Champion, it performed and
behaved as predicted, but I would
lose the mount relatively quickly,
likely within the hour. This has
nothing to do with the motherboard
though, but my mounting and the
heating plate I was using. Depending
on the LN2 container, its surface
area, mass etc. the same CPU
may perform differently in two
consecutive runs. This is purely
because of the heat and the size of
the die the 7900X has. Cooling it
effectively is just as important as
dialing in the right settings within
the UEFI. If the paste cracks or
something else happens, you may
be led to believe there’s some other
instability and you’ll spend a lot of
time trying different UEFI settings
to no avail.
This is exactly what happened
the first time this board was run
and I was convinced something was
wrong, only to find that the paste
or the mount was simply letting
me down. Once this was clear,
things improved dramatically and
stability was no longer an issue.
12 The OverClocker Issue 42 | 2017
This applies equally on any other
board by the way. The right LN2
container is vital and you have to
decide if using a heating plate is
worth it, versus having to deal with
a freezing board or memory. These
are all the details of overclocking
unfortunately, which no board can
overcome. Details where you as the
practitioner have to take charge
and find the optimal solution.
The second round of LN2
overclocking with the Champion
proved that it was not the board
with which I was limited, but the
CPU and of course the DRAM. As we
all know not all B-die is the same
and no motherboard can make up
for memory sticks that aren’t quite
capable of the high speed C12 or C11
settings, which was the case with
the particular memory set I used.
Why I didn’t’ use the original Limited
Edition sticks which can do C12
4000 - I have no idea - but suffice to
say I ended up not tuning memory
at all. Moreover, the benchmarks
were done on Windows 10, so none
of the results are valid, but that’s
fine. I was looking at achieving
frequencies on the board and
nothing more.
As with all things overclocking
with LN2, you have to spend plenty
of time and plenty of runs to truly
nail down detailed behavioral
patterns. Windows 10, being
what it is, has different stability
requirements from Windows 7, and
what will completely crash Windows
7 will have no effect under Windows
10. Sometimes the inverse is true
as well. The difficult part is finding
out which UEFI settings you need
to tune to have complete stability
under both operating systems. (That
said, it is still significantly easier
overclocking X299 than X399 In
terms of OS behavior)
Since th ese results were not for
competitive purposes, but purely
an examination of the X299 SOC
Champion, I’ve no advice on how
to stabilize Windows 7 if you are
having instability at all. Based on
the results others have achieved on
the Champion though, you can hit
identical limits on the CPU, DRAM