Overclocking and Power Consumption
Here is where it should become interesting. Using the same parameters, CPU and memory, MSI and Gigabyte both fall short of the bleeding-edge performance offered by Asus.
Rival Asus makes big noise about the advantages of its OC Socket. Try as we might, the Corsair modules would run no faster than 2,800MHz on the MSI, and even switching out to some proven G.Skill DDR4-3,000 memory made no difference to the ultimate speed. Of course it can be argued that higher memory frequencies do little to impact real-world performance, but Asus is the only manufacturer able to run 3,000MHz-plus stably.
Equipped with a GeForce GTX 780 Ti and top-of-the-range Core i7-5960X processor, at-wall power consumption is lower than you might expect. MSI shaves 12 watts from Asus.
