Intel i7 3960X EE / Asus P9X79 Deluxe / 32GB Corsair Vengeance (1600mhz) Review

The Asus UEFI bios is very intuitive. We expected a comfortable, stable user experience and were not disappointed.

Overclocking the i7 3960X EE with the P9X79 Deluxe proved straightforward enough and we managed to post at 4.9ghz then 5.0ghz with the Antec H20 920 cooler installed.

To get stability at 4,900mhz and 5,000mhz our particular sample needed over 1.5 volts, which meant that the thermal footprint would run hot under load, around 90c.

We didn't want to kill the processor chasing benchmark figures over the last couple of weeks so backed down to 4.8ghz, which required around 1.475 volts for complete stability. This caused CPU temperatures to drop by around 10c to 80c under load, indicating that our CPU cooler had reached the limit.

Getting the system prime stable wasn't quite as easy as simply changing a few settings, as it required some fine tweaking within the Digi+ Power Control panel. The P9X79 Deluxe certainly doesn't disappoint in this regard, although many of these settings would be rather complicated and confusing for an inexperienced user.

Interestingly, our Core i7 3960X EE sample was stable at 4.7ghz with only 1.41 volts and many of the settings on automatic. We only had one sample at hand so are unable to compare against others. We are sure that 5.0ghz and higher is possible 24/7, with better, more expensive cooling.

Validation at 4.8ghz is available here.

Validation at 4.9ghz is available here.

Become a Patron!