OLD VERSUS NEW
OUT WITH THE OLD and in with the new, eh? It was a sad occasion when we benchmarked our Z170 test bed for the last time. It’s performed admirably this year, and to be fair, a large chunk of it is staying with us. You may have noticed the Samsung 850 Evo 500GB is still plugged in the back, for instance, sitting next to the Crucial MX300—but, alas, it won’t be making the journey with us, as it’s purely there to transfer over any files we may need from the desktop, and is soon to be removed.
So, how was it to piece together? Well, open-air test benches are some of the easiest builds we ever create. The biggest challenge was assembling the Paean itself. The case comes flatpacked, so you have to attach the eight legs, then add all the other major components. The instructions could use some work, as we struggled to find the right screws for mounting the front I/O panel (probably what caused us to break it), and installing the PSU was a pain as well.
The biggest decisions were with regard to finalizing test benches for this year. We’ve all but wrapped up our Broadwell-E processor testing, so there’s no need to pick a single X99 motherboard. As such, that test rig will remain pretty much cemented in place, with motherboards swapping in and out until we start seeing Skylake-X and its Kaby-X twin. For X99 motherboards, we’ll use the Intel Core i7-6950X, with 32GB (4x 8GB) of Dominator Platinums. SSD testing will be handled by the new Kaby Lake base test bed, aka the Z270, with the same going for any new GPUs and coolers that come out, until a new consumer chipset arrives as well. And, of course, Z270 motherboard testing will be handled by the Core i7-7700K, the GTX 1080, and the storage solution we have on board. The real wild card is Ryzen. We’re not sure what’s going to happen with AMD’s new champion and its chipset. However, it’s unlikely we’ll swap out from Z270, at least not until 2018. Same goes for GPUs, with AMD’s Vega looking likely to launch in June of this year.
The big question is, do we get some proper water cooling on the go? We’ve certainly got the hardware to do it, but there are pros and cons. The positives? It would allow us to potentially push overclocks higher, as we wouldn’t be so limited by thermal issues. And we can ensure the tubing is the correct length and the entire cooling table is controlled by us directly. Plus, it looks awesome. The negatives? Well, there’s the fact that if we’re reporting temperatures on CPUs (which we do, occasionally, for a new processor launch), it would mean swapping out the loop for an AIO, because the number of people using fully water-cooled loops like that would be very few. And, once Ryzen does launch, the AMD prodigies won’t be using the same socket design as Intel, so we’d need to drain the loop and attach a new waterblock. Decisions, decisions….