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Hot off the heels of its release earlier this week, well-known overclocker der8auer has slammed Intel’s new X299 platform, saying that there are no motherboards on the market that are "properly designed".
Looking into options from Gigabyte, Asus and MSI for integration with Caseking systems, the YouTuber concluded that he "couldn’t use any" motherboard due to a multitude of factors that rest on both Intel and the motherboard vendors.
Der8auer says that Intel, "pulled in the launch from August to June" which gave the motherboard vendors "zero development time" with even less of a chance to fully test the products for market, The complaints levied at the motherboard vendors revolve around smaller issues such as power delivery and the headlining VRM.
Testing motherboard designs from the aforementioned vendors, a recurring problem is that they all have a "very bad heatsink design". The first example – the Gigabyte Aorus X299 motherboard – was tested with a Kraken LCS cooled Skylake X CPU which should be capable of hitting 5GHz, but only managed 4.6GHz. He notes that replacing the heatsink of the board with a 120mm fan reduces the temperature by around 40 degrees celsius.
Another issue highlighted is that the 8-pin power connectors featured on a lot of motherboards "is not enough" for overclocking on an X299. Using the Skylake chip, der8auer says that the board would "pull about 300W" which simply "isn’t going to work". As a result, the cable temperature can hit around 65 degrees celsius and, in a closed case surrounded by more cables and a PSU, a likely temperature upwards of 80 degrees. All of this leads to der8auer saying that it could lead to the system "catching fire" and as a result he could not recommend any X299 motherboard with an 8-pin power connector.
These are damning words to come from such a respected figure in the overclocking community and, if proven to be correct, poor design and rushed production could see potentially dangerous products being sold.
