Today we had a chance to look at another X299 offering, this time from ASRock with its X299 OC Formula. The OC Formula is more of the sports coupe of motherboards with a focus on overclocking and going fast as opposed to gaming or even workstation use. We put the monster i9-9980XE 18c/36t CPU on the board and push it as far as our cooling will take us along with going over the specifications and features.
Fast forward to today, Intel has released a new lineup of CPUs, also based on the Skylake-X architecture ranging from the i7-9800X (8c/16t ~$600) all the way up to the flagship i9-9980XE (18c/36t ~$2000). The new processors are all 165W parts, but in testing these have pulled a few hundred watts with ambient cooling during stress testing. Due to increased power use, again we are seeing a couple of board partners releasing new versions of boards with even beefier VRMs and cooling to the new CPUs. ASUS was one of those and have taken high-end motherboard to what initially feels like a whole new level with the new ASUS Rampage VI Extreme Omega.
NVIDIA’s Turing architecture found in the 2xxx series video cards came onto the scene nearly six months ago releasing the high-end first in the RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti. Time went on and the mid-range tier hit the scene with the RTX 2070 and RTX 2060 coming out a bit later filling out the full RTX lineup but leaving plenty of space in the market for a less expensive, more budget-friendly solution. In comes the GTX 1660
Today we are looking at another drive towards the high-end of the performance spectrum in the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro. The SX8200 Pro is updated with the new, faster, Silicon Motion controller allowing for speeds up to 3500 MB/s reads and writes up to 3000 MB/s, SLC caching and DRAM cache buffer, and LDPC ECC technology all backed by a 5-Year warranty.
Today we will be looking at another motherboard in the Z390 series, this time from ASRock. The last time we connected with them was in January where the X399 Phantom Gaming 6 motherboard for Threadripper was reviewed, and positively. This time around, we have something from the mainstream platform and likely a fairly familiar name if you have been reading our forums over the past few years in the Z390 Extreme 4. The Extreme 4 was typically highly regarded as one of the best ‘bang for your buck’ type motherboards with a solid feature set as well as capable power delivery for overclocking the CPU. We will break it down in this review and see if it is still able to maintain that crown of being one of the better Z390 boards without paying a premium.
Better late than never is a popular phrase coined by Geoffery Chaucer way back in the day that is perfectly applicable now, and for this review. As most know by now, both of NVIDIA’s mid-range cards have been released in the RTX 2060 FE and RTX 2070 FE. The latter being released in 10/2018 while the RTX 2060 was released January 7th – our first day of CES.
The Helix-L purports to be a budget offering with good performance (Up to 1700/1500 MB/s R/W) and a solid value per GB. The Helix uses again uses a Silicon Motion controller and runs without a DRAM module (cost savings) but uses HMB (Host Memory Buffer) and system RAM similar to how drives with integrated DRAM work as well. We’ll put the drive through its paces and see how the DRAMless drive performs!
Mushkin might not be the first name you think of when you are looking for super performance, overclockable memory, but we are reviewing something today that just might change your mind about that. With an emphasis on high-quality IC’s and XMP 2.0 compliance, Mushkin offers a high-performance product without being overtly flashy about the design. We are going to put this memory through a gamut of overclocking and benchmarking tests to find out how well this memory performs and whether or not its suitable for computer enthusiasts.
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