally via iCUE, but given the confines here, there’s little to nothing that

one should find confusing.

Aesthetically, I simply can’t express how good it looks in this way. It’s better in person than in photos. So compelling are the matt black heat spreaders, that I think for the purposes of gaming, I would be more than willing to overlook the choice of IC for the price. There are other DRAM kits which use poor to average Samsung B-die ICs for the same price and these ICs even at their worst will be better than the best Hynix ICs for overclocking, but they will not give you RGB control, let alone this build quality and finishing. If you’re looking for the higher end stuff, then you’ll obviously need to look at the 3200 C14 SKU, but you’ll notice that the price is over $100 more, and this is likely if not entirely due to that SKU using the famed Samsung B-die IC. So ultimately you get what you are willing or able to pay for.

Not all is about performance however, missing on many kits, including the cheaper competing kits from other vendors is a thermal sensor.

Corsair uses an STMicro

STTS2004 sensor which provides temperature reading via software.

This is what allows software to read the DIMM temperature. One would have thought iCUE allowed you to set the colours via DRAM temperature, but for some reason I was not able to select this and could only use readings from the CPU, motherboard and other sensors, just not he DRAM directly. This is likely to do with the specific test machine though as there’s no reason why Corsair’s own iCUE wouldn’t be able to read the DRAM temperature directly.

In closing, I’m thoroughly impressed by the look of this dram, build quality and of course appreciate the full software control and temperature monitoring.

The only part which didn’t come to the party are the ICs but this is understandable.

If you’re looking to complete your build with some stunning DRAM and you don’t mind the matt black, there simply isn’t a better-looking DRAM kit on the market. Next to the Contrast SE, nothing else is close to Dominator Platinum RGB. The Overclocker

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