Gadgetory

welcome back to harbor unbox today we're testing how well the flagship X 399 boards work with the threaded 2990 WX and we'll be focusing on two vrm performance and namely thermals I conducted all this testing a few weeks ago now but never got around to releasing all the data and if I waited much longer it may never have happened given what we have coming up on the channel next week so for this test we have 4 X 399 motherboards we have the insane MSI Meg x3 and iron creation I also have the new gigabyte X 399 or s extreme that's a pretty cool looking motherboard that yeah I'm yet to test out and we also have the tried-and-true a soos rog zenith extreme so can you give that board another go and see how it stacks up to the newer boards and then last but possibly not least is the asrock X 399 professional gaming since the release of the 32 core or even just the second gen 3 hearts in general both a soos and as rocker yet to introduce any new external motherboards so they have added support obviously to their existing boards for the 32 core 2990 WX but I wanted to see how well it actually works on those boards before I explain the test method and then of course go over all the results I thought we should probably cover each board and a little bit more detail go over the vrm design and of course the cooling used and we will start with the granddaddy of them all the MSI mega x3 nine creation and I will be dropping the mega from the naming moving forward just because well let's be honest that sounds pretty crap and it's just an extra thing to say so we'll go with x3 now and creation anyway for those unfamiliar with this beast packs a genuine 16 phase v Corvair I'm using the ir35 2:01 controller which supports up to eight phases each phase is doubled using an IR three five nine nine phase doubler which connects to a pair of Infineon at TDA to one four seven two power stages for two separate phases each filter through a six amp choke the Infineon power stages pack a 70 amp rating but sadly there's no publicly available spec sheet for these parts in any case they are basically overkill even for the 32 core 2009 WX and that's what we like to see feeding power to the board are a pair of dual 8 pin power connectors as amazing as the verum is it's still going to need a decent cooler if you plan on overclocking the 2990 WX so MSI has gone with a massive pair of aluminium heat sinks which are connected to one another via a nickel plated copper heat pipe sadly these aren't findit sinks which would have been ideal but instead they are just slabs of aluminium but even so given their size and the quality of the VRM I expect they will still work quite nicely of course there's much more to the X 3 9 own creation but I won't dive into anything else for this video again the focus is solely on a very informal performance I would just like to note though that MSI has included voltage offset support for this board a much-needed feature that wasn't present on the board when we first got it have the release but the latest bios version does include that feature so that's great to see new from gigabyte we have the x3 99 horas extremely now this is a very very impressive looking board and once we take it out of the box and have a good look at it you will notice that the varium is quite compact certainly much more so than the MSI board that we just looked at they have managed to squeeze it between the two banks of DIMM slots what we have here is another ir35 2:01 controller but whereas MSI uses all eight phases with doubles gigabytes using just five phases though they are again doubling them using the IR three five nine nine phase doubler this time though we find IR three five seven eight power stages which are only rated for 50 amps this means the board provides a combined 500 amp capacity and that is a country mile from the 1020 amps of the MSI board there's still plenty of power input though you get to eight pin power connectors but for a board specifically designed for the 32 core 29 WX I have to say the X 399 or s extremis verum is somewhat underwhelming in what I suspect is an effort to compensate for the lackluster varam gigabyte has included real heatsinks which are actively cooled via a pair of thirty five-millimeter fans and this has caused a few mixed feelings for me on one hand it's great to see proper fin heat sinks that's certainly great stuff however despite that it's quite clear that this very room is going to be put under the pump with the 2990 WX as gigabyte has felt the need to include active cooling with not just one but rather two fans gigabyte also claims were using higher grade thermal pads rated at five watts per Kelvin rather than the standard 1.8 watts per Kelvin used by most motherboards the advantage of the compact vrm is that it's allowed gigabyte to include four PCIe x 16 slots with spacing for dual slot cards that said if you plan on using a massive air cooler like the Wraith Ripper the primary slot will be blocked anyway the X ray no no extreme does have a lot of nice features such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet dual Intel Gigabit LAN 802 11 AC Wi-Fi and much more I'm just a little concerned this extreme board won't be that extreme for those won't overclock the 2990 WX then as I said earlier we have the tried and true a seuss ROG X 399 the zenith extreme actually X 399 isn't in the name it's just the south extreme but anyway doesn't really matter this particular board can be upgraded there's a new cooling kit for it but for this particular test I won't be modifying the board and using that cooling kit but be aware if your case cooling isn't great you can purchase a few of those additional horrid 40 millimeter fans to plaster over the verum heatsink prior to the release of the MSI X 399 creation the zenith extreme was pretty much the cream of the crop the granddaddy of the X 399 motherboards it uses an ASP 1 4:05 controller which I'm pretty sure is just a rebadged ir35 2:01 but for whatever reason soos tends to be a little bit special like that anyway what we have here is a true 8 phase vrm without any kind of doubling scheme meanwhile whereas gigabyte used 50 amp IR three five seven eight power stages a soos has gone with IR three five five five power stages which are 60 amp parts and then we have some 60 amp micro-fine alloyed chokes a soos uses a slab of aluminium to cool their eight phase V core vrm but it connects via a heat pipe to an actual real heatsink you know fins and all there's even a 40 millimeter top down fan though honestly it moves stuff all air and makes way more noise than it's worth at least in my opinion anyway I really think like gigabyte they just need to remove the stupid plastic shroud over the actual real heatsink and just let the case cooling do the work for you it will be very interesting to see how these Susan gigabyte boards perform with the twenty nine ninety WX as one was created with the new 32 core processor in mind while the other wasn't and yet they aren't that different in terms of vrm capabilities and finally we have the fatality X 399 professional gaming as rocks flagship X 399 motherboard like a soos as rock hasn't gone all out with the release of the second gen 3rd or 4 CPUs the fact they haven't really gone out at all instead they've just opted to stay the course with the three boards they already had the vrm design is basically the same as what we found on the zenith extreme but as Rock hasn't rebranded the controller so here we have the ir35 two zero one driving eight phases using ir35 five power stages with 60 amp chokes so another veeram that's designed to be more than sufficient for the thread Ripper 1950 X and therefore the 21 50 X but I can't see a squeezing much extra out of a twenty nine ninety W X on this board cooling wise it's a pretty basic affair we have an aluminium slug directly on the power stages and then this heatsink is connected to a larger aluminium slab behind the i/o panel so no finned heat sinks here just big fat heat reservoirs so will be interesting to see how the professional gaming performs in our temperature tests speaking of which we've pretty much covered everything we need to hear so let's move on to discuss the testing method to apply load to the system I'm not using a power bug-type program like prime95 I have nothing against using that kind of software it certainly has its place but for this test I want to use a real-world workload so I went with a blender workload that takes the 2990 WX a little over 20 minutes to complete so this test was run three times back to back for an hour-long stress test this means the load results are reported after an hour of running blender and then the idle is taken after a 10 minute cooldown period there are three tests in total first we'll look at stock results so out-of-the-box 2990 WX performance then a four gigahertz overclock using just one point to five volts and then an unrealistic extreme stress test again at four gigahertz but this time using one point four volts all three tests will be conducted twice once on an open-air test bed with no direct airflow over the very room though note the asou sang gigabyte boards do feature small fans so they aren't truly passive and therefore kind of cheating this test then we have a second test configuration inside the corsair 500 d with three 120 millimeter intake fans in the front two 120 millimeter intake fans in the top and a single 120 millimeter exhaust fan in the rear so the top mounted fans are directing airflow directly over the board's verum heat sinks then cooling the CPU was the nmuk slick tech 280 which was mounted in the front of the case to record the temperatures I'm using a digital thermometer with k-type thermocouple x' I've placed multiple sensors on the surface of multiple power stages to measure the temperature across the verum and i will be reporting the highest value so this means I'll be measuring the temperature directly on top of the component between it and the thermal pad and not an internal temperature which is bound to be a little bit higher still with all boards tested under the exact same conditions that'll give us a clearer picture of how the V RMS compare on each board starting with the open test bed results which sees no direct airflow over the verum heat sinks we have the 2990 WX in its stock configuration again remember the gigabyte board packs to 35 millimeter fans while the asou sport has a single 40 millimeter fan and then the MSI and asrock boards are completely passive quite shockingly despite featuring too real heat sinks and to 35 millimeter fans the gigabyte board managed to produce the highest of erm temps in this test and given how these boards compare on paper I would have never predicted this it's also very very strange how the asrock board which doesn't feature any form of active cooling and also doesn't feed any finned heat sinks managed to run seven degrees cooler under load meanwhile the Isuzu zennith extreme which also includes a forty millimeter fan around its sixteen degrees cooler than gigabytes or as extreme and was comparable to the beastly MSI creation which I should note is 100% passively cooled so as expected the MSI creation provides the most impressive result but it has to be said the asou sport also does very well okay so time to overclock and at 4 gigahertz using just one point to 5 volts the Asura professional gaming failed the stress test crashing after a few minutes of heavy load the gigabyte horas Xtreme shot off well over 100 degrees to hit a peak temperature of 117 degrees and again that's a pretty shocking result given the board does pack active cooling meanwhile there Suisun MSI board saw peak temperatures increased by about 20 degrees and although the creation ran six degrees hotter than the zenith extreme remember it doesn't feature any kind of active cooling whereas the asou sport does and it was quite loud in this test then finally we have the extreme stress test using one point four volts and here the Gigabyte ors extreme had seen enough the board would randomly power off during the stress test and it wasn't temperature related almost every time the verum didn't get a chance to hit even eighty degrees before the board would completely power off and require a power cycle before it would allow us to boot back up therefore we are tripping the board due to a current overload rather than a thermal issue it seems the Auris extreme simply can't handle the power requirements of this test then of course we have the asrock professional gaming which also failed this test as it failed at one point to 5 volts so it was never going to pass at one point four volts the Isuzu Zenith extreme appeared to have no issues with this test and kept rather cool at 87 degrees and then we see the MSI creation did run quite a bit hotter at 99 degrees but for a truly passive design that's a really incredible result now if the boards installed inside the corsair 500 e we have direct airflow over the very room heat sinks so this will no doubt help reduce the load temperatures the improvement for the asrock board was a 10 degree drop for the load result which actually isn't too bad that said the gigabyte board dropped by an incredible 26 degrees so this tells us two things firstly those thirty five-millimeter fans clearly aren't working very well or we wouldn't have seen such an extreme drop when adding more cooling and the finned heat sinks work extremely well when fed cool air via case fans the msi board was more in line with what we saw from as rocker with airflow it's now 14 degrees cooler while Lea soos board was 11 degrees cooler so with the exception of the gigabyte board we saw a 10 to 15 degree reduction in temperature when adding some case cooling the good news here for gigabyte though being that with the Auris extreme installed inside the ATX case the performance was much better and with a stop 2990 WX it is comparable to the other high-end msi and of soos boards okay so time to overclock once again and here we see that even with the increased airflow the IROC professional gaming still can't handle the 4 gigahertz overclock with the 2990 WX here we see that the MSI creation is now peaking at 73 degrees which is a 12 degree improvement compared to what we saw on our open test bench I mean while the azouz board is now running seven degrees cooler and this means installed on our ATX test system that these anyth extreme ran just one degree cooler than the msi creation again we see yet another massive improvement for the gigabyte or s extreme this time a rather insane 36 degree drop in temperature as seen when compared to the open testbed result which saw the board peak at 117 degrees this result would be far less surprising if the board didn't feature two active fans but again I'll talk about this later in the video finally we have the most extreme stress test which sees the 2990 WX reign at 4 gigahertz using one point 4 volts the Gigabyte board again failed and once again it isn't due to a thermal issue but rather an over draw safeguards shutting the board off previously on the open test bed the MSI Croatian hit 99 degrees making it 12 degrees hotter than the zenith extreme again the asou sport features a small active fan whereas the Croatian doesn't however now with the aid of case cooling both boards max out at the same 81 degrees and that is a super impressive result given the test conditions before wrapping up the temperature testing I decided to get out the IR gun and measure the temperature of the vehicle verum heatsink here we're looking at the highest surface temperature taken from the top of the heat sink in the ATX case using these stock 2990 WX configuration this is interesting because here we see the Gigabyte board's heatsink was actually the coolest as the proper finned heat sink design dissipates the heat much more efficiently then we see even with the help of case cooling the aluminium bricks on the MSI crash and retain the most heat while the bricks on the asrock board were slightly better this is probably down to the fact that there is far more surface area on the heatsink feature on the Azeroth board and it's also fully exposed whereas MSI shroud their second larger heatsink in plastic still it's interesting that despite a low heat sink temperature the Gigabyte boards verum still run very hot though this is likely down to the components used being of a lesser quality and we know that are only using 50 amp hour stages here's a quick look at how the power stage and heatsink temperatures compare under the same conditions here we can clearly see that although the verum components on the Gigabyte board are exceeding that of the MSI creation the top of the heatsink is significantly cooler meanwhile the MSI creation sees only a single degree difference between the power stage and heat sink temperature so just imagine how well this board will perform with real heat sinks of course I'm not saying that it needs them but damn it certainly wouldn't hurt okay so I went into this expecting the MSI x3 knives you know in creation to be the ultimate x3 99 motherboard and in terms of power delivery it certainly is that's it when it comes to veeram thermal performance the a sous rog zenith extreme certainly rivals that board but remember it does have active cooling whereas the MSI board is completely passive for extreme overclocking well beyond what I've demonstrated in this video it's likely that the MSI board will ultimately win out but for your more typical overclocks using 1.25 to 1.3 volts there really appears to be very little difference between the sous a sous and MSI motherboards they both ran at just over 70 degrees when installed in the corsair 500 d test system the gigabyte $3.99 horas Xtreme that bored it was a bit of a mixed bag I have to be honest it appears to be right on the edge with 1.25 volts for overclock and pushing beyond one point three volts did cause the board to power trip so we were in the middle of a test as I said earlier it didn't appear to be thermal related it was just completely shut off and we couldn't power the system on until we completely power cycled it and then it would boot back up of course if we didn't lower the voltage it would just do it again quite quickly the two thirty five-millimeter fans they basically or they appear to be basically useless while I haven't put that to the test by removing them and then retesting the board I can almost guarantee that if you were to remove the fans and then that stupid plastic shroud that covers the large finned heat sink that would probably yield better results in our ATX test case still for those of you looking overclock the 2990 WX verum thermals appear to be the least of the Auris extreme as worries as it only hit 81 degrees in our 1.25 volt ATX case test the real issue is power door and as i said going much above 1.25 volts at 4 gigahertz caused massive problems for the gigabyte board just to be clear at one point three to one point three five volts the gigabyte board would often successfully complete multiple blender runs but really made it to five before shutting off so this might not be an issue you see if you run a quick 30 minute stress test for example as for the asrock X 399 professional gaming well it had less Headroom with the 2990 WX and the gigabyte or s extreme basically with the Azeroth board overclocking is pretty much off the table and frankly it's not a good pairing for the 2990 WX and will work perfectly fine with the 2950 x and you'll be able to get the most out of the new 16 core CPU but the 32 core model is just a bit too much the 2990 WX is an $1,800 us CPU so I doubt those in the market for such a beast are looking to skimp on the motherboard and this is why the MSI X 399 creation makes so much sense at $580 us it is the most expensive x 399 board but really in the grand scheme of things it's not that much more expensive given what you get after all it is only 60 to 80 dollars u.s. more than the Asuza rog zenith extreme which usually sells for around five hundred and twenty dollars u.s. it's only about one hundred and thirty dollars u.s. more than the gigabyte or six stream and then about two hundred dollars more than the Asura professional gaming and to be fair just under four hundred dollars u.s. that board really is a good pairing for a sixteen core model in my opinion this place is the gigabyte or as extreme in a bit of an odd position at four hundred and fifty dollars u.s. it means that if you spend seventy dollars more you can get the zenith extreme and it's a safer bet if you're going big with the thirty-two core processor and then you could just spend another sixty or eighty dollars and get the MSI creation this choice becomes even more obvious if you're buying a motherboard and CPU combo so that is to say you're buying x3 nine motherboard with the twenty nine ninety WX right now in you egg you can snag an MSI creation and 32 core CPU for about two thousand two hundred and eighty dollars or you can get the zenith extreme bundle for $50 less so that's a two percent saving and that being the case I don't know which one I would get and that is going to do it for this one hope you guys enjoyed all the testing that went into getting all the temperature results for these boards quite useful if you're going to buy the 32 core processor and probably not as useful if you want or twenty nine fifty eight speakers honestly that CPU will work quite well on any of these motherboards it really comes down a price and the feature set them the vrm will be more than capable anyway I hope you liked the content if you did hit the like button for us please subscribe for more content just like this hit the alarm if you actually know the little bell if you want to be notified that usually sometimes maybe could work and if you would like to support us 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