Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
How We Test
Additional cores create additional thermal and power loads that can push other hardware to its limits. But the parts we’re hoping to push to the limit are all on the motherboards here. 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.
Comparison Products
The less common Micro ATX form factor pits ASRock's X299M Extreme4 against MSI's X299M Gaming Pro Carbon AC. Our only other reduced-size board, ASRock's X299E-ITX/ac helps fill out the charts, while its full ATX X299 Extreme gives us additional perspective on the ATX/Micro ATX debate.
Benchmark Settings
| Synthetic Benchmarks and 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 and 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: 4.19 GB 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 and Settings | |
| Ashes of Singularity | Version 1.31.21360High Preset - 1920x1080, Mid Shadow Quality, 1x MSAACrazy Preset - 1920x1080, High Shadow Quality, 2x MSAA |
| F1 2015 | 2015 Season, Abu Dhabi Track, RainMedium Preset, No AFUltra 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 |
MORE: Best Motherboards
MORE: How To Choose A Motherboard
MORE: All Motherboard Content
