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Firmware
Colorful’s BIOS starts in easy mode, as most do these days. It’s a unique-looking BIOS setup with a black background, red buttons/icons, and white text matching the iGame theme. It’s a nice contrast and easy to read, for sure, and it has all the functionality you want. But it also feels a little dated compared to the competition. The BIOS also has a ‘Main Panel’ page that displays an image of the board and its connectivity (akin to Asus’ Q-Dashboard). If something is connected, it shows on the screen with a green light next to it. They also provide several modes to boost X3D processor performance.
Advanced mode displays the hardware monitor on the left side and the different headings across the top. Here again, you'll find everything you need to get the most out of your system, even if you’re using sub-ambient cooling methods. In all, it’s a solid BIOS, and I like that there are two to use, but they are 32MB and not 64MB, so you may lose support on older chips as time goes on.
Software
Colorful’s iGamecenter software is your one-stop shop for viewing your hardware, monitoring the system, and controlling the RGB lighting and the Vulcan Smart Screen. It also includes a game section that predicts your FPS based on your hardware at three resolutions (1080/1440/4K). The AI section you’d think is for overclocking and optimization is, sadly, for pets and avatars. Cute, but nothing to do with system optimization.
This software, while useful, wasn’t very user-friendly. To see temperatures and such on the screen, you need to merge several pictures and adjust what it displays. I don’t know why it doesn’t show system info (or even a picture) by default, but it should. I would also like to see some overclocking features (at minimum, multiplier and Vcore adjustment) in the software.
Test System / Comparison Products
We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 (23H2) 64-bit OS with all updates applied as of late September 2024 (this includes the Branch Prediction Optimizations for AMD). Hardware-wise, we’ve updated the RAM kits (matching our Intel test system), cooling, storage, and video card. Unless otherwise noted, we use the latest publicly available non-beta motherboard BIOS. The hardware we used is as follows:
TEST SYSTEM COMPONENTS
- CPU - AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
- Cooling - Arctic Liquid Freezer II 420
- Storage - Crucial 2TB T705 M.2 PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD
- RAM - Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32)
- RAM - Teamgroup T-Froce Delta DDR5-7200 CL34 (FF3D518G7200HC34ABK)
- RAM - Klevv Cras XR5 RGB DDR5-8000 (KD5AGUA80-80R380S)
- GPU - Asus TUF RTX 4080 16G
- PSU - EVGA Supernova 850W P6
- Windows 11 64-bit (24H2)
- NVIDIA Driver 561.09
Sound | Integrated HD audio |
Network | Integrated Networking (GbE to 10 GbE) |
Graphics Driver | GeForce 561.09 |
Benchmark Settings
Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | |
Procyon | Version 2.8.1352 64 Office 365, Video Editing (Premiere Pro 24.6.1), Photo Editing (Photoshop 25.1.2, Lightroom Classic 13.5.1) |
3DMark | Version 2.29.8294.0 64 Speed Way and Steel Nomad (Default) |
Cinebench R24 | Version 2024.1.0 |
Blender | Version 4.2.0 |
Application Tests and Settings | |
LAME MP3 | Version SSE2_2019 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s) |
HandBrake CLI | Version: 1.8.2 Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX) |
Corona 1.4 | Version 1.4 Custom benchmark |
7-Zip | Version 24.08 Integrated benchmark (Command Line) |
Game Tests and Settings | |
Cyberpunk 2077 | Ultra RT: - 1920 x 1080, DLSS - Balanced. |
F1 2024 | Ultra High Preset - 1920 x 1080, 16xAF/TAA, Great Britain (Clear/Dry), FPS Counter ON |
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