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Additional cores create additional thermal and power loads that can push other hardware to its limits, yet the parts we’re hoping to push to the limit are all on the motherboards. Intel’s 10-core, 20-thread Core i9-7900X CPU is a great product for stressing the voltage regulators of various X299 motherboards, particularly under our full-AVX-load overclocking stability test.
Test Hardware
| Sound | Integrated HD Audio |
| Network | Integrated Gigabit Networking |
| Graphics Driver | GeForce 382.53 |
The tremendous heat produced by the Core i9-7900X required us to use nothing less than our award-winning Fractal Design S24 liquid cooler system sample. Getting its fans to blow sufficiently over each motherboard’s voltage regulator required additional design consideration: Of our leftover case review samples, Cooler Master’s HAF-XB had the best layout. So we used that one.
Comparison Products
A quick look at firmware settings shows that all four boards in today's charts have similar overclocking adjustments, leveling the field for that portion of today's comparison.
Benchmark Settings
| Synthetic Benchmarks & Settings | |
| PCMark 8 | Version 2.7.613Home, Creative, Work, Storage, Applications (Adobe & Microsoft) |
| 3DMark 13 | Version 4.47.597.0Skydiver, Firestrike, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets |
| SiSoftware Sandra | Version 2016.03.22.21CPU Arithmetic, Multimedia, Cryptography, Memory Bandwidth |
| DiskSPD | 4k Random Read, 4k Random Write128k Sequential Read, 128k Sequential Write |
| Cinebench R15 | Build RC83328DEMOOpenGL Benchmark |
| CompuBench | Version 1.5.8Face Detection, Optical Flow, Ocean Surface, Ray Tracing |
| Application Tests & Settings | |
| LAME MP3 | Version 3.98.3Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160 Kb/s) |
| HandBrake CLI | Version: 0.9.9Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4k mkv to x265 mp4 |
| Blender | Version 2.68aBMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark |
| 7-Zip | Version 16.02THG-Workload (7.6 GB) to .7z, command line switches "a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9" |
| Adobe After Effects CC | Release 2015.3.0, Version 13.8.0.144PCMark driven routine |
| Adobe Photoshop CC | Release 2015.5.0. 20160603.r.88 x64PCMark driven routine (light and heavy) |
| Adobe InDesign CC | Release 2015.4, Build 11.4.0.90 x64PCMark driven routine |
| Adobe Illustrator | Release 2015.3.0, Version 20.0.0 (64-bit)PCMark driven routine |
| Game Tests & Settings | |
| Ashes of the Singularity | Version 1.31.21360High Preset - 1920x1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAACrazy Preset - 1920x1090, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA |
| F1 2015 | 2015 Season, Abu Dhabi Track, RainMedium Preset, No AFxUltra High Preset, 16x AF |
| Metro Last Light Redux | Version 3.00 x64High Quality, 1920x1080, High Tesselation, 16x AFVery High Quality, 1920x1080, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF |
| The Talos Principle | Version 267252Medium Preset, High Quality, High Tesselation, 4x AFUltra Preset, Very High Quality, Very High Tesselation, 16x AF |
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