Gadgetory

hey guys build Zoid from actually hardcore overclocking here and today we're going to be taking a look at the features of the x2 99 dark motherboard so let's get right into it starting with the memory slot layout so this board is as you can clearly see only equipped with four dimm slots for your RAM and the reason why this is actually a really cool feature for at least extreme overclockers and just competitive overclockers in general you can be competitive on water cooling as well the reason why this is a cool feature is that with the reduced number of memory slots the memory traces are shorter because the slots are physically closer to the CPU socket they're also better lay it out because there's not as many traces necessary to like there's not as many traces that need to be routed for the two memory slots instead of four and the other thing is that a lot of the actual traces between between two memory slots on the same memory Channel are actually shared before that this video is brought to you by Thermaltake and the view 71 enclosure the view 71 is a full tower case that's capable of fitting three video cards and most configurations it's also one of the better cooling cases in our recent case testing bench lineup the view 71 has hinged a tempered glass doors on either side that make it easy to open and show off and it comes with at least one rain fan though you can get the RGB version if you prefer learn more at the link in the description below this unoccupied memories law actually introduces a lot of signal integrity issues for the memory slot that is occupied and it actually negatively impacts your memory overclocking performance so thanks to the fact that EVGA has this you know one memory slot per memory channel layout which is the same thing as what you would find on other you know top-of-the-line extreme overclocking targeted boards like the Azeroth cozy formula as well as the Asus Rampage 6 apex this board is capable of doing things like this right here and what is this well this is a screen shot that I take a took of memory of basically a geek run that I did and mostly what the focus was was just memory tuning I didn't really hammer the CPU that much even though four point eight six gigahertz on the fourteen core CPU as it's pretty significant the CPU was peaking at about 500 Watts know all 500 Watts 550 watts actual CPU power CPU heat output thermals weren't great but this was just basically a quick benchmark run and the board handled it just fine but more importantly for me the board does 19 1966 megahertz so this is ddr4 that frequency right there translates to ddr4 39 33 and look at those timings that's 12 not CL 12 11 11 26 240 so basically these are these are memory settings that you would expect from like I did you know the rampage 6 apex or the OSI formula which actually the OSI formula doesn't clock for me at least as high as the dark does so EVGA has done a really really good job with this board that memory layout absolutely works there are very very few motherboards out there that can do this on X 299 there are very few motherboards on Z 217 Z 370 that can do these kinds of settings so it is really impressive that you know EVGA has pulled this off and this is in quad channel so the memory layout that EVGA is using is definitely working now here's a screenshot of a similar scenario except this one is from Lumi who is the number-one overclocker in finland and he got his ram all the way to ddr4 4120 at basically the same memory timing so he's still running that 12 1111 28 while I was running 26 but 40 RAF's but he's still doing you know 4000 and 120 mega ticks per second at 1211 11:28 memory timings which is like this is there there's there's a very short list of motherboards out like on the market that can do these kinds of settings regardless of what platform you're looking at so yeah EVGA is decision to go with the low memory slot count now we have here definitely paid off that this board is seriously impressive when it comes to memory overclocking thanks to the memory slot layout that it comes with now then let's move on to some of the more like features you can actually sort of feel and see not just not ones that affect your overclocking kinda in the background so you have a power button you have a reset button and you have a four digit postcode and the reason for this is is this postcode reads when you're when you're done with the post process this postcode will actually display CPU temperatures and it reads you know it reads just fine for positive temperatures if you go over a over 99 degrees then it'll just go from like 99 to a zero because that there is a 10 so basically that's ten and a zero and if this was a say 3 then you know you'd have a hundred and three degrees centigrade so it reads CPU temperatures that way but the reason why actually has that second part of the digits is this actually does negative temperatures as well and it goes accurate all the way down to minus 64 degrees centigrade this is extremely handy for extreme overclockers because it allows you to check the condition of your thermal paste without worrying about sticky stuffing a thermal probe behind the CPU which the dark does support there is a hole in the middle of the CPU socket for putting a thermal probe through but that's just way less convenient then you know just using the postcode to read the temperature directly from the die so very very handy feature right there under that you find a clear CMOS button and a whole bunch of LEDs for troubleshooting these they do things like indicate critical CPU errors as well as the presence of your various voltages like 12 volts 5 volts 5 volts standby 3.3 volts and any other voltages that the motherboard needs to operate that it gets from external sources so that simplifies the troubleshooting process you have similar LEDs actually scattered around the motherboard elsewhere for example above the memory slots which you can't see but they're there behind each memory slot you have two LEDs there's a white one and there's a red one and these are actually super handy in my opinion because basically these LEDs indicate how many functioning memory slots you have if they're all white you all your memory salts are working I'm not sure if some of these LEDs turn off if you use a KB like xcp you like the white LED might not light up if you're on a KB like X CPU I do believe you'll only have the KB like X memory slots lighting up all the other the other two memory slots will be blacked out but so that's nice you you get a visual indicator of the LEDs with like which memory salts are working but the other thing is when you train that red LED indicates if your memory Channel failed so when you go through the post process you're gonna go through the post codes B 6 to beat while B 0 to B 7 but really on the post code all you're really gonna see is the b6 and b7 post code flickering back and forth and after that if any of your memory channels has a red LED on it you will know that that memory Channel failed to Train and this is super handy because you can skip the entire process of going to the BIOS to fix yourself going to the BIOS or Windows to check if your memory failed you will know immediately after startup if your memory is all working which for normal users this is not really a big deal memory training misses aren't that common until you start pushing the memory settings that I showed you earlier like 39 33 or 41 20 at CL 12 we're actually getting the memory to train properly is often a matter of multiple reboots and like really fine-tuning some of the settings so this gets very very handy because it helps you troubleshoot any kind of memory boot issues but before you get all the way into Windows and check that oh yeah we're not running quite channel or running triple channel so that's a really really nice feature to have right there along with all of those LEDs now the one thing that I think this board is missing while two things this board is missing is there's no safe boot button so that clear like you're basically stuck clearing the BIOS every time you have any like if you have a full memory training failure where all four of your memory slots for sky like X turn red or both of your memory slots for K be like X turn red you're gonna be hitting clear CMOS because this motherboard does not does is not particularly good at retraining and there isn't really a retraining button like there's not a retry button either for attempting multiple train attempts quickly but in my experience it wouldn't really help you because I've tried retraining the board on the same settings multiple times and it doesn't really get anywhere once you all of your memory channels are failed it's basically clear CMOS as the only way to get into the BIOS the board compensates for the fact that you're gonna be trashing your memory like your bio settings often by giving you a million profiles like it can store by far the most profiles I've seen on any motherboard but I'd really prefer if there was a safe boot button which you just press and it gets you into the BIOS on safe settings without wiping the entire BIOS a retry button to skip the entire like if you want to retrain about motherboard without a retry bus and you need to cut PSU power to the motherboard and then like redo the entire and then started a them you know power it back up and we're gonna see if it retrains so that's again just a quality-of-life feature that's kind of missing and then finally the board lacks a slow mode switch which I find very like for liquid-nitrogen overclocking on X 299 I find that rather concerning because even at just 4.9 gigahertz the 14 core that I have idles on about 10 amp on like 12 amps down the 12 volt connectors which translates to about a hundred and forty Watts idle if you turn off all your power savings which you should do for extreme overclocking which that 140 watts Idol on liquid nitrogen translates into a lot of wasted liquid nitrogen just keeping the system running at well idle so I'd really appreciate if the board had a slow mode because slow mode is on a lot of extreme overclocking motherboards and the reason why it's there is it enables you to immediately drop the CPU from you know full speed to the lowest possible CPU ratio so on X 299 you could go like let's say you're doing ln2 overclocking and you're at 555 X a hundred after slow mode your 55 X would go to 12 X and you'd be at 1.2 gigahertz and this actually significantly reduces power consumption because you've just got like a more than four times decrease in core clock which will actually cut your power consumption very significantly so that would be really handy for you know like the the time like you boot up and when you're configuring your OS and opening benchmarks and making sure everything is just right slow mode would be extremely handy to have on this motherboard for ln2 overclocking because X 299 is really really hot and already on X 99 slow mode was a feature I used a lot with the motherboards that had it because it just saves you a lot of it saving you liquid nitrogen but yeah this board doesn't have a slow mode which is a kind of unfortunate it's not like a disaster because there's a lot of boards with no slow mode but it is a nice quality of life feature especially for a platform as power-hungry as X 299 now moving along what it does give you as switch wise is a BIOS switch its triple BIOS which is kind of insane like I don't know why you need triple BIOS but it doesn't hurt that's for sure and you know two BIOS I think is the minimum BIOS account requirement for like a overclocking board this has three so nothing to complain about here under that you actually find the socketable BIOS chips so you can actually like if you manage to somehow brick all three of your biases you can actually ask for a replacement chip from EVGA and it's not going to be massive pain to do the swap because a lot of other motherboards have the BIOS chips soldered into them and if you break the if you break all of your BIOS chips there's like you're either gonna have to get an external flashing device or you're gonna have to de solder the the break BIOS chips and replace one of them with a good one to recover from so yeah the soft gated Biol BIOS chip is is that's a nice feature under that you find this connector right here which is the probit connector now this is EVGA is implementation of voltage read points it's uh it's a really clean implementation it's unfortunately not a very useful one and the reason for this is is this doesn't like you can monitor VCC in you can monitor recore VM and the problem with this is VCC PLL which is a cable like ex exclusive voltage and VC CSA and the problem with this is that on SE sky like x for example you also have v mesh which i would like to be able to monitor VCC i/o which i would like to be able to monitor and v dim is not a single voltage on this motherboard because if you look washed the vrm analysis you would know that there is a voltage controller and a power phase for each set of DIMM slots specifically and that actually allows you to do things like having these two memory slots at 1.9 for 2 volts and this slot these two slots at 2 volts or really you could go to the absolute extreme and set these to at one point two and this to 2 volts like you can set different voltages on your memory slots depending on what memory sticks you have in them so if you have two memory sticks that don't really tolerate super high voltage you can put your two memory sticks that don't tolerate a super high voltage into two slots and the ones that prefer more voltage into the other two slots and you can run different different voltages on your memory slots but you can't actually check what both of your memories lot like what your different memory slots running out because there's only one vedyam so read point on the probit connector and the reason for this is is EVGA actually went for making this thing like super accurate so you get a proper ground reference for every single one of the pins but I think it would have been just better if they grabbed a ground reference from like right and like right behind the CPU I just pulled a ground line once and then just crammed more voltage readings on to that because currently you can't actually monitor all the different voltages that the board offers for you to play with which I think well that that's kinda unfortunate though this is definitely a better way of doing voltage read points than what a lot of other top-end overclocking motherboards do which is solder bumps basically usually in an awkward place like if the 24 pin which this one has a right angle 24 pin but if you have a 24 pin sticking right up the solder bumps will be like right next to it for your various voltages and that actually makes measuring the voltage on those bumps really really really hard because you need to get under the 24 pin power cable and it's just not convenient like if you're in the middle of a benchmark on liquid nitrogen the last thing you want to be doing is trying to measure voltages at the same time so while this is like a very nice implementation it's not particularly useful because the range of what you can measure on it is actually kind of limited so that's kind of unfortunate next to that we find a 5 channel dip switch this is for your PCIe slots and this board this is another really cool feature in my opinion for this board because I'm a big fan of big multi-gpu setups so 3-way 4-way I love it and for competitive benchmarking not for gaming like gaming games supporting the 3 Way or 4 Way anything is just basically non-existent but benchmarks are on three-way and four-way just fine so there it's really really nice and this board is obviously targeted at extreme overclocking and competitive overclocking so it's nice to have this PCIe slot layout because you can run one two three like that if you want you know three slot spacing on your GPU works just fine and you can also run of course four-way you would run one two three four and this PCIe slot is actually like wired into the CPU it's not off the PCH which is a nice thing and it's a full 8x and that's why you actually get the five channel dip switch up here because it allows you to disable this slot this slot this one this one and this one and the reason why you'd want to be able to disable your PCIe slots is if you're running liquid nitrogen or say custom water cooling and all of your motherboard like all of your bore all of your graphics cards are water blocked into place and actually really hard to remove if one of the GPUs is causing the motherboard to not start up you can just disable the PCIe slot and you can boot up without that GPU it'll basically act like that GPU doesn't exist which is really convenient for certain troubleshooting scenarios now then to make it all so easy for you to tell if you're like which PCIe slots are enabled and which aren't you get to LEDs again so you get a white LED here and a green LED the green LED tells you if the PCIe slot has a working device in it the white LED tells you if the PCIe slot is enabled so if you switch a PCIe slot off so let's say we push this pin like this switch down the v switch off then the white LED for this slot down here would not turn on so these would just be you know they wouldn't light up whereas all the other enabled ones that would light up white and if you put it as a device in them they light up white and green now the only unfortunate thing about this is is that since these are right next to the PCIe slots if you're running a big multi-gpu setup there's a pretty good chance that seeing these LEDs is gonna be really hard because there's gonna be a GPU sitting right over them so yeah it's nice that it's there it's just kind of hard to use and I have the same complaint for the LEDs above the memory slots because normally if you're in a overclocking environment with a test bench you're gonna be somewhere to the you know to the right of the motherboard so that you can access this corner and this area of the board and have good access to all of your ln2 pots which would be located right around here and well if you're located you know if you're to the right of this board seeing these LEDs tends to be kind of hard especially because the vrm heatsink has like he heat pipe that goes right over them though you can generally like get an idea if this area is glowing red or white so that's not too bad but when you're running a three-way or a four-way setup seeing these LEDs is very very difficult like they're basically they're buried under GPUs so you know it's nice that those indicators are there they're just not superb like they're not most effectively positioned but you know nice that it's there and you actually get LEDs for also your MDOT two slots you get LEDs for your these these are the youtubes yeah so the U dot two connectors get LEDs these flash on power on like this this board is loaded out with like troubleshooting LEDs everywhere so that's actually really nice some of them are kind of in conveniently positioned but they're they are definitely useful the board also has a speaker which is a I find it actually kind of handy when I'm benchmarking on like air cooling or water cooling where I'm not paying a ton of attention to the system this is really handy to know when you have to start mashing the delete button because it'll be back you you can disable the beeper in the BIOS obviously so it's not like it's just you know it's not gonna go drive you insane but when you clear the BIOS the first startup will always beep so yeah but you know nice and a feature to have in my opinion there's a lot of motherboards that to have this and just have it removable so I don't really like it's not a huge benefit but it is there and next to that you find the this six pin power connector this is here basically for running big multi-gpu setups because your 24-pin has exactly two 12-volt pins in it and those two 12-volt pins are good for about 10 amps which means if you have which basically means you can push about 240 watts into your PCIe slots without burning all of your you know without burning down your 24-pin which if you think about this right each of these PCIe slots aspect at 75 watts output and we go times 4 that's 300 watts you can't technique like you can't run a high power consumption four-way GPU or even a 3-way GPU setup because a 3-way setups gonna get you to 225 before you do overclocking on some cards like a R X 480 you're gonna be pushing 225 before you do any overclocking after overclocking this you're gonna go over that very very easily and if you're on a 4 Way R X 480 setup then god hell god help the 24-pin because it's gonna need it except not on this motherboard because you have the 6 pin down here you plug that in and your PCIe slots are gonna be pulling a good chunk of their power from the 6 pin and the 6 pin is a 3 x 12 so that is capable of delivering an extra three hundred and sixty watts to the PCIe slots so that's a handy feature again for competitive overclockers for basically everybody else this is kind of irrelevant because most people won't be running a huge multi-gpu setup though maybe if you're running some kind of like high power consumption raid cards or sound cards or capture cards this might come in handy but most most PCIe devices don't tend to go like GPUs are generally the biggest power hogs so this is mostly for large multi GPU setups it's not really meant for anything else but you could use it for sound cards and that kind of thing as well if you have some exceptionally power-hungry non GPU devices now moving back up the board in the i/o area you get a clear CMOS switch so for those of you using this motherboard incorrectly and inside a case because really this is meant for this is really a motherboard meant for a test bench but if you are using this motherboard in in case because you're a filthy casual you you get a clear submit with CMOS switch right there because again if you screw up your settings the motherboard will not recover so you can just wipe the BIOS from there and that pretty much covers it in terms of the physical features that this motherboard comes with for extreme overclocking and it's is well equipped I really do think I actually love all the different troubleshooting LEDs around the board they are like that's a really cool feature I really like that and I'm a fan of the post code like the the minus 64 degrees readings on the post code and the temperature monitoring on the post code that's really really cool I've had other motherboards that kind of did that they didn't go into the negative temperature range so this is just like a straight upgrade over that and I do think that's a really cool feature but the lack of the slow mode switch and safe boot as well as retry buttons is like as a that's uh that's something I would really like to see from this motherboard because it's so close to perfect and the other like the other complaint I have is this right the the probit connector it's too limited it's just like you can't measure there's far too far more voltages on this motherboard I would like to be able to measure then what this connector allows you to measure and yeah that's really my only complaints other than that this is very close to perfect as far as an overclocking motherboards feature setup goes but safe boot retry slow mode and more voltage read options would be really really welcome in future motherboards from EVGA but for now the this thing is like probably like the is really well featured so yeah that's it for the video thank you for watching like share subscribe leave a comment down below if you would like to support what we do here at gamers Nexus there is a patreon link you can find that in the description and probably in the comments I have a channel called actually hardcore overclocking which is even more extreme overclocking focused in this video so if you'd like to check that out that would be cool and see you next time