MSI X99A Gaming Pro Carbon Motherboard Review

Overclocking Results

If you hadn't already heard, the 6950X 10-core $1700 beast isn't the best overclocker. I cannot validate CPU frequency anywhere near 5GHz, and I cannot even boot at 4.5GHz, but I can run 4.4GHz on all cores. I have decided to change how I do the overclocking section and determine exactly what it takes to push to the CPU to this maximum stable frequency on the different motherboards I test.

MSI's X99A Gaming Pro Carbon overclocked pretty easily to 4.4GHz on all cores. The LLC I used was the second strongest, and I noticed that auto rules for voltage increases weren't very strong when only overclocking the CPU.

Overall temperatures remained low during the 4K video transcoding, which was a surprise. I like the ability to pick between a dynamic and fixed frequency overclock in MSI's BIOS; it can save you a lot of headaches depending on whether or not you want the CPU frequency to drop during idle or remain at maximum speed all the time.

The Dominator Platinum 32GB 3200MHz C16 kit worked well.

The G.Skill TridentZ 32GB 3200MHz C14 kit is also worked well.