Gigabyte Z170X Ultra Gaming Motherboard Review

As with all of our reviews, we pit the default speed system against the overclocked one in a head-to-head byte match.  The effective overclock for these tests is 4.6Ghz @ 46x multiplier and 100 BLCK.  This is a very easy overclock to attain with the Core i5 6600K and slightly above the average.

When overclocking it is important to find a "sweet spot" where the performance curve tops out and still remains stable with a reasonable amount of heat production.  For this test I didn’t pay much attention to heat output but rather stability with the least amount of CPU voltage.  The for this is related to issues with the latest Ivy Bridge and Haswell chips using TIM under the heatspreader that doesn’t always transfer the same amount of heat.  As a result the CPU die always reads hotter than it should given the AIO cooler I’m using. 

Overclocking the Gigabyte Z170X-Ultra Gaming was pretty straight forward and not much different from a LGA1150 Haswell.  For those familiar with the Gigabyte UEFI you can manually set frequencies and voltage or you can select any number of "auto up" options that will automagically overclock your system. 

The important thing to note with any overclocking adventure is to "know your processor" and take baby steps with frequency and voltage until you find a stable overclock that matches your cooling method.  In the case of this review I was able to push the processor up to 4.6Ghz with 2400Mhz memory and got a fairly good performance boost thanks in part to the 3800Mhz IMC clock.