Testing and Overclocking
We tested the Core i7-8700K and i5-8400K using the Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 motherboard with 16GB dual channel G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200MHz. It is desperately upsetting that a package of TridentZ RGB DDR4-3866MHz after we had finished testing and while we shooting our video. Not, you understand, that we expect DDR4-3866 will make much difference it’s just, you know, faster and more desirable.
Other components are an EVGA Founder’s Edition GTX 1080Ti graphics card, Fractal Design Celsius S24 cooler, M.2 Samsung SSD and a Sea Sonic Prime Titanium 1000W power supply.
These are combinations of CPU, motherboard and memory we used throughout our testing:
Intel Core i7-8700K and i5-8400 on Z370 Aorus Gaming 7
G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200MHz
Intel Core i7-7700K on Asus Strix Z270F Gaming
G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200MHz
Intel Core i7-7800X on Asus ROG Rampage VI Extreme
G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200MHz
AMD Ryzen 5 1600X on Asus Crosshair VI Hero
G.Skill FlareX DDR4-3200MHz
We started our review with the intention of overclocking the Core i7-8700K to something approaching 4.9GHz or 5.0GHz with 1.4V however this plan went out of the window as the Z370 Aorus Gaming 7 offers a preset that overclocks the system to 5.0GHz in one click.
It worked and was rock solid (albeit with high CPU temperatures) so that was the extent of our overclocking.
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