Pricey, though with all the stuff added to it I guess it's understandable. Asus and their ROG series of products tend to have a bit of everything added to them from what I do remember though they've branched out a bit from doing just motherboards too with that brand. O-LED screen of everything too, wonder if that's a first. EDIT: Ah and it needs to be paired with the 7900X too to make use of all those lanes, if there's need for that.

Thank you for this great motherbard review Hilbert! For sure this is the top of the line motherboard for Kaby-X and Sky-X CPUs, those who want to go X299 route this mobo probably has everything they need/wish, probably even few more things they don't i.e. won't be using those features so soon, if ever. The only "drawback" is that €600 price tag, it looks scary 😀 But for those who want the best for their X299 build and have no money limit they can't go wrong with this one.

I think the motherboard reviews for the 10 core CPU would be more interesting if the overclocking section showed performance with delidded CPU. My only thinking behind this is that the review states & shows that they're temperature limited, so the motherboards can't be pushed to their limits. Delidding would allow for the motherboards to be pushed more towards their limits while overclocking & would potentially show any weaknesses in the motherboards more clearly. I think I read somewhere that some of these motherboards (not necessarily the one in this article) had VRM problems in terms of supplying large currents to these new 10 core CPUs, so I think there's merit in more severe overclock testing - allowable through delidding. (Or am I getting confused with AMD threadripper, but either way, would allow for motherboards to be pushed closer to limits).

Totally understand your request and from your viewpoint it makes sense. But: 1) Considering I dropped a thousand bucks on the CPU I am not risking damage by delidding it. 2) The number of people delidding is like what 0.0001% of the pie? We write for a broad audience who would like a result set they can replicate at home, similar to their own setup. And also, no there are no VRM overheating issues. You refer to der8auer, which he corrected afterward. Perhaps if you go LN2 and use an improper PSU, but here again I'd have to make that percentual margin even smaller as really LN2 overclocking these days is done for marketing purposes only. For regular liquid cooled OCing like the 99% of us do ... there are no VRM issues or power cables running hot.

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

Totally understand your request and from your viewpoint it makes sense. But: 1) Considering I dropped a thousand bucks on the CPU I am not risking damage by delidding it. 2) The number of people delidding is like what 0.0001% of the pie? We write for a broad audience who would like a result set they can replicate at home, similar to their own setup. And also, no there are no VRM overheating issues. You refer to der8auer, which he corrected afterward. Perhaps if you go LN2 and use an improper PSU, but here again I'd have to make that percentual margin even smaller as really LN2 overclocking these days is done for marketing purposes only. For regular liquid cooled OCing like the 99% of us do ... there are no VRM issues or power cables running hot.

Thanks for the response

I've got the ROG RAMPAGE VI APEX with 7900x delidded, I bought the CPU from Overclockers and the board from amazon, and have corsair Vengeance 3333 RGB ram, Overclockers had pre stressed tested and also delidded, cost me a heft amount, but wow, overclocks stable at 4.6, (Could get it higher but that's plenty) ram overclocks to 4000, from 3333, CPU temps can hit into the 80's but strangely it quickly drops to the mid or below 50, then again with the spike so delidding seems to work, this board has a great and very clean power supply so very happy with it , a bit overkill granted, but will last me years

Tone:

CPU temps can hit into the 80's but strangely it quickly drops to the mid or below 50

Hmmz, are you sure the cores are not downclocking?

You are right thinking about it, but with 10 cores guessing the spikes will be when the system is using higher clocks, and more cores, when needed, im not big on this sort of stuff so can only report on what I see temp wise lol 😱

Yeah, I am fairly certain your cores are throttling down. Basically, there is a TDP allowance for a number of seconds before the cores drop to a lower frequency on the majority of bins. I do that a different way, and clock all cores fixed at a frequency and force them to stay on that frequency (allcore overclock). You can easily check that out btw, open up HWINFO, stress all the processors for a minute and watch the multipliers change (core ratio). http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?ct=articles&action=file&id=32209&admin=0a8fcaad6b03da6a6895d1ada2e171002a287bc1

Ok cheers, ill give that a go when home, thanks thanks for the tip 🙂

Hilbert Hagedoorn:

1) Considering I dropped a thousand bucks on the CPU I am not risking damage by delidding it.

With the his delid tool there is virtually zero risk 🙂