If you want to say which type of installation is the most popular today, the answer is undoubtedly the pillarless sea view room - not only the hardware is fully displayed, but also the air duct design is also reasonable. The most suitable theme for the pillarless sea view room must be pure white, pure white hardware is easy to implement for most components, the only thing is that the motherboard PCB is to be white, how to weigh or ensure the electrical performance is very critical for the board factory.
GIGABYTE has recently launched a new series of GIGABYTE motherboards, from trim parts, thermal vests to PCBs in a white design, and this series is very high-positioned for gamers who are looking for both beauty and performance, today we will bring you the installation experience of GIGABYTE B760M AORUS ELITE X AX Ice Sculpture X Team Special (hereinafter referred to as B760M Ice Sculpture X) motherboard.
The outer packaging of the motherboard adopts GIGABYTE's iconic sketch head + pure white background design, and the B760M Ice Sculpture X is also a special gaming motherboard of the WBG team, with the Weibo logo in the upper right corner and the after-sales service with a 4-year free warranty in the lower right corner.
Motherboard accessories are simple and practical — a simple manual, SATA cable, and a Wi-Fi antenna that has its own magnetic properties and a vertical base that is very easy to use.
B760M Ice Sculpture X design is quite beautiful,Including heat dissipation armor、Decorative parts and PCB parts are covered in white,Only the memory slots and some Io interfaces are black,Of course, pure white as a selling point,Naturally, it is far from enough,After all, there are many pure white motherboards below 1,000 yuan to choose from,So B760M Ice SculptureX is not a simple vase,Its various strong performance is in the details。
For a B760 motherboard, the best performance display is the first to bear the brunt of the memory performance, B760M Ice Sculpture X is a standard four-slot DDR5 design, but the official nominal memory frequency can be overclocked to DDR5 8266MHz, it also uses 8 layers of service-level PCB, the introduction of new back drilling technology, it is undoubtedly full of competitiveness in the current price of 1,000 yuan.
The power supply part is the second performance selling point of the motherboard, and the B760M Ice Sculpture X adopts a 14+1+1 phase luxury power supply, of which 14 phases serve the CPU vCore part and uses 60A DRMOS, although the B760 chipset cannot achieve CPU overclocking, this kind of material affects the flagship level of the Core i9, and there is naturally no pressure.
In terms of expansion slots, the B760M Ice Sculpture X has a PCIe 5. made of zinc alloy, rubber lining, and heightened and lengthened buckles0 graphics card slots, performance, durability and strength are all full, and the second black is PCIe 40x4 rate. m.The 2-socket has two sets of common thousand-yuan levels, with a thick heat dissipation vest, and the quick-release structure is designed directly on the armor, which means that from disassembling the armor to installing M2 SSDs, no tools required.
The back is also reinforced with a very rare graphics card socket backplate at the 1,000 yuan level, which can be increased by 10 times the carrying capacity of the official publicity.
Motherboard IO has 4*USB 20. Wi-Fi 6E wireless network, 1*HDMI, 1*DP, 1*USB 32 gen 2x2 type-c、1*usb 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A (Red*USB 3.)2 gen 1 type-a、2.The rich configuration of 5G Ethernet port and ALC 897 audio chip driver interface (with digital optical output) is enough to meet the I.O. expansion needs of mainstream gamers.
The motherboard memory performance is so strong, the memory module naturally has to choose the high-end to match, finalize the Acer Predator this Vesta II RGB DDR5 6600 16GB * 2 set, named Dazzling Starship in Chinese, as you can see from the packaging, this memory has also won the honor of the 2022 Red Dot Award, it is a high-performance RGB light bar.
The packaging design of the VESTA II RGB DDR5 is also very careful, the outermost layer is a layer of color printing sleeve, and the inside is a black inner box in the form of a gift box, which not only has transparent PVC material to wrap the memory, but also has cushioning material under the inner box.
Vesta II RGB DDR5 is divided into 6000 6400 6600 6800 7200MHz five memory frequencies are optional, the mainstream coverage to high frequency can be satisfied, the color is divided into starlight silver and stone Yao black, this is 6600MHz + starlight silver version, suitable for high-end pure white theme installation.
The appearance design of the memory is very amazing, the whole body is not only covered with aluminum alloy heat dissipation vest, but also delicate enough to present a strong sense of hierarchy, mainly reflected in two aspects, first in the upper area of the memory to create a similar cabin shape to highlight the logo of the Acer Predator, and secondly, in the lower part of the heat dissipation vest adopts a special twill groove design, forming a strong visual difference, and can significantly improve the heat dissipation effect of the memory.
The back of the memory is marked with the parameters and serial number on the label, and the memory supports XMP 30 technology, DDR5 6600C34-40-40-105 & 14V, you can get good performance with the preset overclocking scheme, and this memory also uses selected Hynix A-Die particles, which can easily overclock to 8000MHz without pressure when the CPU constitution is good enough and the motherboard overclocking performance is strong.
The top of the memory is covered with an RGB light guide layer, the surface is blessed with Predator and DDR5 logo, and the RGB light guide layer is blessed by 8 independent lamp beads, supporting 16.8 million colors, and is compatible with the lighting control software of the four major motherboards.
The focus of pure white installation is also in the choice of the chassis, this time the Josbo D300 This matx chassis was finalized, it is a type of column-free sea view room that supports back plug-in - in the front of the case, the side area is two huge areas of tempered glass splicing, forming a broad ultra-wide field of view, in addition, Josbo also has a column-free curved sea view room D301 optional, the two are essentially different glass designs.
In the back area of the case, you can see that this case also pays great attention to heat dissipation, and the back side and top panel are all used to optimize the ventilation performance in an all-round way (even including the motherboard tray and power compartment part, which are very comprehensive).
The three panels of the chassis are all tool-free to disassemble, making it easy to install. After disassembly, we can briefly analyze the structure of the case, and the traditional side-view chassis is different from the previous traditional side-view chassis, this case not only has a wide hardware visual range, but also the heat dissipation air duct is extremely reasonable - abandon the front fan water cooling support, cut off part of the power compartment, so as to make room for the installation of lower and side fans (sucking in cold air), the same is that the top is still the 360 water cooling installation and the tail is the exhaust fan (exhaust hot air).
The fan that matches the chassis is Qiao Sibo ZH-120 reverse ARGB triple pack*2, the biggest selling point is its installation convenience, adjacent fans can be directly spliced through the buckles and contacts between them, and similar fans can be powered through a single wire, and this triple pack fan** is also relatively close to the people, suitable for cost-effective players.
The processor assembled this time is Core i7-14700K, a powerful water cooling radiator is naturally indispensable, here is prepared Xianma XW360W PLUS white model, and the previous non-plus model is different, it uses a larger size of the round display, of course, if you prefer a square display, you can also choose XW36SDW.
Xianma XW360W Plus comes standard with three XT128 fans, the speed can reach 2500RPM 10%, the fans have been pre-installed on the radiator at the factory, and the cables are all connected in series, so players only need to connect one cable when they actually install the machine.
The water block will be larger than most products on the market, and the circular modeling area itself will be larger, with a built-in 2The 8-inch, 480x480 resolution IPS full-color display, combined with Xianma's own Samamonitor software, can achieve a more comprehensive screen effect.
The water block has been pre-installed with Intel fasteners, and its copper bottom area is not small, which can perfectly cover the processor top cover of various platforms, and the copper bottom thickness reaches 15mm, it is more effective to suppress high-power CPUs.
Considering that this time it is a Core i7-14700K+RTX 4090 top loader combination, the prepared power supply comes from the XP1200 V3 Snow Edition ATX 30, the packaging design is quite low-key, the upper right corner is 80plus platinum certification, and supports a ten-year warranty, including 3 years of replacement + 7 years of maintenance service.
The overall size of the XP1200 V3 Snow Edition is 150*150*86mm, which is very compact among 1200W power supply products and can be fully applied to most compact MATX cases. The power supply has a built-in 140mm FDB liquid dynamic bearing fan, just looking at the size, you can know that the heat dissipation performance has been full, and the fan also supports ECO mode, which belongs to the dual control strategy of temperature and load.
XP1200 V3 snow version single channel +12V can reach 1200W, the large capacitance part adopts the Taiwan system, through the 80LUS platinum certification, supports full-bridge LLC+APFC+ synchronous rectification + DC to DC technology, as well as multiple protection circuit measures, and the power supply can be used normally at an altitude of 5000 meters, and the overall power quality is very good.
The power supply has a full module interface, each partition has a clear logo, including two CPUs, five PCIe, native 12VHPWR, interface, 24pin power supply and five MOLEX interfaces, the interface is quite rich, and it is indeed a 1200W high-power configuration. It is worth mentioning that the interface itself is also whitened to maintain visual consistency.
In terms of specific cables, it provides 1*24pin power supply, 2*(4+4)PIN CPU power supply, 3*(6+2)PIN traditional power supply, and 1*12vhpwr 16pin PCIe 50 new standard, 2 x SATA (4 per stick), and 1 x large 4D (4 per stick) are the types that can meet the high-end configuration of today and the future.
The installation process omits 10,000 words, plugs in once and lights up without overturning, it turns out why the pillarless sea view room is popular - the inside of the chassis can be fully displayed without dead ends, and the pure white hardware of all staff with ARGB lighting also fills the sense of atmosphere, if it is a pure black theme, it is still more suitable for no light, which can highlight the cold style.
The whole machine can be controlled through Gigabyte Control Center (referred to as GCC) softwareARGB lighting effects,The interface UI design is quite simple,6 kinds of lighting effects are available by default,My favorite is rainbow or monochrome constant brightness。
XW360W Plus can adjust the screen effect through its own Samamonitor software, the preset provides more than 30 kinds of theme effects to choose from, and on this basis, you can customize the font color, background color, adjust the brightness and other parameters, if you are not satisfied with the preset theme, you can also edit the theme, a very comprehensive experience.
Xianma XW360W Plus overall ARGB effect, you can see that the water block looks very large on the motherboard, the visual effect is very good, and the rear of the case is also installed with a reverse fan, which is a little abrupt.
There are also ARGB lights on the B760M Ice Sculpture X motherboard, and the AORUS logo on the I O armor is very concise, which is a personal favorite style.
The ARGB effect of the Vesta II RGB DDR5 memory, the lighting transition is quite natural, and due to the special shape design of the Predator, the overall lighting effect looks more layered and high-end.
My favorite Xianma XW360W Plus screen theme effect - in the white and concise background, there is a specific CPU model display, there are also CPU and GPU two key temperature monitoring, and there is also a water-cooled speed display below, which is very compatible with the pure white installation.
Of course, if you like dynamic effects, Xianma XW360W Plus also provides a number of preset themes, and its border area is usually some dynamic special effects, which looks more emotional.
Regarding the air duct, the installation is equipped with suction fans on the side and bottom, which can ensure the entry of cold air to the greatest extent, and the heat dissipation effect can be significantly improved for the graphics card, the CPU water cooling radiator actually doesn't matter, in the CPU non-full load state, it usually also acts as the role of heat dissipation of the whole machine.
The graphics card comes from AX gaming renegade RTX4090 X3W, which is also out of print, with an overall scale of 337mm+ three-slot thickness, but it is not crowded at all in this compact matx pillarless sea view room, and the chassis is also intimately hollowed out for the 12VHPWR 16pin cable, and the wiring will be more beautiful and smooth.
Now more and more high-end gamers will also choose B760 (B series) motherboards, the reason is very simple, in the case of sufficient power supply materials, it is enough to drive the flagship processor like Core i9, after all, the current CPU main frequency factory is almost in a state of ashes, everyone is actually more willing to toss IMC physique.
However, B760M Ice Sculpture X still can't escape the trouble caused by CEP restrictions - the default voltage is very high when paired with K series processors, and the solution is simple, just use 104 microcode to step down, this 14700K core voltage, CPU ring voltage can be both -015V large-scale operation, very powerful.
In the BIOS, first turn on the XMP configuration and Resizable Bar technology, and then enter the system test, this time the operating system is the latest Windows 11 23H2, equipped with NVIDIA's latest graphics driver 54633 whql, the configuration framework of the whole machine is shown in the preceding figure.
First of all, the CPU was cinebench R23 10-minute multi-core cycle baking project, and after 104 microcode step-down, the CPU core voltage was controlled at 1272V or so, CPU Package power consumption is 270W, CPU temperature suppression is 95, Xianma XW360W Plus can perfectly release all the performance of 14700K, large cores and small cores are in normal turbo frequency state, and the VRM temperature of the motherboard is only 67, indicating that the materials used in the motherboard are solid enough, and the good construction of the air duct of the chassis will also work.
Cinebench R23 10-minute cycle multi-core score result is 35162 PTS, which is exactly the same as the single running score, and the four more E cores than the previous generation 13700K are the key to the lead, and the score is actually no different from the performance of the higher-end Z790 motherboard, and the single-core score is 2143 PTS, the turbo frequency is higher than 13700K, and the natural score is also a little higher.
XMP configuration vesta ii rgb DDR5 6600C34-40-40-105, D5 black technology to close AIDA64 memory and cache test.
XMP configuration vesta ii rgb DDR5 6600C34-40-40-105, D5 black technology to enable AIDA64 memory and cache test.
With XMP turned on by default, memory performance is already pretty good, with 100 GB of reads and around 90,000 MB s for writes and replication, with a latency of 64The performance of 4ns is relatively close to the mainstream high-frequency D4. B760M Ice Sculpture X's High Bandwidth &Low Latency (Low Latency) two memory black technology optimization technologies can automatically help gamers optimize the timing after they are turned on, and you can see that at this time, the benchmark read, write, and copy have all reached the level of 100 GB S, and the memory latency has also dropped to 598ns, which is a huge improvement.
XMP configuration vesta ii rgb DDR5 6600C34-40-40-105, D5 black technology off 7-zip benchmark.
XMP configuration Vesta II RGB DDR5 6600C34-40-40-105, D5 black technology to enable 7-zip benchmark.
In addition to the significant improvement in memory performance of those multiplayer** e-sports games, it cannot be ignored is its decompression performance, which can be increased by 6% compared to when the D5 black technology is turned off, and the compression performance is 15%, which is a relatively small improvement because it mainly relies on CPU multi-threading performance rather than memory performance.
GIGABYTE D5 is a novice-friendly means to improve memory performance, and the stability is very high, after the D5 technology is turned on, the Vesta II RGB DDR5 6600 memory can perfectly pass the testmen5 baking test on the B760M Ice Sculpture X, there is no need to worry about crashing and restarting in the future, and the memory temperature performance during the baking process is also very good, and the maximum temperature of both memories is stable at around 50 when the box is sealed without fan.
Finally, the RTX 4090 was tested using the 3DMark Speed Way stress test, and finally passed with 99% stability, the best and worst cycle scores were quite close, and the maximum temperature of the graphics card was only 735, this is a GPU with 450W power consumption, and the memory temperature is also suppressed at 78, first of all, of course, thanks to the strong heat dissipation specifications of the graphics card, and the construction of a good air duct of the chassis.
This time, the GIGABYTE B760M Ice Sculpture X Team special motherboard installation experience is quite enjoyable, not only the motherboard to maximize the whiteness of the high appearance of the pleasant feeling, but also the experience itself is quite good in other aspects - the motherboard power supply drive high-end processor is stress-free, can meet the needs of DDR5 high-frequency memory (also supports D5 black technology) and has a lot of functional details, if you want to build a pure white sea view room host in the near future, you might as well consider it!