X299x aorus xtreme waterforce review in Spanish (analysis)

The X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce could well win the award for the plate with the best design of the year, because if the Z390 version already seemed impressive to us, this is better in every way. A plate whose most differential aspect is to incorporate a water block that takes CPU, VRM, Chipset and M.2, to mount a custom liquid cooling on it.

Such a light display and design is accompanied by a powerful 16-phase VRM, an expansion card for 4 M.2 and dual Thunderbolt 3 connectivity on the I / O panel. Network connectivity includes Wi-Fi 6 and 10G link, and for those with large chassis, a fan controller comes as an extra accessory. Do you want to see what the most extreme plate ever built by AORUS offers us? Well, let's go there!

But first, we thank AORUS for their trust in us by giving us this plate for analysis.

X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce technical features

Unboxing

The bundle of this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce consists of no less than two boxes of considerable size. And there are quite a few things to keep, so we have used thick rigid cardboard covered in black vinyl-style paint where we only see the AORUS logo and the name of the plate.

In one of the boxes we will of course have the motherboard with some of its accessories, while in the other box of almost the same size the cooling block and larger accessories such as the expansion card have been stored.

The bundle then consists of the following elements:

• X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce Motherboard Cooling Block USB Flash Drive with Drivers User Manual Quick Installation Guide 6x SATA 6Gbps cables 2x Wi-Fi antennas G Connector AORUS2x adapter cables for RGB strips 1x noise sensor 2x temperature thermistors Screws to install M.2 External Fan Controller AORUS Gen4 AIC Expansion Card (GC-4XM2G4)

Due to the amount of gossip we cannot complain, since we have practically everything it takes to have fun for a few hours mounting the dream board for many. Note that it has only been missing to include a water flow sensor, although in custom refrigerations it is usually included.

AORUS Gen4 AIC card

We start with the expansion card that is included with this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce, being the GC-4XM2G4 model. This is the one included in the TRX40 version, being a PCIe 4.0 card, although in this case it should work at 3.0 because the Intel platform does not implement the new standard.

This card is aimed at enthusiastic configurations and with almost unlimited budgets for users who want to mount, for example, a RAID 0 of superfast solid storage. In this way we could achieve read and write performance of about 15, 000 MB / s.

For this, it has a powerful cooling system consisting of a copper cold plate and a 50 mm diameter turbine fan. In addition, 8 temperature sensors control we continue the installed SSDs. A big advantage is that the power supplied by the PCIe interface is sufficient, so you don't need extra PCI connectors.

Exterior design

Well then, let's get fully into the analysis of the design of this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce. During the review we will see many of the images with the unmounted water block, in order to fully appreciate its architecture.

In the absence of having the water block mounted, the appearance of the plate is practically the same as that of the TRX40 AORUS EXTREME, which we already analyzed a few days ago. Except for the entire central area that is bare waiting for its water block, practically the entire plate is covered with aluminum elements. In the left area we have the corresponding aluminum EMI protector with integrated lighting, whose cover extends throughout the area of ​​the sound card and the gap between the PCIX_2 and 3, where there is nothing.

More interesting is the right area, which is also completely covered except for the top due to the power connectors. In it we see that all SATA, ATX and other connectors are placed at 90 ⁰ to facilitate connections in the chassis, and thus avoid the typical bend of the cables. The entire side edge under it is covered by a RGB Fusion 2.0 LED lighting strip. The design of plates is more and more worked, and integrating such lighting is undoubtedly the way to go.

The back has a very high quality metal and NanoCarbon cover. This protects the PCB from shocks and electrostatic charges.

Internal board control and RGB Fan Commander controller

As for user interaction elements in this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce, we have two quite identifiable zones, the first one in the upper right corner, and the second one below in the connectors area. In them we can see the following:

• Power button and fast overclocking (above) OC Ignition button (above): this peculiar button what it does is keep the power on the board and components while the system shuts down. Must be used in conjunction with Power. Reset and Clear CMOS Internal (bottom) BIOS_SW and BIOS_SW switches (bottom): to toggle between using the primary or secondary BIOS.

Likewise, we have no less than 10 temperature sensors distributed throughout the plate and the cooling block and 8 headers for fans that can be expanded with the Fan Commander. Fan control can be done either from the BIOS or from Smart Fan 5 software.

Speaking a little more about this controller, it has 8 hybrid headers to connect all kinds of sharable lighting or ventilation peripherals. They are not typical 4-pin headers, but integrate both lighting and power, so check the compatibility list in the instructions.

Cooling block

The first thing to note in the X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce is precisely this, that the water block comes fully disassembled in a separate box. The reason is obvious, we will need to install the CPU in the socket first, and the SSDs in the M.2 slots.

Well, this block has a peculiar design to integrate the VRM, CPU socket, M.2 slots and even the chipset into the cooling system. The block is made of copper and transparent acrylic to reveal the complete lighting system that it integrates. Its design has been simplified compared to the Z390 version and is now much more manageable, elegant and minimalist. The watering system is divided into two circuits, one for M.2 and chipset and the other shorter for CPU and VRM. The input and output is compatible with custom systems such as Corsair or Cooler Master are any problem.

The surface occupied by it is 250 cm ² and has pre-installed thermal pads for the MOSFETS and Chokes of the VRM, Chipset and of course for the M.2. The cold plate for CPU has a good polishing in the zinc coating with which the plate is coated to optimize heat transfer from it. A water leak detection system has been installed and its weight amounts to 3.1 kg.

VRM and power phases

The VRM that has been installed in this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce does differ from that used in the TRD40 version of AMD.

In this case we have a configuration of 16 power phases with MOSFETS Infineon TDA21472 of 70A that will ensure a total intensity of 1120A for the V_Core and SoC. This DC-DC converter system will be managed by an EPU with IoR 35217 C804P digital PWM. But the main change comes in that between both elements they have used 8 phase doublers to duplicate the PWM signal in the 16 MOSFETS. Judging by the option implemented for AMD boards, we are quite surprised that this system was chosen.

In the second phase, as always, we find the corresponding 70A chokes or stranglers together with the solid capacitors that will be in charge of smoothing the signal. But we also have a 4th stage that is clearly visible through POSCAP or SP capacitors for further optimization. Of them we will have a total of 24, 12 for each face of the plate.

Finally, to provide power we have two 8-pin CPU connectors each along with a third 6-pin PCI to enhance the current signal in the PCIe slots. We have only lacked the MOLEX connector used by other boards such as the Asus or the MSI.

Socket, Chipset and RAM

All this energy provided by the VRM of the X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce will go directly to manage the main hardware support.

Again, don't confuse the X299X chipset with a new generation of the South Bridge that uses the enthusiastic platform from Intel because it doesn't. It remains exactly the same X299 that has been with us for a few years. The only thing that has been done in it is to optimize its microcode to make it compatible with the new i9-10000. Due to the new rehash of processors that Intel has released, an update of instructions was necessary, and this was not entirely possible with the "normal" X299s as they lost compatibility with previous architectures. And the result has been a new range of boards optimized for these 10th generation Intel.

However, the socket remains as the LGA 2066 with the same configuration as the previous boards. This means that in addition to the Intel Cascade Lake-X, this board offers perfect compatibility with the Intel Core i7-78xx Skylake-X and the Core i9-9000 Kaby Lake-X. The only difference we have in this regard is that these new CPUs have a total of 48 PCIe 3.0 lanes along with the 24 available in the chipset, compared to 44 or 28 of previous generations.

The RAM capacity has also been improved, supporting a total of 256 GB of DDR4 memory thanks to the 8 288-pin DIMM slots with support for Quad Channel configurations. In addition, XMP profile compatibility increases supported frequencies up to 4333 MHz for the Intel Core i9 10000 X-Series. If what we have is an Intel Core 9000 or 7000 X-Series, then the speed will be limited to 4200 MHz and 128 GB with 16 GB modules. Although we all know that this will also depend on what modules we install.

Storage and PCIe slots

We go to the section regarding the possibilities of expansion and storage of this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce board. And in this case it could be said that it does not provide as much capacity as other competitive range top plates.

We start with the expansion slots, of which we have a total of 3 PCIe 3.0 x16. Along with them we do not have any x1 or x4 in turn, although everything has its reason for being. For starters, having 4 slots we exceed the CPU capacity, and also these would be quite together. What AORUS has decided is to put two slots with enough space to install two graphics cards with a thickness of 3 slots to support AMD CrossFireX 2-way multiGPUs and 2-way SLIs with range top cards of such thickness.

Let's see how these slots work, since there are not 4 we will have certain speed advantages:

• The three PCIe 3.0 x16 slots will be connected directly to the CPU and without sharing a bus with any other element. When we install a 48 lane CPU (case of the i9-10000) they will work at x16 / x16 / x16. When we install a 44 lane CPU (case of i9-9000) they will work at x16 / x16 / x8 And when we install a 28 lane CPU (case of i7-7800X) they will work at x16 / x8 / x0

It seems logical to us that a user buys this board to use it with the 10980XE, so the good thing about having three slots is that they can all work at x16. It would have seemed a little more normal for them to be shareable with triple GPU instead of double, for example, for users who already have such a setup or want to update their platform.

Similarly, we are going to be forced to use custom cooling, so the best thing would be to install our GPUs within the cooling circuit that we assemble.

We move on to see the storage configuration of the X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce, which is inevitably going to be pretty brief. And it is that we only have two M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slots that can also be shared with SATA. Along with them, we have a total of 8 SATA 6 Gbps ports, without any extra controller with ASMedia chip. All this will be compatible with the Intel VROC connector for RAID 0, 1, 5 or 10 configurations quickly and without a dedicated controller.

Let's see how they are connected:

• The 1st M.2 PCIe x4 (M2P) slot is the one located at the top of the board. It supports sizes 2242, 2260 and 2280, and is connected to the chipset without sharing a bus with anyone. The 2nd M.2 PCIe x4 (M2Q) slot is the one located at the bottom. It supports sizes 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110, and is connected to the chipset, although it shares a bus with SATA ports 4, 5, 6 and 7. It means that if we are using an M.2 in this slot, SATA ports will be disabled. The remaining 4 SATA ports 0, 1, 2 and 3 will be connected to the chipset independently or any other bus.

It could call our attention that the fact that even having only two slots, one of them shares a bus with 4 SATA, but it is that in the chipset the network cards will be connected, and also the 2 Thunderbolt 3 stations that this board includes and that they occupy alone 10 lanes.

We must not forget that the expansion card has been included with 4 M.2 so in total we will have 6 slots available, so we can not complain at all.

Network connectivity with 10G and Wi-Fi 6

The connectivity of the X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce can already be considered as typical in a top of the range, with triple network link and high-end sound card, although not at the level of which the TRX40 installs.

The most powerful wired link amounts to 10 Gbps thanks to an Aquantia AQC-107 chip found under the EMI shield. The second link provides a 1000 Mbps bandwidth with the typical Intel I219V chip. Finally, for wireless connectivity, the Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 chip has been installed, with a bandwidth of 2.4 Gbps at 5 GHz and 733 Mbps at 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth 5.0. All these elements will be connected to the chipset consuming about 6 PCIe lanes.

The sound card is made up of a Realtek ALC1220-VB codec. This provides us with a maximum sensitivity at the input of 108 dB SNR and up to 120 dB SNR at the output, with a capacity of 8 channels of high definition audio. In this way we have support for 32-bit audio playback at 192 kHz. Next to it, an ESS SABER9218 DAC has been installed that supports professional quality headphones up to 600Ω.

I / O ports and internal connections

Oddly enough, this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce is one of the few to have Thunderbolt 3 connectivity already built in at the factory and not available on an expansion card, which would also be perfectly valid.

Starting with the rear I / O panel we have:

• 2x Antenna Outputs 2T2R2x DisplayPort2x Thunderbolt 3 via USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C2x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A2x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A2x USB 2.02x RJ-45 3.5mm Audio S / PDIF5x Jack

True, we do not have a large number of Type-A ports, since they are reduced to 6, but failing that we find an Intel Thunderbolt controller with its standard connectivity of the two DiplayPort and the two USB-C. All this will be connected to the chipset in 4 PCIe lanes.

The absence of the BIOS FlashBack and Clear CMOS button is notorious, which is why we have already seen them at the beginning of this review that are inside the board. In the rear port we will notice that one of the USB ports is white, that is where we will have to enter the USB with the BIOS to update.

As internal connectivity we find:

• 4x LED strip headers (2 ARGB and 2 RGB) 8x pump or fan headers (expandable with external controller) Intel VROC2x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C2x USB 3.1 Gen1 (4 USB ports) 3x USB 2.0 (6 USB ports) Connector Front Audio Noise Sensor Header 2x Headers for Temperature Sensors PTM

Both the USB 3.2 Gen2 of the I / O panel and these internal ones are managed by two ASMedia controllers and then connected to the PCIe bus.

testing bench

The test bench is made up of the following hardware:

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	Intel Core i9-10980XE
Base plate:	X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce
Memory:	32 GB G-Skill Royal X @ 3200 MHz
Heatsink	Corsair H100i V2
HDD	Samsung 860 EVO
Graphic card	Nvidia RTX 2060 FE
Power supply	Corsair RM1000

As we can see we opted for a state-of-the-art test equipment. In this case we have assembled this X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce plate with the Corsair Hydro X custom system, which we already analyzed a while ago and which has come as pearls for this analysis.

In the case of the graphics card, as is evident, we have maintained it with its standard cooling, since it would not make any sense to modify it because it was not subject to analysis.

X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce BIOS

The BIOS is definitely the same as that used for the rest of the manufacturer's boards, at least this is its aesthetic base and firmware specifications. Unlike on the AMD platform, on the Intel platform the manufacturer does have the most established foundations, and gives us perfect stability.

We have used the same Corsair Dominator in 32 GB configuration and we had no problem activating the XMP profile at its 3200 MHz. In this case it seems that the AMD platform still has a small margin for improvement in this regard. We do not avoid having the feeling of facing a BIOS with a fairly traditional aspect, somewhat far from the MSI or Asus on duty, but the functions we need are assured. In addition, it supports USB update like the previous ones.

VRM temperature test and overclocking on X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce

Next, we have stressed the assembly to see the temperatures of the entire assembly, which in this case will be of vital importance to see how this peculiar cooling block works. In the thermal image we can observe the temperatures that an i9-10980XE reaches during 12 hours of stress in its stock configuration.

Here it is difficult to see in detail what the surface temperatures of the VRM are, since the block is completely integrated into the board. We do see how its surface is at a sensational 25 ⁰C and inside with HWiNFO we have obtained a temperature of 36⁰C. Undoubtedly, using a Custom refrigeration is one of the best experiences that a hobbyist can have, since its performance is excellent. And part of the blame lies with this large AORUS block, with a consistent copper base that cools all critical elements.

And if we wanted to do something, it was overclocking this i9-10980XE. In this case we have managed to reach 5 GHz @ 1.4V without problem. But due to the construction of this CPU, we have seen temperatures soared to 100⁰C as it happened on other boards. The click of our unit is in the 4.9 GHz @ 1.3 V that in this plate under stress we have obtained a temperature of 64 prácticamenteC practically constant and with very few peaks. We do not know if it occurs in other units, but Intel should optimize the construction of the IHS of these processors with so many cores a little.

Final words and conclusion about X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce

Before seeing any of the features that this board gives us, what undoubtedly stands out from it is the spectacular design it has and that custom cooling system that integrates into VRM + CPU + Chipset + M.2 slots. In addition, it comes full of lighting, as well as its side area, marking a style that many will soon follow.

Focusing more on the performance of this block, it comes from pearls for mounting with the Corsair Hydro X and integrating it with the graphics card that we have. The temperatures of the whole set with an 18C / 36T like the 10980XE have been spectacular. Low stress in the stock frequency only 36 ⁰C and in overclocking at 4.9 GHz 64 ⁰C, so it is at the level of those provided by the same manufacturer of the liquid.

We do not understand exactly the reason for placing benders in the 16 feeding phases, but the truth is that the sensations that they left us are of a good performance. We have been able to reach 5 GHz without major problems and the cooling block has not changed. The limit in this case has been set by the CPU itself and its construction.

We recommend our guide to the best boards on the market

A priori, we could think that in terms of connectivity it is one step behind, to see that it only supports double GPUs in parallel or that it has two M.2 slots. What we see is an optimization of the connectivity it has, because it also includes dual Thunderbolt 3 integrated, 10G LAN and Wi-Fi 6, one of the few that is so complete. A PCIe card with 4 M.2 is also included for those who think that two are few.

It is time to check out, and the scare will be monumental. This X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce can be found for a price of only 1699 euros. Complete nonsense only within the reach of very few, and much less if we consider that we need a custom RL. Are you going to order it for Christmas?

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ BRUTAL DESIGN AND INNOVATIVE RGB	- PRICE
+ WITH INTEGRATED LIQUID COOLING
+ POWER TO OVERCLOCKING AT 5 GHZ
+ THUNDERBOLT 3 + 10G + WIFI 6
+ CARD FOR 4 M.2

The Professional Review team awards him the platinum medal:

X299X AORUS XTREME Waterforce

COMPONENTS - 100%

REFRIGERATION - 97%

BIOS - 93%

EXTRAS - 100%

PRICE - 87%

95%