ASRock X299 OC Formula

[cadaveca]

ASRock's fabled X299 OC Formula is here! It's that board that can push 4600 MHz memory or crack the OC ceiling on Intel's HCC CPUs, and all that other good stuff a board carrying the "OC Formula" name has always been capable of; this time with less yellow!

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[Chaitanya]

Don't OC oriented motherboards have bare minimum of RAM slots? So how is 4 RAM slots a Con.

 

[cadaveca]

Don't OC oriented motherboards have bare minimum of RAM slots? So how is 4 RAM slots a Con.

It does limit you from using all the platform has to offer. For some users, such as our @xkm1948, who is using 128 GB, and maxing out his ram completely, this board would not be an option.

But yeah, you're very right, for sure.

You might also want to ask the question, is going to four slots the easy way out, design-wise, or if they spent a huge amount of time trying designs, could they get the same memory scaling with all eight slots? I'm sure there'd be a slight decrease in overall speeds, but just how much exactly, given a huge amount of time and an unlimited budget?

 

[xkm1948]

Love your review. Any works station boards reviews coming up?

 

[cadaveca]

Love your review. Any works station boards reviews coming up?

We'll see what happens. Got some surprises in the works (for everyone) on the way.

 

[xkm1948]

Whenever you get a chance to test X399 platform can you check their max RAM capacity? AMD claims with unbuffered ECC the TR can support up to TB level RAM. I wanna know whether that is for real or just marketing.

 

[cadaveca]

Whenever you get a chance to test X399 platform can you check their max RAM capacity? AMD claims with unbuffered ECC the TR can support up to TB level RAM. I wanna know whether that is for real or just marketing.

Yeah, that is an interesting aspect of that platform... and you already know I sleep cuddling my DIMM collection....

 

[erixx]

Amazing how empty pcb gets bigger and bigger!

 

[cadaveca]

Amazing how empty pcb gets bigger and bigger!

Standard ATX board, but the lack of DIMM slots does make it appear a bit empty. At the same time, those "spaces" help isolate the different parts of the board from each other, helping the board clock well. And it clocks amazingly well, with surprisingly low voltage compared to other boards, so it really does seem that it pays off in spades.

 

[Frito11]

all good XOC oriented DDR4 mobos have only 1 DIMM per channel. litterally nobody who competes on HWBOT would buy this board if they had made it 2 DPC reason being is its impossible to run DDR4-4000 C11-12 T1 tight on anything else the added trace lengths and noise screw up any board with more slots from ever doing it or even much higher than 4000 even with normal timings.

 

[cadaveca]

all good XOC oriented DDR4 mobos have only 1 DIMM per channel. litterally nobody who competes on HWBOT would buy this board if they had made it 2 DPC reason being is its impossible to run DDR4-4000 C11-12 T1 tight on anything else the added trace lengths and noise screw up any board with more slots from ever doing it or even much higher than 4000 even with normal timings.

Yes, you're simply stating the obvious for those that normally buy this sort of product. But the OC scene isn't growing, like, at all, so we've really got to consider how ALL users might look at this board,not just those that run LN2. Not all users are willing to accept that, but we do want to have products that interest other users into XOC. So how do we make products appealing to entice users... you remove any and all complaints, period.

I've run 4000 with XMP-like settings with 4 sticks on many boards. All of my Skylake-X CPUs can run 4000 pretty easy (I got every model and multiples of 7900X), and NONE of them even require voltage boost to VCCSA or VCCIO when only clocking up ram up that high, so you are right... board memory design is extremely critical for real memory overclocking, and pretty darn important for those that want over like 3600 MHz with all slots filled.

However, I do know of users that would like to be able to run higher speeds with greater densities, and I either got extremely good CPU samples, or Skylake-X's memory controller is one of the best yet.

That said, like I said in the review, if you want to push this platform, this is the board to do it, and Nick's focus on the XOC community and the industry as a whole means that you have a real person, a real face, with which to approach with any issues you might encounter, and that is invaluable. No other company offers that level of support as well as Nick and ASRock does.

 

[Frito11]

Indeed Sky-X IMC is very good i was able to run DDR4-4000 C17 1.4v on my Rampage VI Apex with a 7820x on my 4266-C19 sticks. for daily users i don't disagree the small advantage of the missing slots isn't a big deal esp on skylake-x, however if someone is buying this for competition use then well its this board or the Apex sense Gigabyte won't put their XOC boards in retail channels anymore for some reason.

 

[cadaveca]

Indeed Sky-X IMC is very good i was able to run DDR4-4000 C17 1.4v on my Rampage VI Apex with a 7820x on my 4266-C19 sticks. for daily users i don't disagree the small advantage of the missing slots isn't a big deal esp on skylake-x, however if someone is buying this for competition use then well its this board or the Apex sense Gigabyte won't put their XOC boards in retail channels anymore for some reason.

I don't think Gigabyte's BIOS can keep up with ASRock and ASUS, so to me, it is no surprise. Gigabyte excels at a different type of product than what those two brands do, and ASRock has the customer care that kills anything ASUS and Gigabyte offer; you don't find much if anything at all recently about people complaining about ASRock's RMA service, for example...

 

[phill]

I love the OC Forumla boards, I have a few Some of the best for benching and so tweakable. I've not had any issues with the RMA's (the companies I've bought the boards from have never given me any issues at all if I have ever needed to RMA them) but I tend to go down that route rather than going for a more bare bones board..

As for Gigabyte boards, not had the best experience with those, the X99 SOC boards seemed to have been so flakey and I had about 4 of those whilst benching and only on water cooling no sub zero... Even died with no overclocking, the RAM side of things seemed to have been the cause of the board dying.. Not the best experience I must admit....

 

[Jism]

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X299_OC_Formula/13.html

Is it me or am i missing a complete review of overclocking features? We see a chip idling at 1200MHz. Was that the final OC? Lol.

 

[BigMack70]

I don't understand how one can look at X299 and conclude, as here, "This platform really does bring enthusiasts and high-performance computing and gaming together in a single platform" when this very review shows how much better Z270/Z370 is for gaming than X299.

X299 hasn't changed anything about how Intel's platforms stack up... its premium X[]99 platform is worse for gaming than its mainstream Z[]70 and gamer without some other use for 8+ cores is much better served by avoiding X299

 

[Frito11]

I'm sure Dave can clarify but I'm going to assume he ran the benchmarks at default settings on the motherboard. the massive change Intel made on Skylake-X that hurts gaming is the Mesh and it really low default 2400 mhz clock speed, if one simply overclocks that to 3000 that will resolve most of the poor gaming performance seen on skylake-x vs ring bus desktop CPU's. end of the day though Sky/Kaby/Coffee Lake-S will always deliver you the highest of highest frame rates in many games esp when overclocked.

 

[cadaveca]

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASRock/X299_OC_Formula/13.html

Is it me or am i missing a complete review of overclocking features? We see a chip idling at 1200MHz. Was that the final OC? Lol.

That is at idle, and for some users, seeing that the chip still scales down the multi and voltage when under OC is important. It could have been forced higher, but I feel it's important to show exactly what you see in that screenshot. All X299 boards are tested with the i9-7900X set to 4600 MHz on OC. If all the screenshots just sshow 4600 MHz, it's kinda of useless, and doesn't provide you with any real info, IMHO.

Here's an example of how many tests I keep results of (I actually run way more than what is shown here, and multiple times, but I only keep certain results for review purposes):

There's benchmarks there I kept screenshots of that aren't even posted in the review. With every board, results are highly dependent on what specific configuration you have. Memory, VGAs, CPU, power supply, drives, cooling are all changed many time over for every reviewed product. You cna see I do have OC results as well as memory OC results, evn though those aren't reported in the review. I don't just slap a rig together, run benchmarks, and then toss out a review; I build the rig, use it for a couple of weeks at least for 16-18 hours a day, and I tend to run benchmarks for reviews at the very end, but through the entire process I am constantly doing tests to get a true feeling of what a product has on offer. For example, if you check the "Sexy Hardware" thread, you'll see I have an ASRock X299E ITX AC board for review, along with a full cover block from Bitspower. It will be several weeks before you see that review posted, but I'm building that rig today.

Very few other sites go as in-depth on testing as I do. I don't do reviews for money or for access to the hardware; I do reviews to help ensure everyone is getting what they need out of these products, as well as making sure you guys have a place to ask questions and get some info that might not otherwise be available to you. This is my hobby, and I want it to grow so that I can continue to enjoy it for many many years to come.

I don't understand how one can look at X299 and conclude, as here, "This platform really does bring enthusiasts and high-performance computing and gaming together in a single platform" when this very review shows how much better Z270/Z370 is for gaming than X299.

X299 hasn't changed anything about how Intel's platforms stack up... its premium X[]99 platform is worse for gaming than its mainstream Z[]70 and gamer without some other use for 8+ cores is much better served by avoiding X299

You can't judge a platform like this by results with a single CPU. The KabyLake-X chips, by default, are the same as Z270, but have a higher spec right out of the box, for example. If you are NOT overclocking, X299 has higher clockspeeds right out of the gate. With past platforms, I would tend to agree with you, but X299 and it's socket that fits multiple CPU designs into it really changes the game this time, so I have written that to draw your attention those that.

I'm sure Dave can clarify but I'm going to assume he ran the benchmarks at default settings on the motherboard. the massive change Intel made on Skylake-X that hurts gaming is the Mesh and it really low default 2400 mhz clock speed, if one simply overclocks that to 3000 that will resolve most of the poor gaming performance seen on skylake-x vs ring bus desktop CPU's. end of the day though Sky/Kaby/Coffee Lake-S will always deliver you the highest of highest frame rates in many games esp when overclocked.

Yes, I always test and show "out-of-the-box" settings as this shows the board maker's tuning to Turbo profiles and other things like power settings (that idle multi, for example) that can affect overall performance and/or power use. It's actually really hard to create a level playing field in which to evaluate motherboard performance, to be honest, yet the field I put them on allows board makers to show you what they can do, tuning-wise, while also pointing out if that tuning is taking place, and I feel that that is very important for the end user in many cases.

 

[lukart]

I love the OC Forumla boards, I have a few Some of the best for benching and so tweakable. I've not had any issues with the RMA's (the companies I've bought the boards from have never given me any issues at all if I have ever needed to RMA them) but I tend to go down that route rather than going for a more bare bones board..

As for Gigabyte boards, not had the best experience with those, the X99 SOC boards seemed to have been so flakey and I had about 4 of those whilst benching and only on water cooling no sub zero... Even died with no overclocking, the RAM side of things seemed to have been the cause of the board dying.. Not the best experience I must admit....

Yea, same here. I had a few OCF and they are the best thing ever.
Shame they are not doing them for X370 AM4 mobos, I would love to get one for my Ryzen.

 

[phill]

I've a few here, Z77, Z97 and Z170.. I don't plan on getting anymore but if I see a Z170M then I might consider it lol That said, I'm thinking more towards the Ryzen setups for the girl friend and my daughter if I'm honest.. I think they'll be damn good rigs with 16Gb ram and one of my 480's in there Perfect for folding and them gaming!!

 

[Vlada011]

399$, I don't know... I'm more familiar with ROG BIOS and I would rather add 29$ more for
Rampage VI Apex. Somehow is inteligent modern and innovative.
Best investment at the moment, RVIA and i9-7900X.
And build will not be in shadow even after Z390 and Intel 8 core show up on market.

 

[Upgrayedd]

Wow, almost a full year necro..should I have just waited an extra day? Why such a fps difference between motherboards of the same chipset (Metro Last Light)?