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INTEL OPTANE 900P 480GB NVMe SSD
The Intel Optane 480GB NVMe SSD was the original reason we started this build, with claims of lightning fast startup and shut down times…as well as quicker system commands. If you watched our video on the first page of this report, you would have seen our system startup in eight seconds from the press of the power button. This was much the same with the fresh build, as it was with a configured system running at 5GHz. It is the fastest we have seen a system start to date, with shut down being equally so at under 2 seconds.
Our video also depicts a start-up with use of our PNY Quadro M5000 Graphics Card. Using the integrated HDMI or Display Port (a first for any motherboard I think) would save you yet another second or so off that time.
Our initial report of the Optane SSD 900P is very similar to just about every other analysis published; this SSD is the best of the best. The only reason we could reach such quick startup and shutdown speeds is the result of such high random 4K throughput as shown in this Crystal DiskMark speed test:
The Intel Optane 900P NVMe SSD can be found at Amazon for $539.
PNY QUADRO M5000 GRAPHICS CARD
The PNY Quadro M5000 is a few years old but still one of my favorite cards. With 8GB of GDDR5 memory running at a clock speed of 400MHz, this card has been the choice of professionals for some time. Frankly, it really is overkill for our needs but a great peripheral to have on board.
A bit surprising was the power within this card when seeing it through the eyes of PCMark 8, where our system is said to be above the 99% of tests submitted:
For those who need just a bit more validation, these are the detailed results running PCMark 8 Creativity Conventional tests:
The PNY Quadro M5000 is available at Amazon for just under $2000 which is an amazing price point as it was once above $5000.
Any remaining peripherals used in this build can be found in our Z270 Test Bench Report. As minor as the difference between the Z270 and Z370 remain to be (CPU specific/Memory and Optane Integration), this build is easily one of the easiest to configure and most powerful to date. We plan on leaving it at 5GHz for the long term and will probably be pushing memory a bit more; any updates will be included in this report.
Last but not least, although we haven’t awarded during our test Bench builds, we feel the ASRock Z370 Taichi is deserving in this instance. Editor’s 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.