ASUS Z890 Boards

[Viper69]

This just came out a few hours ago, $1,100+ for the top of the line, geez

Asus Z890 motherboards emerge at a U.S. retailer — pricing starts at $280 and goes over $1,000

It appears LGA1851 Z890 motherboards will have a $100-$200 price premium over their Z790 counterparts.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[Janus67]

To be clear the extreme is both overpriced and honestly only for people that are doing extreme Sub-Zero overclocking (or just have too much money burning a hole in their pockets)

 

[Viper69]

To be clear the extreme is both overpriced and honestly only for people that are doing extreme Sub-Zero overclocking (or just have too much money burning a hole in their pockets)

Thanks! It reminds me how vid cards become so expensive though.

 

[Woomack]

Thanks! It reminds me how vid cards become so expensive though.

Do you mean BTC mining, problems with production, and the fact that people showed manufacturers that they could easily pay twice as much as before?

Competitive overclocking has been dead for many years. Right now, the most expensive motherboards are not about overclocking, but it's hard to say why they make them. Models designed for pushing the limits are usually not cheap but cheaper than the top series. For example, ASUS APEX costs less than the Hero, and Gigabyte Tachyon costs slightly less than the Master. Above them are 1-2 more models. If you look at MSI, then the only extreme OC model from the last gen is the MPower, which is not available worldwide and is pretty cheap ($200 or something).
The most expensive models typically have full-cover water blocks and many additional controllers that barely anyone needs. However, they're still not so different from 30-50% cheaper motherboards.

Regarding the link, this is a retail listing a month before the premiere. Everything can change. Not to mention that early prices are always far from the MSRP. I don't know if I can share or not (I had to sign the NDA for some brands), but the MSRP prices I saw, are not much different than in the last gen. I have no direct contact with ASUS, so I can't confirm that.

 

[Janus67]

Fair point Bart, I realize that competitive overclocking/extreme overclocking is largely dead. I don't know for who else these massively overbuilt/overkill/[and overpriced] boards would be for anymore (other than people with more money than sense).

 

[Viper69]

Competitive overclocking has been dead

Thanks! I remember when competitive OC was a thing, why did it die?

I’ve never seen in person a full cover liquid cooled board- where does one see relevant performance gains for full cover?

 

[EarthDog]

Thanks! I remember when competitive OC was a thing, why did it die?

IMO, it started to die when money got poured into it starting like 10-15 years ago. Overclocking back then also yielded significant gains whereas today, the differences aren't nearly as great (couple of %?) so, few people are doing it as the past few generations of CPUs are getting more out of the box and pushed closer to their acutal limits than ever before...

I’ve never seen in person a full cover liquid cooled board- where does one see relevant performance gains for full cover?

There aren't any, really (maybe a couple to a few percent better?)... runs cooler and quieter, though.

 

[Viper69]

IMO, it started to die when money got poured into it starting like 10-15 years ago. Overclocking back then also yielded significant gains whereas today, the differences aren't nearly as great (couple of %?) so, few people are doing it as the past few generations of CPUs are getting more out of the box and pushed closer to their acutal limits than ever before...


There aren't any, really (maybe a couple to a few percent better?)... runs cooler and quieter, though.

Thanks I had a feeling that was the case! Def. true on quieter, that was the main reason I went with liquid cooling of my CPU, I was so tired of the fan noise. Now it's whisper quiet!!

 

[Woomack]

Thanks! I remember when competitive OC was a thing, why did it die?

I’ve never seen in person a full cover liquid cooled board- where does one see relevant performance gains for full cover?

I see it as:
1. Hardware manufacturers were limiting OC by locking OC options, locking voltages and some more. It's clear they wanted to reduce RMA, but in the same time, they unlocked some options for "all 5%" OC and started calling every gaming series OC. Some would say that's fine, we can still make volt mods and some more, but with 100-500% higher hardware prices, not all want to risk killing the hardware.
2. Everything is about marketing. Most higher-ranked overclockers are fully sponsored. At some point, many results were fake to satisfy some brand managers. Competitions turned into "buy $300 motherboard, to have a chance to win $200 motherboard." The list is long.
3. Most guys who had the knowledge and experience retired or quit because they hated how the community changed. This is also why there are so few good hardware/overclocking guides. Many higher-ranked overclockers were banned from hwbot because they said what they thought and didn't agree with new rules. Since hwbot became the only active global OC ranking, there was no other place to share results. This is also a vast topic.

Full-cover liquid-cooled motherboards are only for looks. They do not offer performance or overclocking gains, as the limits are on the CPU side. The power design is typically much stronger than the CPU needs, and even for top LN2 results, nothing but air can cool the board.

 

[Viper69]

I see it as:
1. Hardware manufacturers were limiting OC by locking OC options, locking voltages and some more. It's clear they wanted to reduce RMA, but in the same time, they unlocked some options for "all 5%" OC and started calling every gaming series OC. Some would say that's fine, we can still make volt mods and some more, but with 100-500% higher hardware prices, not all want to risk killing the hardware.
2. Everything is about marketing. Most higher-ranked overclockers are fully sponsored. At some point, many results were fake to satisfy some brand managers. Competitions turned into "buy $300 motherboard, to have a chance to win $200 motherboard." The list is long.
3. Most guys who had the knowledge and experience retired or quit because they hated how the community changed. This is also why there are so few good hardware/overclocking guides. Many higher-ranked overclockers were banned from hwbot because they said what they thought and didn't agree with new rules. Since hwbot became the only active global OC ranking, there was no other place to share results. This is also a vast topic.

Full-cover liquid-cooled motherboards are only for looks. They do not offer performance or overclocking gains, as the limits are on the CPU side. The power design is typically much stronger than the CPU needs, and even for top LN2 results, nothing but air can cool the board.

I remember when I could use a pencil to OC on AMD chips! I agree re marketing, there was no marketing regarding OC at all. Next thing you see is gear makers labeling their products with OC on them. Re sponsors- that I knew, it's like that in every industry I can think of off the top of my head, and the fake part too. It's so pervasive now that even when a reviewer says "I bough this", I don't believe them about 90% of the time.

I thought as much as re full cover, thanks for confirming I remember when liquid nitro first started being done- amazing to see it, but not practical at all. I am glad that liquid cooling became an off the shelf product, rather than a plumbing experiment for the bold- I remember those days too.

 

[rainless]

Overclocking died the moment it went mainstream.

It kind of mirrors what happened to computing in general.

It used to be you REALLY had to know what you were doing just to BOOT a PC. You needed to have some functional knowledge of Autoexec.bat and Config.sys... as a MINIMUM.

There was no such thing as support... so you had to troubleshoot a variety of problems on your own.

It was the same with computer building.

You needed to know how to set your RAM timings to get them dialed in... and even your CPU speed. All KINDS of things.

Around the time they switched from a regular bios to UEFI... all that went to hell.

It's been so many years since I set my RAM timings I'm not sure I even remember how to do it. And CPUs, generally, overclock themselves.

Hell... Every computer I've built in the past ten years or so has been MORE than powerful enough for whatever I'm trying to do.

I was never in it to compete with people who were using dry ice or some kind of extreme cooling (although I did have one of the the fastest E6400s in the world at some point...). I was in it because I had limited means and wanted to be able to process video faster.

Now I can do video, audio, 2D, 3D, and every conceivable thing right out of the box.

Also the core overclocker community moved on. The weirdest of the weirdo's was able to find a wife, start a family, begin raising kids, get a business going, start playing Minecraft... whatever.

No more hooking up a tube to the output of an air conditioner in the basement to get another 10mhz out of a CPU to move up one spot in the rankings.

i actually went three years without even HAVING a desktop computer. And, frankly, I never really felt like I was missing anything.

Technology itself was a huge factor. Like I said... the parallels between computers tech and overclocking... Once computers themselves went mainstream... laptops became extremely powerful, easy to use, and against-all-odds... cheaper.

You buy this little all-in-one package, turn it on, and it could do whatever your desktop did. Maybe slightly slower... but who cared?

It's all those things put together plus the world becoming a place you REALLY needed to keep your eye on.

 

[Viper69]

Overclocking died the moment it went mainstream.

It kind of mirrors what happened to computing in general.

It used to be you REALLY had to know what you were doing just to BOOT a PC. You needed to have some functional knowledge of Autoexec.bat and Config.sys... as a MINIMUM.

There was no such thing as support... so you had to troubleshoot a variety of problems on your own.

It was the same with computer building.

You needed to know how to set your RAM timings to get them dialed in... and even your CPU speed. All KINDS of things.

Around the time they switched from a regular bios to UEFI... all that went to hell.

It's been so many years since I set my RAM timings I'm not sure I even remember how to do it. And CPUs, generally, overclock themselves.

Hell... Every computer I've built in the past ten years or so has been MORE than powerful enough for whatever I'm trying to do.

I was never in it to compete with people who were using dry ice or some kind of extreme cooling (although I did have one of the the fastest E6400s in the world at some point...). I was in it because I had limited means and wanted to be able to process video faster.

Now I can do video, audio, 2D, 3D, and every conceivable thing right out of the box.

Also the core overclocker community moved on. The weirdest of the weirdo's was able to find a wife, start a family, begin raising kids, get a business going, start playing Minecraft... whatever.

No more hooking up a tube to the output of an air conditioner in the basement to get another 10mhz out of a CPU to move up one spot in the rankings.

i actually went three years without even HAVING a desktop computer. And, frankly, I never really felt like I was missing anything.

Technology itself was a huge factor. Like I said... the parallels between computers tech and overclocking... Once computers themselves went mainstream... laptops became extremely powerful, easy to use, and against-all-odds... cheaper.

You buy this little all-in-one package, turn it on, and it could do whatever your desktop did. Maybe slightly slower... but who cared?

It's all those things put together plus the world becoming a place you REALLY needed to keep your eye on.

Man, I completely agree! I remember config and autoexec, and I remember when all I can remember in dos now is the most basic of commands hahah

I never competed. Just wanted to get the most speed for money within a limited amount of time to do it. I remember going to computer stores searching through AMD chips for the “right” ones which were believed/known to OC better.

True life moves on and the limited amt of time you have in a day is replaced with other things- eg family and as you said and others, gear just got better! I remember when there was basically 3 pricing tiers for vid cards. Now omg there’s so many price points and models!!

 

[dfonda]

Maybe folks who live in Igloo's will find that board useful.

 

[mackerel]

I don't think ease of OC killed it. The biggest problem is lack of headroom to make it worthwhile.

This is stretching my memory a bit, but some overclocked systems I ran in the past include:
+??% Pentium II ??? @ 450-ish using "tape mod". Covering a contact on the slot increased the fsb. (edited as the bus in original was wrong, and I can't work out the numbers again)
+50% Dual Celeron 366@550 on Abit BP6. 2 cores in 1999-ish!
+55% Pentium 4 "Northwood" 1.8A to 2.8. I was using phase change cooling to achieve this one, but 1 GHz OC! No SNDS either.
+33% Dual Xeon 2.4 @ 3.2 on PC-DL Deluxe by adding wire jumpers in the socket. 4 threads in 2003! I saw this as kind spiritual successor to the BP6 and was the last unofficial CPU support dual socket board I had.
+??% Duron/T-birds "pencil trick" bridging contacts on the substrate. I forget exactly which models and how much I got out of them, but I had several.

I don't recall exactly when, but I stopped overclocking my daily driver around the Core 2 era. I think the gains were already starting to become less significant and I cared more about stability. Any OC I done since then is for fun or testing where time consuming stability testing is not essential, not for real use.

 

[EarthDog]

. I think the gains were already starting to become less significant

I mean, 50% was out of the question, but C2D and C2Q you could easily get over 33%. I remember my q9650 at 4.3 ghz on air, or the 8400/8600 around the same speeds both starting at 3ghz, iirc.

But much after that, the glass ceiling really started to e felt.

 

[mackerel]

I mean, 50% was out of the question, but C2D and C2Q you could easily get over 33%. I remember my q9650 at 4.3 ghz on air, or the 8400/8600 around the same speeds both starting at 3ghz, iirc.

I had original 6000 series ones. The 8000/9000 came out much later and I guess I decided it wasn't worth it at the time, if my existing mobo even supported it at all. My Q6600 eventually got replaced by 2600k, which I don't recall overclocking at all for normal use.

Around that time I do recall also getting an AMD X6 which was a distributed computing monster. I think I tried OC on that, 2.8 to 3.2 GHz OC? A mere 14% if my memory is correct.

 

[EarthDog]

The 6000 series, thinking e6400/6600, also overclocked well. The e6600 I had ran around ~3.3Ghz (from 2.4 GHz) on air.

The 2500K/2600K (sandybridge) , overclocked like mad also. You got one that could run that 48-52x multi (remember these had a hard wall for multi and very limited BCLK) and you could go from 3.3-5.2 Ghz on air...5 Ghz a daily driver.

But yes, shortly after this, but well after C2D/C2Q days, things really clamped down. I'd say Haswell or Skylake (2014ish).

 

[mackerel]

The 6000 series, thinking e6400/6600, also overclocked well. The e6600 I had ran around ~3.3Ghz (from 2.4 GHz) on air.

There must have been some reason for me not to do that at the time, although I don't recall what that was. Did I get a lemon? Was my motherboard potato? Was (some other part) (some other food item)?

The 2500K/2600K (sandybridge) , overclocked like mad also. You got one that could run that 48-52x multi (remember these had a hard wall for multi and very limited BCLK) and you could go from 3.3-5.2 Ghz on air...5 Ghz a daily driver.

If mine had hit 5 GHz I would have remembered! Again, I don't recall why I didn't OC.

But yes, shortly after this, but well after C2D/C2Q days, things really clamped down. I'd say Haswell or Skylake (2014ish).

I never had a high end Haswell as I didn't replace my 2600k until 6700k. Broadwell just didn't OC at all topping out barely above 4 GHz. Stock top end Skylake was 4.2 GHz single core turbo. I recall on air maybe 4.7 was possible on average for non-AVX loads. I don't remember what the number was for AVX but it was much lower. Possibly a bit more if you had a golden sample, or really start throwing extreme cooling on it. Coffee Lake did start getting more consistently closer to 5 GHz but it was the 3rd iteration of Skylake so they had some practice by that point.

Since I mentioned AVX, that could be my reason for not OC since Sandy Bridge. At the time I was running Prime95 equivalent loads. The introduction of AVX obsoleted everything before it. It had to be 100% stable in that. Intel didn't have AVX ratio offsets then, so I had to in effect limit the CPU max clock for that workload. With later separation of ratios that meant I could have a higher non-AVX clock than the actual AVX clock. But now I had to test for two conditions and still not worth it.

AMD's approach to boost under different workloads introduced from Zen+ essentially killed the usefulness of old school fixed multiplier/bus based OC.

 

[Woomack]

I hated Sandy Bridge so much. They overclocked high but also could easily degrade. One day, you were happy with the top CPU for OC; the next day, it was overclocking 200-300MHz worse. Some chips were going down as much as 500MHz.

Some mobile chips used on desktop mobos were overclocking 100%+. Some P3 series the same. Many Celerons were overclocking 50%+. C2D 8000 series were overclocking high, 6000 not so much. Actually, most series could make 30%+. There were some exceptions like mentioned Broadwell ... or the latest generations.

 

[dfonda]

I stopped OCing when for two reason's. GPU's become the only viable way to produce PPD when Folding at Home.

and a Stable system became more important than FPS. It was time consuming to reach a stable point. With 3 or 4 PC's to deal with it, it made it impossible to keep up.

We have 30 to 50 members here who faced the same thing. We each have varying amounts of PC's in our farms.

It also coincided with having a PC in our hand (Phone) and handheld devices and the release of better gaming systems.

The worse thing in gaming isn't frame rate it is having the game crash due to instability. IMHO.

On a personal level siting in even a comfortable gaming chair (Which I don't have) isn't as comfortable as my recliner with a good 17" gaming laptop, or Switch, or Steam Deck. Which right now is where I do all of my gaming.

The last good OC I had was 4.5Ghz on a 2600K in an MSI Mobo that pretty much had a push button for OC'ing. Still have it, taking it out of retirement today. I only care that it runs 2 GPU's and don't use the CPU.