have easily gained another 100 points
here with anything resembling some
form of competence. That said, even
when you’re not trying it would be
impossible not to score well with this
combination of hardware.
As to what one should expect, it
is the usual condensation, cold boot
bug (usually around -90’c with this
particular CPU) and of course a cold
bug. You may lose the mount as well
after a while, but again overclocking
this platform outside of the expected
and regular LN2 overclocking
challenges was a breeze. There’s
always room for improvement, but
as it stands, it simply isn’t even
worth it trying another combination
as it’s unlikely to yield the same
results. Even if it does, something
tells me it’ll be a little tougher than
it necessarily needs to be. I may have
only one result here, but in all the
benchmarks run, the Rampage VI
APEX delivered. One always wants
to be cautious and avoid saying
overclocking is easy, but with the
Rampage VI APEX, it really is. It’s
an incredible board whichever way
you look at it, made even more
remarkable when you consider
that this was a first attempt at the
platform and it turned out to be the
best of the lot.
INTEL CORE I7 8700K & ROG
MAXIMUS X APEX
In my version of the ideal world, or
rather the ideal overclocking world,
everyone would have access to the
Core i9-7980XE Extreme Edition and
the Rampage VI APEX. However,
we don’t live in such world. For the
price of a single Core i9-7980XE CPU
one could get a very capable Core
i7-8700K, a MAXIMUS X APEX, a
useful set of high bin B-die memory,
a graphics card (at least at the
time before mining made it near
impossible to buy graphics cards)
and an LN2 container for either the
CPU, GPU, or even both depending
on where you look.
This is the more common
overclocking configuration and once
again it is best served with an ROG
APEX motherboard.
It has to be said that what INTEL
has managed to do with the Core
i7-8700K is worth celebrating.
Not only did we receive two more
cores with these newer CPUs, but
Issue 43 | 2018 The OverClocker 21