Overclocking

Overclocking using the Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Xtreme WaterForce should have been easy. With twenty power-stages and top-of-the-line components, there is no doubt this motherboard has CPU overclocking capabilities. However, overclocking the CPU was severely limited due to waterblock-mounting issues.

In short, the CPU never made proper contact with the monoblock, which resulted in insufficient mounting pressure. I tried all three 12th generation Intel processors I had on hand, each of which gave varying degrees of contact. Because of this problem, the best I could accomplish was 270 watts power draw before reaching 100°C. This limited the i9-12900K overclock; it actually performed better at stock. Any all-core overclock above 5 GHz would reach the 100°C T.j Max, which had the CPU downclock itself after only a short period of stress testing.

These thermal issues were truly unexpected with such an expensive item. Due to the nature of full-board monoblocks, the z-height milling tolerance likely needs to be lower to avoid insufficient CPU mounting pressure. This is speculation on my part, of course. It could be that the standoffs and waterblock backplate are the real issues. Either way, this is a full-coverage monoblock designed to be paired with this motherboard. As such, it should not have this problem in the first place.

Memory Overclock

As expected, the Gigabyte Z690 AORUS Xtreme WaterForce has excellent memory support. With all four slots filled using single-ranked memory, a frequency of 2800 MHz (5600 MT/s) was achieved. It required some voltage tinkering, but nothing out of the ordinary. 5800 MT/s was bootable, but unstable without raising the voltages above what I was comfortable with.

For two DIMMs, the limit was DDR5-6600. This is generally the highest frequency 4-DIMM slot motherboards can accomplish with a 12th generation Intel processors. If you are looking for DDR5-6800+ support, it is reversed for 2-DIMM slot motherboards, like Gigabyte's Z690 AORUS Tachyon.