The ASUS TUF X99 Sabertooth Review

ASUS TUF X99 Sabertooth In The Box

From the introduction page we’ve already pointed out that the Sabertooth comes with slot and port guards to protect against dust and sand, but the package also comes with the power delivery fan, three thermistors, six SATA cables, a Q-connector for the front panel header, a single flexi-SLI bridge, the rear IO shield, a driver disk and manuals

There wasn’t much else that ASUS could add to this box that would focus on the market this is intended for.

Many thanks to...

We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:

Thank you to AMD for providing us with the R9 290X 4GB GPUs.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs and the R7 240 DDR3 GPU.
Thank you to ASRock and ASUS for providing us with some IO testing kit.
Thank you to Cooler Master for providing us with Nepton 140XL CLCs.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU.
Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX200 SSDs.
Thank you to G.Skill and Corsair for providing us with memory.
Thank you to MSI for providing us with the GTX 770 Lightning GPUs.
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with PSUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with PSUs and RK-9100 keyboards.

Test Setup

ASUS TUF X99 Sabertooth Overclocking

Experience with ASUS TUF X99 Sabertooth

The X99 Sabertooth sits between a rock and hard place when it comes to overclocking. X99 is a chipset which enables overclocking, and almost every motherboard for the platform is built to handle it. By virtue of the upgraded components leading to the 5-year warranty on the Sabertooth, one could argue that it already fulfills the requirement for being built towards holding an overclock. Nevertheless, the software does not outwardly promote overclocking, instead focusing on longevity. For a proper overclock, the BIOS has two auto-overclock options (CPU Level Up) or the full range of manual overclock settings.

Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with PovRay and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclock Results

Both of the automatic overclocks did well, scoring under 80C at load although arguably 3.9 GHz isn’t much to shout about. The fact that the second CPU Level Up option put the memory at DDR4-1666 C12 was a little odd as well. For manual overclocks, we were restricted by our bad CPU sample, but 4.3 GHz came easily enough before hitting 100C+ during an AVX load.