GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion Motherboard Review: Low Cost X99 Overclocking
by Ian Cutress on January 5, 2015 4:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Gigabyte
- Overclocking
- X99
GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion In The Box
The Champion falls in between a rock and hard place when it comes to the box bundle. As an overclocking board, anything extra in the box to help with that is more than welcome, but as GIGABYTE is aiming for the more cost conscious extreme overclocker for X99, there is the thought that a stripped bare bundle would help push the price down. The other serious overclocking products in this price range include the X99S MPower which we have in to review at a later date, but this will also have a similar issue.
In the box of the GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion we get the following:
Driver Disk
User Manuals
Rear IO Shield
Four SATA Cables
Two-way flexi Crossfire Bridge
Two-way flexi SLI Bridge
Three-way short rigid SLI Bridge
Three-way long rigid SLI Bridge
Four-way rigid SLI Bridge
Equipping the product with a Crossfire bridge is a little irregular but welcome for all those not using the latest AMD cards. The combination if SLI bridges is also most welcome, given how expensive they can be purchased individually.
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs and SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the NVIDIA GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.
Thank you to ASRock for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-5960X ES 8 Cores, 16 Threads, 3.0 GHz (3.5 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards | GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion |
| Cooling | Cooler Master Nepton 140XL |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory | Corsair DDR4-2133 C15 4x8 GB 1.2V G.Skill Ripjaws 4 DDR4-2133 C15 4x8 GB 1.2V |
| Memory Settings | JEDEC @ 2133 |
| Video Cards | MSI GTX 770 Lightning 2GB (1150/1202 Boost) |
| Video Drivers | NVIDIA Drivers 332.21 |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Vertex 3 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit SP1 |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion Overclocking
Experience with GIGABYTE X99-SOC Champion
Enabling the LGA2083 switch onboard gives more voltage options in the BIOS, although the only change we could find is these six additional settings:
For manual overclocking, most users will head to the classic BIOS which gives GIGABYTE's regular array of overclock options. There is also extra downloadable software designed for a small footprint that offers on the fly adjustments. While we do not have the facilities to test sub-zero, I strapped on a good CLC and did basic overclocking adjustments to achieve 4.4 GHz on our mediocre CPU. The system seemed relatively happy at 4.5 GHz, but the system reduced frequency due to the high temperatures at this setting. With a better CPU there is clearly more to give, but my luck with review samples these past two years has not been that great (!).
Methodology
Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with PovRay and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.
For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.
Overclock Results
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zepi - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
Anandtech should check on the rumours that some Motherboard and Graphics card manufacturers are silently rolling out Rev 2.0 boards with inferior quality components through retail channels without updating their product listing websites etc.Especially Gigabyte has been targeted by this rumour, but you should investigate this about other vendors as well.
I'm sure that some retailers would be more than willing to co-operate about such information assuming a bit of visibility.
Jasmij - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
That Gigabyte is having revisions for costdown is not a rumour, please see this article: http://us.hardware.info/reviews/5835/spot-the-diff...RaistlinZ - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
Yeah, I read that too. I hope it's only limited to their super low-cost boards. But Anandtech should certainly follow up in a Rev 2.0 of this board is realeased and make sure Gigabyte isn't cutting back on quality, features or performance.bobmitch - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
Also beware of the USB 3.0 issue with Gigabyte. Their boards fail to boot up with a USB 3.0 external peripheral attached. In addition, the latest set of bios releases cause the CPU to throttle. No static overclocking is available...doublecheck your boardEvilNodZ - Monday, January 5, 2015 - link
I had this problem with my USB3.0 external HDD connected to my X99 Gigabyte Gaming 5 motherboard and after contacting to customer support i was given a few Beta Bios that eventually sorted this problem with the front ports on my case after feedback they sorted it with all my ports. So they are aware of the problem and already have a fix in development.I havent checked if the new Bios released fixes the problem yet since i don't have any problems with my beta bios i have not updated yet.
Samus - Tuesday, January 6, 2015 - link
I haven't had a quality gigabyte board since the P35-series. The H61 and B85 I've come across were both problematic. The H61 had a lot of BIOS bugs (and the last BIOS before end-of-life didn't fix them, such as fan controls and UEFI secure boot problems) and the B85 was just downright unstable. I eventually tracked the problems down to the Quadro K2000 that was installed by installing a GT430. I don't think the board has proper power regulation to power a spec PCIe GPU that doesn't have aux power input. At first I thought it was the power supply and I tried replacing it the Corsair CX430 with a Seasonic 500-watt but the random reboots still persisted in Adobe Illustrator.That Quadro K2000 has been running for months in a Dell with a H81 chipset without issues. It is just the Gigabyte B85 board that can't supply enough power to the PCIe slot.
I've had better luck with MSI lately than Gigabyte, and that's kind of depressing. MSI has come a long way and Gigabyte is falling apart. Asus and occasionally Asrock are still my go-to brands, though.
chizow - Monday, January 12, 2015 - link
I never had this problem with my Gigabyte X99 Gaming 5, but had a slew of other issues that would have prevented me from recommending this board.The main two would have been:
1) Overclocking required a LOT of voltage. Much more than similar OCs for other boards, like the Asus and MSI boards. I needed 1.3V for 4.4GHz on my i7 5820K and I still wasn't totally satisfied it was stable OC.
2) RAM would not run rated specs above 2133MHz (technically OC above that for X99), even with RAM with XMP rated higher.
They have both been resolved in the latest BIOS update here, so I am pretty happy with it now: F8b
http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/28441-gigabyt...
Before that, there were some of the worst BIOS issues I have ever encountered, failed boot loops, fail to boot with RAID array, fail to POST with molex power connected to board, yeah. Rough launch for X99 for sure, but glad to see they are still working on improving the boards. Definitely don't waste time with the official BIOS or stock BIOS if you want to OC at all, go to the link above and grab the latest!
Overall though, great platform, extremely fast, all modern amenities with tons of native USB 3.0, 10xSATA3, and up to 40 lanes of PCIe 3.0. Just a lot of growing pains, more than I can remember with any new chipset.
SumGuy954 - Thursday, January 8, 2015 - link
Awesome specs on the board, and love the looks of it. One issue. I hate sideways Sata ports. I really hate it when they are sideways. Access is difficult when it is installed in a case. Finding angled cables wit the notch pin the right direction can be very frustrating. I wish none of them did this.imaheadcase - Tuesday, January 13, 2015 - link
I agree, I kind of wish they found someway to put the sata ports, or all ports in the back of motherboards so you can hook them up through holes on other side of care. They would eliminate the need for any cable management since all cables would go straight to back of case area. I guess this is a manufacturing difficulty that is to hard to address.But at the very least, why can't they put all ports on top of the board so all cables can drape back behind board?
nraglin - Monday, August 17, 2015 - link
Does this motherboard support Mac OS?