Test Setup
CPU Intel Core i7-6700K
Cooling Corsair H100i GTX
Motherboard MSI Z170A KRAIT GAMING
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz
Graphics XFX R7970 Black Edition
Storage OCZ Vector 180
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Cooling Corsair H100i GTX
Motherboard MSI Z170A KRAIT GAMING
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz
Graphics XFX R7970 Black Edition
Storage OCZ Vector 180
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU
Benchmarks
Cinebench R15 CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2014 CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 CPU benchmarks
PCMark 8 Home Suite
3DMark FireStrike DX11 3D Benchmark
Games Tomb Raider, THIEF
x264 HD 4.0 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2014 CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 CPU benchmarks
PCMark 8 Home Suite
3DMark FireStrike DX11 3D Benchmark
Games Tomb Raider, THIEF
Other Software
Temperature Analysis: Real Temp
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Overclocking
Overclocking with Skylake is now fully flexible since we can adjust many variables including BCLK and ratio/multiplier.
Our current milestone is 4.7GHz with the Intel Core i7-6700K and we managed to achieve 4.5GHz with KRAIT GAMING though not our best result, this is still a fairly decent achievement.
Overclocking with this motherboard wasnt as straight forward as with other Intel Z170 motherboards from other vendors and from MSI themselves. We soon discovered that the current/power limits were set to a far too conservative level under AUTO and significant modifications to the intricate settings within CPU Features needed adjusting to achieve even a moderate overclock. For those who are interest, we altered the following options (these are the absolute maximum values setting them is to be done at your own risk):
Long Duration Power Limit - 4096
Long Duration Maintained - 128
Short Duration Power Limit - 4096
CPU Current Limit 256