AkG
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- Oct 24, 2007
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Manual Overclocking Results
Let's preface things by stating with absolute certainty that if you are a novice to overclocking Intel's socket 2011-v3 is probably not the best place to start. It may not be nearly as difficult as the 'good old days' of overclocking when increasing clock speeds involved a ton of guesswork but these larger CPUs with physically more cores, and more finicky unCore can, and will suck all the fun out of overclocking if you are not careful. They will crash,l hard lock and generally act up if you let them. Put concisely, expect a certain amount of frustration as these systems do not have an 'easy mode' when it comes to manual overclocking. Conversely, fine-tuning a monster combination like the Sabertooth X99, 5930K and DDR4-3000 RAM is extremely rewarding. Not only will you get near instantaneous feedback, the end results are simply grin inducing.
Now with all that said ASUS are fully aware of the inherent limitations of socket 2011-v3 systems and have spent an inordinate amount of time and effort making things as easy as possible. For most consumers the Auto Tune BIOS overclocking will result in more than enough performance and spending the extra time in the BIOS may not even be worth your while. This is not because the BIOS is terrible -the opposite in fact is true-, rather it is simply a case of the built in overclocking tuner being so good.
If you do however venture into the wonderful and rewarding world of manual overclocking, ASUS and their Sabertooth X99 motherboard are not only willing to be your wingman, but are ready to be your teacher as well. For extreme novices, the built-in default overclocking configurations will net you excellent results and show you the basics. Once you have a handle on how things work on these enthusiast grade systems you can then dig in with near abandon. Every feature you need and want is listed in the BIOS in a fairly straightforward and intuitive manner. This combined with basic help blurbs that show up on the right side of the screen for each and every setting will make things as close to 'easy mode' as you are going to find this side of certain socket 1150 systems.
Your system will still crash, your overclocks will still fail but this motherboard will bounce back instantly from your mistakes without even corrupting the BIOS. If by some amazing twist of chance you do manage to mess things up so badly that the BIOS becomes corrupted the Sabertooth will still take it in stride and ask you to revert from USB backup via the USB FlashBack feature (just remember to name the unzipped BIOS file "X99ST.cap" on the fat16/32 flash drive). This will be very reassuring if you are a novice, as you will know that you are free to experiment and that nearly any problem can be solved within seconds. That to us is what a good overclocking board is all about: freedom to experiment, and freedom from fear of failure.
Overall we were more than pleased with the advanced BIOS and while its default layout is good, what will save you a lot of time is creating a favorite page that is filled with the necessary settings. Depending on what part of the system you plan on overclocking a customized favorites page will save you a lot of effort in the long run. In fact this favorites page - once populated - is what pushes the TUF over the edge into greatness territory.
Unfortunately what yanks it back just as quickly is the fact that this board did not like our G.Skill Ripjaws4 1.35V DDR4 RAM. In fact, even using the MemOK! button resulted in a 0053 error, even with only one stick installed. The only way to get the kit to work was to first install 1.2V memory, manually tell the system to push 1.35V, save the settings, power the system down, remove the sticks and replace them with the Ripjaws4.
Considering this particular set of DDR4 RAM is quite popular, this was not a great introduction to ASUS’ TUF board. However, we have run into this problem before with other boards and the fact is this is a short term problem due to a slightly immature BIOS. In a few months, and few BIOS revisions, this problem will be sorted out and most consumers will never run into it.
Also on the positive side, the TUF Detective feature of this motherboard makes diagnosing issues very simple. You will not only be greeted with a seemingly obscure Q-Code - like you would be with onboard LED debug panel - you are also given a short explanation. ASUS should go the extra mile and make the explanations more detailed and include possible steps to correct the given error. This too will probably be added as time goes by since TUF Detective is still in its infancy. In the meantime the ability to force a hard-locked system to shut down, monitor voltages in real time, and even figure out what an error code is makes this feature worth its weight in saved tears of rage.
There is one more fact worth pointing out about this motherboard and socket 2011-v3 systems in general. Usually boosting unCore above 3900MHz requires a lot of experience and getting above 4000MHz requires not only a lot of effort but sometimes even physical modding. Thanks to its OC socket this is not the case with the TUF Sabertooth X99. An unCore of 4200 may not sound all that impressive, but it in conjunction with a 4500Mhz overclock was impressive and our 5930K is not what we would classify as a good overclocker either. We are positive that these results are thanks to the OC Socket.
The OC Socket really does make a difference but as with everything else overclocking related, it will come with a cost: if you can afford not only expensive DDR4 ram, an expensive X99 motherboard, and an expensive 5930K processor you had better be able to afford expensive cooling as well. Air is eminently doable but water does make things easier.
While this board is certainly no GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion it is still very capable and its abilities will likely be hindered by your CPU rather than any limitation of the board itself. In the end we hit a final overclock of 4500MHz with an unCore set to 4200MHz and even boosted our RAM to DDR4-3200 levels.
Once again the BIOS did make things very straightforward on the RAM overclocking side of things and it was simply a case of trial and error to dial things in and find the best working combination. While these results are decent we are positive that it was our particular 5390K that held things back. Thanks to our very good cooling, it was not a temperature wall per se that we ran into, as we could have used even more powerful fans if the need arose. Rather, going beyond this combination required so much additional voltage that we simply would not consider it a safe long term overclock.
Manual Overclocking Results
Let's preface things by stating with absolute certainty that if you are a novice to overclocking Intel's socket 2011-v3 is probably not the best place to start. It may not be nearly as difficult as the 'good old days' of overclocking when increasing clock speeds involved a ton of guesswork but these larger CPUs with physically more cores, and more finicky unCore can, and will suck all the fun out of overclocking if you are not careful. They will crash,l hard lock and generally act up if you let them. Put concisely, expect a certain amount of frustration as these systems do not have an 'easy mode' when it comes to manual overclocking. Conversely, fine-tuning a monster combination like the Sabertooth X99, 5930K and DDR4-3000 RAM is extremely rewarding. Not only will you get near instantaneous feedback, the end results are simply grin inducing.
Now with all that said ASUS are fully aware of the inherent limitations of socket 2011-v3 systems and have spent an inordinate amount of time and effort making things as easy as possible. For most consumers the Auto Tune BIOS overclocking will result in more than enough performance and spending the extra time in the BIOS may not even be worth your while. This is not because the BIOS is terrible -the opposite in fact is true-, rather it is simply a case of the built in overclocking tuner being so good.
If you do however venture into the wonderful and rewarding world of manual overclocking, ASUS and their Sabertooth X99 motherboard are not only willing to be your wingman, but are ready to be your teacher as well. For extreme novices, the built-in default overclocking configurations will net you excellent results and show you the basics. Once you have a handle on how things work on these enthusiast grade systems you can then dig in with near abandon. Every feature you need and want is listed in the BIOS in a fairly straightforward and intuitive manner. This combined with basic help blurbs that show up on the right side of the screen for each and every setting will make things as close to 'easy mode' as you are going to find this side of certain socket 1150 systems.
Your system will still crash, your overclocks will still fail but this motherboard will bounce back instantly from your mistakes without even corrupting the BIOS. If by some amazing twist of chance you do manage to mess things up so badly that the BIOS becomes corrupted the Sabertooth will still take it in stride and ask you to revert from USB backup via the USB FlashBack feature (just remember to name the unzipped BIOS file "X99ST.cap" on the fat16/32 flash drive). This will be very reassuring if you are a novice, as you will know that you are free to experiment and that nearly any problem can be solved within seconds. That to us is what a good overclocking board is all about: freedom to experiment, and freedom from fear of failure.
Overall we were more than pleased with the advanced BIOS and while its default layout is good, what will save you a lot of time is creating a favorite page that is filled with the necessary settings. Depending on what part of the system you plan on overclocking a customized favorites page will save you a lot of effort in the long run. In fact this favorites page - once populated - is what pushes the TUF over the edge into greatness territory.
Unfortunately what yanks it back just as quickly is the fact that this board did not like our G.Skill Ripjaws4 1.35V DDR4 RAM. In fact, even using the MemOK! button resulted in a 0053 error, even with only one stick installed. The only way to get the kit to work was to first install 1.2V memory, manually tell the system to push 1.35V, save the settings, power the system down, remove the sticks and replace them with the Ripjaws4.
Considering this particular set of DDR4 RAM is quite popular, this was not a great introduction to ASUS’ TUF board. However, we have run into this problem before with other boards and the fact is this is a short term problem due to a slightly immature BIOS. In a few months, and few BIOS revisions, this problem will be sorted out and most consumers will never run into it.
Also on the positive side, the TUF Detective feature of this motherboard makes diagnosing issues very simple. You will not only be greeted with a seemingly obscure Q-Code - like you would be with onboard LED debug panel - you are also given a short explanation. ASUS should go the extra mile and make the explanations more detailed and include possible steps to correct the given error. This too will probably be added as time goes by since TUF Detective is still in its infancy. In the meantime the ability to force a hard-locked system to shut down, monitor voltages in real time, and even figure out what an error code is makes this feature worth its weight in saved tears of rage.
There is one more fact worth pointing out about this motherboard and socket 2011-v3 systems in general. Usually boosting unCore above 3900MHz requires a lot of experience and getting above 4000MHz requires not only a lot of effort but sometimes even physical modding. Thanks to its OC socket this is not the case with the TUF Sabertooth X99. An unCore of 4200 may not sound all that impressive, but it in conjunction with a 4500Mhz overclock was impressive and our 5930K is not what we would classify as a good overclocker either. We are positive that these results are thanks to the OC Socket.
The OC Socket really does make a difference but as with everything else overclocking related, it will come with a cost: if you can afford not only expensive DDR4 ram, an expensive X99 motherboard, and an expensive 5930K processor you had better be able to afford expensive cooling as well. Air is eminently doable but water does make things easier.
While this board is certainly no GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion it is still very capable and its abilities will likely be hindered by your CPU rather than any limitation of the board itself. In the end we hit a final overclock of 4500MHz with an unCore set to 4200MHz and even boosted our RAM to DDR4-3200 levels.
Once again the BIOS did make things very straightforward on the RAM overclocking side of things and it was simply a case of trial and error to dial things in and find the best working combination. While these results are decent we are positive that it was our particular 5390K that held things back. Thanks to our very good cooling, it was not a temperature wall per se that we ran into, as we could have used even more powerful fans if the need arose. Rather, going beyond this combination required so much additional voltage that we simply would not consider it a safe long term overclock.
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