Finished Looks

Getting the ASRock X299 OC Formula board up and running was pretty easy, to be honest. Sometimes, boards like this can be a bit touchy, depending on what RAM kit you have or other things, but I encountered no problems and even got the HCC CPUs up and running quickly.


There is a decent amount of space between the CPU socket and uppermost PCIe slot, so there is lots of room for you to squeeze a huge LN2 pot on to this board, or a huge air cooler if that is your inclination. Although this is a board clearly designed for hardcore-overclocking purposes and breaking benchmark records, it does prove itself as a capable product for daily use too, once you learn of all its subtle nuances, which are a part of what makes this board so awesome.


There are very few RGB LEDs on this board; just some ASRock hid under the chipset cooler. I know many of you are not fans of all this RGB stuff, but let me tell you, get this stuff going with some LN2 vapors and you've got a crazy light show that makes for some fantastic pictures.

Test System

The ASRock X299 OC Formula boots up with very standard Turbo profiling and an input voltage that was a little bit too high for my CPU at stock with the initial BIOS. This seems to be normal for ASRock X299 boards right now, although some BIOSes adjust this a little bit. Either way, what was on offer at "stock" out of the box was perfectly matched with what I expect from my CPU, with power just barely cresting over my i9-7900X CPU's default 140W TDP.