Shootouts

The ultimate Intel Z170 motherboard shootout: Battle of the flagships

By Koh Wanzi - 25 Dec 2015

Temperature, Power Consumption & Overclocking

Temperature, Power Consumption & Overclocking

 

Temperature

We measured the temperatures of the VRM and PCH heatsinks after looping 3DMark Fire Extreme (with 8x MSAA) for 15 minutes. The ASUS ROG Maximus VII Extreme turned out to be quite a bit cooler than its counterparts (especially the VRM temperatures) from the other brands, so there might just be something in ASUS’ claim that its use of microfine alloy chokes help enable lower temperatures. The MSI board also did quite well, with VRM and PCH temperatures that fell right in the middle of the pack.

 

Power Consumption

To test power, we ran the energy-01 viewset in SPECviewperf 12.0.2 and recorded the peak power consumption. As with the temperature tests, the ASUS card bested its competitors in terms of power efficiency with the lowest sustained peak power consumption. The ASRock was the next best, followed by the MSI motherboard. In fact, we were surprised by the Gigabyte board’s comparatively high power consumption, especially at idle. We suppose the extra components like the Creative hardware processor and the PCIe lane switching chip among others contributed to the notable delta in power consumption when compared to the other boards.

 

Overclocking

In order to assess the respective overclocking performance of the boards, we first tweaked the CPU multiplier ratio and raised the voltage accordingly. After ascertaining that the achieved clock speed was stable, we then proceeded to increase the BCLK value to get smaller overclock increments. This also enabled us to take advantage of the new overclocking capabilities of Skylake CPUs, which allow a wider range of BCLK values. Changing the BCLK values also overclocks the RAM, so we throttled its speed accordingly to maintain system stability. The table below shows the clock speeds we achieved, along with the CPU vCore, multiplier, and RAM frequencies. We've also included the respective BIOS versions of the boards for those who are keen to know such details.

Overclocking Results
Model BIOS version Maximum CPU Core Ratio Achieved BCLK (MHz) Vcore (V) RAM frequencies (MHz) Maximum Overclock Achieved (GHz)
ASRock Z170 OC Formula 1.90 47 101.9 1.37 2139 4.79
ASUS ROG Maximus VIII Extreme 1202 46 105 1.37 2100 4.83
Gigabyte Z170X Gaming G1 F5 46 101.2 1.37 2125 4.66
MSI Z170A Gaming M9 ACK 1.3 47 101.5 1.37 2132 4.77

The ASUS motherboard was the most capable overclocker here and we managed to hit a top speed of 4.83GHz, which translated to around a 17% improvement over default speeds. It is also the only motherboard that managed to run off a much higher BCLK and that's further testament to the board's capacity for overclocking. The ASRock and MSI motherboard also performed decently, coming in second and third respectively. Unfortunately, the Gigabyte motherboard didn’t live up to its whopping 22-phase power design at all, managing a top overclock of just 4.66GHz from our trials.

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