Overclocking Tests
We have found that the motherboard can make a more significant difference in terms of overclocking than on Z370. Most of that is down to the Core i9-9900K CPU, which though nominally rated at 95W, pulls a heck of a lot more than that when you start overvolting. So much so, in fact, that reasonable AIO coolers struggle at 1.35V.
Using exactly that voltage initially led to the Aorus board failing to hold 5GHz on our test chip. It turns out that the Master needs more loadline calibration than the MSI. The end result is that it consumes about 12W more at the same overclocked speed.
Memory speed, meanwhile, is an identical 3.8GHz, suggesting the limit for the DRAM rather than the board(s).
The truth is that overclocking the Core i9-9900K doesn't make a whole heap of sense. The CPU-centric performance goes up by a small margin, and while gaming benefits, the advantage is eradicated at QHD or UHD resolutions.
