Gadgetory


All Cool Mind-blowing Gadgets You Love in One Place

Intel Core i9-7900X Overclocking, Can We Tame the Beast?

2017-06-27
welcome back to harbor unboxed today I'm taking a further look at the overclocking performance of intel's new too hot to handle core I know 7900 X and with a little tinkering and a lot more cooling things that are much improved for those of you who missed it I checked out three of the upcoming skylake X chips last week the most powerful of which is the 700 X a10 core 20 thread beast in terms of performance the 1700 X was mighty impressive sadly though it was severely let down by poor thermals even when using a premium all-in-one liquid cooler there are two reasons why thermals were so bad first and probably foremost is the fact that Intel still thinks they can get away by cheeping out on their high-end customers by using a rubbish thermal interface material rather than soldering the chips like AMD does I'll touch on this a bit more later in the video the other reason the semi 100x sees temperatures reach boiling point is due to the extreme power requirements particularly once the unlocked chip has been overclocked out of the box it has no trouble pushing system consumption well over 200 watts hitting 260 watts in the Cinebench test whereas aim DS rise in 7 1800 X maxed out of 196 watts however it was once overclocked the consumption really glad at hand and it was nothing short of extreme hitting 402 watts under load at 4.6 jiggets using just 1.2 volts I should note again because obviously I didn't make it clear enough in the previous video for now CPU Z is reporting voltages for the 700 X incorrectly on my asrock board the chip isn't running at 1.7 to 1.8 volts that is the input voltage CPU Z isn't reporting the fiv R or fully integrated voltage regulator so to show correct live voltage reporting this time I will be using HW info or hardware info for those using something like course as hydro series H 100 IV to extreme eeping the 700 x from throttling at this frequency simply isn't going to be possible begin stint the CPU is placed under any kind of load the temperatures skyrocketed to 90 degrees and will continue to climb from there and eventually the chip would start to throttle the performance though was impressive a 10 core 23 chip running all cause at 4.6 gigahertz is enough sort of insane and if you can keep temperatures down I see no reason why this wouldn't run at four point seven or even four point eight gigahertz so in an effort to do adjust that I put together a brand new test rig with an upgraded cooling solution using thermal tech specific RL 360 liquid cooling kit for those wondering the kit cost three hundred eighty dollars u.s. or about five hundred fifty dollars Ozzy and it comes packing a mammoth three hundred and sixty millimeter radiator that measures sixty four millimeters thick so it's a big boy you also get the Pacific PR twenty two dash D fire pump offering a maximum flow rate of 1135 liters per hour and of course three 120 millimeter fans I was interested to see just how much this would help and if it would be enough to keep the overclock 70 100x in check finally topping it all off is the primer chill praxis wet bench and this was sent over to me by the guys at ple computers so I big thanks to them and if any other Australians are keen on buying one of these I'll provide a link in the video description ok so moving on to the testing I should know it's winter here in Victoria at the moment so my room temperature was around 19 or 20 degrees so a few degrees cooler than normal once the system warmed up idle temps at at just 26 degrees so that was very good however of course it is the load temps that are the real concern previously I was only able to stabilize the 70 100 X at 4.6 Q Hertz though I should point out that for a 10 core processor 4.6 gigahertz is very respectable anyway now with the added cooling 4.7 gigahertz wasn't a problem and I imagine 4.8 gigahertz looks to be possible with a little bit more voltage tuning for now that I'm going to test it 4.7 gigahertz because this only required the same 1.2 volts which is quite low and this saw the CPU spike to just 60 degrees as soon as it was placed under load much better than the 87 degree seen previously even so though I was expecting temperatures to climb quite rapidly heading towards the 90s like they did with the all-in-one cooler but to my surprise they didn't at least not to the extent I had anticipated before long the temps were in the mid sixties and that eventually hits 70 degrees but after that they slowed right down maxing out at 73 degrees occasionally peaking at about 74 degrees for a second or so before returning to 73 degrees with temperatures now staying well within acceptable manners there's no risk of throttling and thermal takes 120 millimeter fans remained very quiet as a result power consumption was also reduced by 7% down from 402 Watts seen previously at 4.6 gigahertz with the only one liquid cooler to a slightly more manageable 375 watts granted that still makes the 70 100x super power hungry but it is a much better result for the 10 core CPU and it is now running at 4.7 gigahertz the overclock boosted the Cinebench r15 multi-threaded score by 15% producing an impressive 2521 points again a 15% increase in performance can be seen this time when testing were 7-zip as the 7900 X at 4.7 gigahertz manages an impressive 67,000 747 MIPS when decompressing the blender workload was completed in just 14.5 seconds previously this test took seventeen point nine seconds so that's a very impressive 19% time reduction the corona test was completed in a blistering fast 82 seconds previously this test took 97 seconds so that was another 15 percent reduction in render time don't blink the Excel tests was all said and done in just 1 point 6 9 seconds that's almost half the time it takes for a stock 7700 to a so with the right cooling solution like the one we have here bokura 9 7 100x can be managed in the results are rather spectacular granted the power consumption is still pretty hideous though but I mean you've got to keep in mind this is a 10 core 20 thread CPU and it is running all cores at four point seven gigahertz which is pretty phenomenal so in a way I think the power consumption can be justified the main sticking point though that is a bit harder to justify that $1,000 us asking price and that is again just for the CPU that doesn't factor in the expensive X 299 motherboard and of course the custom liquid cooling so I think overall the package is still a bit of a tough sell realistically you will want to spend at least $300 us on the motherboard and it looks like about $300 us on the cooling for a custom do-it-yourself liquid cooling solution like what we've done here with thermaltake so the package deal for those core components will be $1,600 us or at least $1600 u.s. in my opinion and that doesn't factor in a higher quality power supply which will also be required and so on and so forth so a very expensive platform from Intel here and that sort of makes me wonder it really will be interesting to see what thread Ripper can offer with all its core components for a similar level of performance so that's something exciting that we'll be able to look at shortly talking of the thermals and the cost of cooling and all that sort of stuff there is the argument that you could deal with this 7 100x and that will reduce low temperatures by at least 20 degrees that's what we saw with a much smaller 7700 k chip so I expect you'll see at least those results here with a much bigger chip but I'm of the opinion that you really shouldn't need to delete your CPU to get the most out of it particularly to such an expensive high-end enthusiast grade CPU so I won't be deleting any of the correct CPUs I have or at least I don't plan to you guys will probably force me into creating a video and showing you the results but it's not something I really want to advertise or promote I just don't think when spending that kind of money on a CPU should get a rubbish Tim it should be something quite good it should be sold basically like what AMD do but anyway I won't rant and rave about that I just don't think that deleting is something that should be used an excuse for solving a problem Intel is put forward to enthuse this it's not something I think you'll want to do anyway because it does void your warranty and it is quite risky if you especially if you know experienced I don't think you want to attempt your first deal lid on a 70 900 X for example so yeah not something I think most will want to do or should have to do for that matter but back in February I did bite the bullet and I did D lead one of my 7700 K chips after suffering terrible thermal performance when overclocking and I found that the deal II did reduce load temperatures by an incredible 20 degrees or thereabout so it was worth it if you're a serious overclock I suppose anyway I summarized that video by saying this I have to say this is really poor form from Intel doing this to their unlocked processors if it wasn't already a low enough blow that Intel we're charging a premium for their unlocked processors they're now doing so we're providing the same rubbish thermal interface material that they use on the locked models as a PC enthusiast and a consumer I really can't stand this and the need for AMD to deliver next month is more important than ever all up I spent 14 dollars on the D lid tool which I grabbed off eBay $45 on the liquid Pro and then of course you still need a CPU cooler for the unlocked Intel processors they don't come with one and so I used this Corsair model here and that's about 150 dollars by the way all these prices are an Australian dollars that I'm quoting so Intel is stinging overclocked is about a $40 premium for their unlocked for i7 and then you need to buy a cooler and spend about another $60 or so so you can actually have clock it without risk of it cooking itself so my opinion on the matter that is having a dealer Intel CPU so I haven't clocked them to the max and do it with reasonable thermals hasn't changed and as far as I'm concerned with the 1700 X the chips are good for somewhere between four point six and four point eight yogurts depending on how lucky you get with the chip itself and how good your cooling setup is needless to say the cooling has to be mighty good I've had a heap of fun overclocking the core I nine 7900 X with thermal takes RL 360 or liquid cooling kit it's a really good looking kit and yeah the temperatures are now acceptable in my opinion the results were incredible and yeah it's just been it's been a heap of fun sadly though using an all-in-one liquid cooler quite a premium cooler I might add which I did in my previous video the experience was met with high temps throttling issues and overall it was just it was pretty miserable if I'm honest as I said at the end of my core X coverage last week my advice wait until thread ripper before making any major cpu purchases still if you dead set on picking up a 10 core 23 core i 9 7900 X be prepared to invest in a custom liquid cooled solution if you plan to overclock alright that's going to do it for this one if you liked the video please help us out and hit the like button subscribe if you haven't already and hit a little notification bell to be notified of our videos as they go live and put yourself in contention to make that all-important first comment I'm your host Steve see you again soon guys
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.