Gigabyte X299X Aorus Xtreme Waterforce Review i9 10980XE

Temperatures and Power Draw

We don’t think it should be a surprise to anybody that if you overclock an eighteen core CPU to over 4.7 GHz on every core, at all times, there will be a thermal and power draw price to pay for such relentless performance, and with the Core i9-10980XE there is definitely a price with the CPU hitting the absolute limit of what we’d be remotely comfortable running for any length of time at all, whilst there is nearly 300W extra power draw when compared to the stock Intel setup.

We mentioned a lot in our first few pages about how well designed the Monoblock on the Waterforce was, and sure at stock it’s keeping everything frosty thanks to the outstanding power design. Unfortunately it appears that there just isn’t enough water flowing through the VRM section to really reward us for the efforts involved in building the system, with the active fans on the Encore proving significantly more effective. Fortunately the CPU part of the block is better suited to keeping our heavily overclocked i9-10980XE cool. Well, relatively cool.