Gigabyte X299X Aorus Xtreme Waterforce Review i9 10980XE

Gigabyte X299X Aorus Xtreme Waterforce Review

Introduction

When it comes to high end performance from your rig the most important thing is keeping your system running cool, and thus efficiently, as much as possible. Normally this is accomplished by keeping the CPU cool with an AIO and hoping the fans in your case manage to keep everything else at tolerable temperatures.

If you are part of the enthusiast set though an AIO is good, but not the absolute solution. The best way to keep your components cool is to go for a custom watercooling loop, normally covering the CPU and GPU. As anyone who has specced their dream lottery win build will know it is also possible to buy water blocks for the motherboard too. This normally entails buying a specific motherboard that has a block designed for it, and voiding your warranty installing the thing. What if there was another way? What if, instead of being restricted in your motherboard choice and buying third party water blocks and all those headaches, you could just grab a motherboard that has it all built in already?

The Gigabyte X299X Aorus Xtreme Waterforce isn’t the first motherboard that has a built in water block for keeping the key components of your motherboard cool, but it is the first that combines all of the current system build thinking into a whole monoblock. The Monoblock on the Aorus Xtreme Waterforce not only can keep your CPU cool, but it has dedicated channels for the M.2 drives and the 16 phase, 70A power stage, all wrapped up with RGB lighting and a subtle but effective Aorus logo. It is all the benefits of watercooling with none of the headaches of finding a water block to fit, or plumbing in many differing elements. Naturally the latest eighteen core Intel Extreme 10980XE processor is a perfect test for this cooling solution and so we’re here to put the X299X Aorus Xtreme Waterforce through its paces.

First though, let’s see what the motherboard brings to the party.

Technical Specifications

When you combine a processor tagged the Extreme and a motherboard that has the Xtreme suffix it is fair to say that this is for the ultimate enthusiast who demands the very highest performance irrelevant of cost. You expect to find all the very best technologies and we think that is what the Aorus Xtreme Waterforce provides. Besides the eye-catching monoblock you’ll find all the high bandwidth connectivity that a modern motherboard should provide, from the Intel WiFi 6 802.11AX wireless through Thunderbolt 3 connectors and 10G LAN. If storage is your bag then the Xtreme Waterforce has two M.2 NVMe slots, and both are underneath the waterblock to ensure you can maintain those peak transfer speeds for the duration of whatever task you throw at it.

Rather than just list of what you can see here, click on and let’s look at each section in more detail.

Gigabyte X299X Aorus Xtreme Waterforce Specifications Â