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So I originally started this upgrade on the advise of a peer who sold me on the fact that new Z370 PC builds were a natural for the Intel Optane SSD, displaying significantly faster startups, shutdowns and typical PC tasks. He never lied. The difference is not just visible; it is significant.
As with most things, however, I have always found it hard to color between the lines. I had to dig deeper and see what I could do and, in doing so, I discovered not only the perfect PC pairing, but also, the simplest 5Ghz ‘STABLE’ overclock there is….and it is only two steps.
Meet the ASRock Z370 Taichi motherboard, Intel Core i7-8700K CPU and Intel SSD9 Optane 480GB SSD. If you are looking for a Christmas present, this is heaven. Not only does it start in eight seconds and shut down in less than two, It provides an observable speed increase in typical Windows operations and runs VERY comfortable at 5GHz. Just to get you set up a bit, this video will validate everything we just stated…. as well as the secret settings (Only two!) to this build:
Before we jump into the build, I’d like to acknowledge Intel, ASRock, Corsair, Kingston and PNY for their continued support in our climb to create bigger and better builds.
This Z370 build is now running very comfortably with the Intel Core i7-8700K CPU at 5Ghz, has a massive 64GB of Kingston predator DDR4-3000 memory running at spec, and starts in about 8 seconds with the worlds fastest SSD, The Intel Optane.
Let’s take a closer look at the components and ensure that any component choice you make in result of this report…is the right choice.
WTH!!! A mobo of that kind and no thunderbolt support?! ASMedia on the usb 3.1 side?! common!!!
Who cares about Thunderbolt !
1.504 vCore for 5Ghz?
Have you tried delidding that CPU?
Do you still have that CPU running at those voltages today?
Interested to find if you have ran into any instability over the 18 months, which could indicate degradation of the CPU.
There’s little information about the long term effects of running a coffee lake processor pretty much at intel maximum voltages (1.52), but degradation should manifest as lockups and inconsistent performance.
Appreciate your feedback.
This is my test bench. Still runs the same with these settings. I admittedly am not a CPU expert and I am sure some have said, “This guy is just nuts!” but this serves my purpose for achieving the highest possible performance in benchmarks.