Performance and Wrap Up

Then how fast is the ridiculously powerful MicroATX organization? First we have a batch of 3DMark results...

3DMark Score
Fire Strike

16563
Sky Diver

40119
Deject Gate

40115
Ice Storm

139711

Looking at the 3DMark Hall of Fame, the Fire Strike score puts us but outside of the top 100. For instance the Intel Core i7-5930K armed with three GeForce GTX Titan X cards scored 17973pts, while four Radeon R9 290X cards were good for 17964. Squeezing out 16563pts from our picayune MicroATX organization was a good result.

When it comes to 4K gaming our ridiculously powerful MicroATX system delivered, for the well-nigh function anyway.

Game fps @ 4K Settings
Crysis iii

39

SMAA MGPU (2X)
Thief

50

FXAA/16xAF
Lookout Dogs

55

FXAA/HBAO+
Sleeping Dogs

36

FXAA/16xAF
Hitman Absolution

81

FXAA/16xAF
Filigree Autosport

83

CMAA/16xAF
Dragon Age: Inqusition

39

2xMSAA/HBAO
Company Of Heroes 2

34

AA Low
BioShock Infinite

65

DDOF
Battlefield Hardline

63

2x MSAA

Starting with 39fps in Crysis three was an impressive effort, especially considering we were still using SMAA. The merely other challenges were seen in Company of Heroes 2, Dragon Age: Inqusition and Sleeping Dogs. Meanwhile we saw over 50fps in Thief and Watch Dogs and more 60fps in Battleground Hardline, BioShock Infinite, Hitman Absolution and GRID Autosport.

The biggest effect facing compact high performance computers is thermals and this is where the h2o-cooled Radeon R9 295X2 and Silverstone TD02-East come in handy. Here are the temperatures we recorded when stress testing...

Idle Stress
CPU

26

49
GPU

35

74

The stress temperature of the Core i7-5960X is especially depression and this allowed u.s. to practice a lilliputian overclocking. The Asrock Fatal1ty X99M Killer offers users 4.0GHz at the click of the push button, which boosted the operating frequency of the i7-5960X by 33%. This overclock was 100% stable, though it did increase the CPU temperature to 62 degrees which by all accounts is yet rather absurd.

Packed And Ready To Go

Having put our organization together I was in awe of what we managed to fit inside the Silverstone KL06 with relative ease. Within is a serious looking arrangement, just with its case doors on the KL06 is rather unassuming. From all angles this just looks similar a bones gaming system.

The ridiculously powerful MicroATX system is then quite the 'sleeper'. Modest enough to tuck nether your arm, few fellow gamers would suspect an Intel Cadre i7-5960X and AMD Radeon R9 295X2 are found within.

What's more, in one case y'all first the system up, information technology's nearly silent cheers to the liquid-cooled CPU and GPUs. The Silverstone KL06 provides excellent air-flow which helps go on the organisation cool and quiet once gaming.

The Asrock Fatal1ty X99M Killer complemented the build nicely and nosotros liked how easy it was to extract even more functioning out of the Intel Core i7-5960X with the click of the button. With all eight cores now running upwards to 33% faster the Silverstone TD02-East had no problem keeping temperatures in bank check.

G.Skill's DDR4 memory non only complemented the build in terms of aesthetics, but it also allowed us to excerpt the maximum amount of performance from the Cadre i7-5960X as the memory bandwidth peaked at 52GB/south in the SiSoftware 2022 memory bandwidth test.

There are a number of meliorate storage options and you could say nosotros cheaped out here going with Samsung'south SSD Evo 850 M.2 500GB. While a good drive on its own right, certainly non the nearly complementary SSD for this build but we were still in the process of reviewing the kings of the hill in the SSD world.

A much improve choice would take been the new Intel SSD 750 Series ane.2TB which costs a cool $1,100 and would button the build's total to $3,600 every bit the single virtually expensive component. Or for less money, Samsung's own (supposedly OEM only) SM951 PCIe 512GB SSD which nosotros similar even meliorate. There is also room for a few hard drives if some larger secondary storage is required.

Our build ended up coming in at a cost of $2,750, which includes the Intel Core i7-5960X, Silverstone KL06 case and TD02-E cooling, AMD Radeon R9 295X2, Asrock Fatal1ty X99M Killer motherboard, G.Skill Ripjaws 4x32GB and the Samsung SSD Evo 850 1000.2 500GB.

Naturally, gamers volition still require a monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers/headset and any required software. If you need help with those picks or any others, TechSpot's Product Finder and community should point you lot in the right direction.