The EVGA X299 FTW K is our first X299 motherboard from EVGA. The FTW K aims to bring users a solid power delivery, three-way multi-GPU capabilities, two M.2 slots, and a unique feature so far on our X299 coverage: two U.2 ports. The X299 FTW K looks to fit into the crowded mid-range segment for X299 motherboards at its price point. We will put it on the test bed and gave it a thorough inspection.

EVGA is a bit unique when it comes to their motherboard product stack. Unlike the four major motherboard companies that have almost a dozen options apiece, EVGA usually has only three boards in the market for a given chipset. This time around, the EVGA boards consist of the X299 Micro (a MicroATX offering), the X299 FTW K (this review), and the X299 Dark (a flagship X299). While a 'gaming' or 'professional' designation is missing, the fundamental requirements for a good X299 board are still the same. The X299 FTW K attempts to hit the mainstream of X299 users, without going above and beyond like the Dark or for small-form-factor builds like the Micro.

EVGA X299 FTW K Overview

One of the more unique items to crop up in our X299 coverage comes from the X299 FTW K: here there are the two U.2 ports on the board. Only a select handful of X299 motherboards on the market have one, let alone two. Not that it is a hugely popular item, but if you are looking for the performance of the top M.2 PCIe x4 NVMe based drives without the potential hassle of cooling them, U.2 and standard sized drives may be your answer. Be aware that in order to use both the U.2 ports, a 44-lane CPU (a Core i7-7900X or higher) is required. 

Regarding storage options on the X299 FTW K, aside from the dual U.2 ports, there are also eight SATA ports and two M.2 slots. One of the M.2 slots is directly connected to the CPU while the other sources its lanes through the chipset. The board supports up to 3-way SLI and 3-way Crossfire using three of its four full-length slots, despite supporting x8/x8/x8/x8 which would allow 4-way with single-slot or thin liquid cooled GPUs. With it being called the 'FTW K', the K in this case stands for Killer, and one of the gigabit Ethernet ports is powered by an E2500 controller.

Our performance results for the FTW K were mostly found to be average with it doing very well in power use.  From long idle power testing to our load testing, it used less power than all of the previous X299 boards tested so far because the load voltage was a low, due to the CPU dropping to its base clocks to run. This motherboard, with the latest BIOS we used for testing, automatically applies an AVX offset of -300 MHz no matter if the cores are set to Auto or either of the manual overclocking options. Because of this, and no other board we've tested so far behaves this way, we see a lower power use stock settings. Outside of this, the rest of the results have the FTW K an average performer sitting in the middle of the pack in most other tests. For overclocking, we managed to hit 4.5 GHz on our i9-7900X and ran into our temperature limit. The voltage required to reach this clock speed was on par with the other boards. 

Manual overclocking results

The EVGA X299 FTW K is currently priced at $330 on Newegg US. This places the board, by price, squarely in the crosshairs of other boards like the MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC at $330, the ASRock X299 Taichi XE at $323, and the Gigabyte X299 AORUS Ultra Gaming Pro at $350. There is a lot of competition around this price range so it will come down to included features and use to pick between them. 

EVGA X299 Strategy

EVGA's X299 strategy has three motherboards, competing against the other major manufacturers that have 10 or more boards filling out many of the niches of the market. 

EVGA's X299 Motherboard Lineup (11/28)
	AnandTech Review	Amazon	Newegg
X299 Dark	requested	-	-
X299 FTW K	this review	-	$330
X299 Micro	upcoming	$290	$290

The least expensive board is the X299 Micro which as its name implies, is a MicroATX size motherboard. Next up the stack is the product we are reviewing here in the FTW-K. This board will compete with other mid-range offerings through its feature set and price. Finally, the flagship of the EVGA X299 stack is the X299 Dark which will match up with other board partner's flagship offerings. 

Information on Intel's X299 and our other Reviews

With Intel's release of the Basin Falls platform, encompassing the new X299 chipset and LGA2066 socket, a new generation of CPUs called Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X were also released. The Skylake-X CPUs range from the 7800X, a hex-core part, all the way up to an 18-core 7980XE multitasking behemoth. Between the bookend CPUs are five others increasing in core count, as in the table below. The latter HCC models are set to be launched over 2H of 2017.

Skylake-X Processors
	7800X	7820X	7900X		7920X	7940X	7960X	7980XE
Silicon	LCC				HCC
Cores / Threads	6/12	8/16	10/20		12/24	14/28	16/32	18/36
Base Clock / GHz	3.5	3.6	3.3		2.9	3.1	2.8	2.6
Turbo Clock / GHz	4.0	4.3	4.3		4.3	4.3	4.3	4.2
Turbo Max Clock	N/A	4.5	4.5		4.4	4.4	4.4	4.4
L3	1.375 MB/core				1.375 MB/core
PCIe Lanes	28		44		44
Memory Channels	4				4
Memory Freq DDR4	2400	2666			2666
TDP	140W				140W	165W
Price	$389	$599	$999		$1199	$1399	$1699	$1999

Board partners have launched dozens of motherboards on this platform already, several of which we will have an opportunity to look over in the coming weeks and months. This specific review will cover the MSI X299 SLI Plus.

Other AnandTech Reviews for Intel’s Basin Falls CPUs and X299

Prices checked Jan 25th

• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X Tested
• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7900X, i7-7820X and i7-7800X Tested
• The Intel Kaby Lake-X Review: Core i7-7740X and i5-7640X Tested
• Intel Announces Basin Falls: The New High-End Desktop Platform and X299 Chipset
   
• ($400) The ASRock X299E-ITX/ac Review [link] 
• ($400) The GIGABYTE X299 Gaming 7 Pro Review [link]
• ($390) The ASRock X299 Professional Gaming i9 Review [link] 
• ($370) The ASUS Strix X299-XE Gaming Review [link] 
• ($350) The MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon Review [link] 
• ($340) The ASUS X299 TUF Mark 1 Review [link] 
• ($330) The EVGA X299 FTW-K Review (this review)
• ($290) The ASRock X299 Taichi Review [link]
• ($280) The MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic Review [link]
• ($260) The MSI X299 SLI Plus Review [link]
   
• ($500) The GIGABYTE X299 Gaming 9 Review (planned) 
• ($490) The ASUS Prime X299-Deluxe Review (testing)
• ($290) The EVGA X299 Micro Review (in editing)
• ($286) The MSI X299M Gaming Pro Carbon AC Review (testing)
• ($199) The ASRock X299 Extreme4 Review (testing)
• ($?) The EVGA X299 Dark (planned)

To read specifically about the X299 chip/platform and the specifications therein, our deep dive into what it is can be found at this link.

X299 Motherboard Review Notice

If you’ve been following the minutiae of the saga of X299 motherboards, you might have heard some issues regarding power delivery, overclocking, and the ability to cool these processors down given the power consumption. In a nutshell, it comes down to this:

• Skylake-X consumes a lot of power at peak (150W+),
• The thermal interface inside the CPU doesn’t do much requiring a powerful CPU cooler,
• Some motherboard vendors apply Multi-Core Turbo which raises the power consumption and voltage, exacerbating the issue
• The VRMs have to deal with more power, and due to losses, raise in temperature
• Some motherboards do not have sufficient VRM cooling without an active cooler
• This causes the CPU to declock or hit thermal power states as to not degrade components
• This causes a performance drop, and overclocked systems are affected even more than usual

There has been some excellent work done by Igor Wallossek over at Tom’s Hardware, with thermal probes, thermal cameras, and performance analysis. The bottom line is that motherboard vendors need to be careful when it comes to default settings (if MCT is enabled by default) and provide sufficient VRM cooling in all scenarios – either larger and heavier heatsinks or moving back to active cooling.

This means there are going to be some X299 boards that perform normally, and some that underperform based on BIOS versions or design decisions. We are in the process of quantifying exactly how to represent this outside of basic benchmarking, so stay tuned. In the meantime, take a look at the next motherboard for review. 

Visual Inspection

The EVGA X299 FTW K is an all black motherboard, with shrouding hiding the back panel IO and the audio bits further down the board. An item to note here is EVGA did not install the shrouding: it is something the user will have to do. The board uses all black memory and PCIe slots, designed to match the PCB. The chipset and power delivery heatsinks, black with a silver outline like the rear panel shroud, are attached via heat pipe and help share the load. We did not record any issues with this setup during stock operation, nor overclocking. 

It is worth noting that due to the shroud, a longer-than-normal screw will be needed in the 9 o'clock screw position. The shroud makes the board thicker and typical motherboard screws will not reach. EVGA does not supply these screws.

Onboard lighting is found through the audio and panel shroud, as well as the chipset heatsink on the production model. A few months ago when we first saw the board, the power delivery heatsink was lit up as well. The onboard LEDs can be controlled through the EVGA E-Leet software and offers four modes: static, on/off, rainbow, and breathing. Compared to other motherboards, this is a fewer number of options. There is also an RGB LED controller header at the bottom part of the board. 

 

As far as fan headers go, the FTW K has a total of seven 4-pin headers. The two CPU headers, located in the upper right-hand corner, are able to control attached fans via PWM only. The remaining five headers scattered around the board in strategic locations support both PWM and DC control. All headers are designed to deliver 1A (12W) to the header. I would have liked to see at least one high-power header as most of the other boards in this class have them. 

The socket area is fairly clean with the VRMs lining the top side. The FTW K has a 10 phase power delivery, with eight dedicated to Vcore and one each going to System Agent and VCCIO. The VRM uses Intersil ISL69138 and ISL99227B MOSFETs for Vcore and VCCIN. The VSA uses ISL66133 and ISL99227 for the DRAM. Delivering power to the VRMs is are two 8-pin EPS connectors; with only one is required for most conditions. The rest of the power is fed from the 24-pin ATX connector. During our testing the VRMs did get warm, but nothing that caused throttling in our testing, even at peak overclock. 

DRAM support on the FTW K is up to 128GB, with speeds supported up to DDR4-4000 in quad channel mode with Skylake-X CPUs. For Kaby Lake-X, speeds up to DDR4-4133 are supported.

 

The right edge of the board has a lot going on. On the far right of this image below, we are able to see the CPU fan headers and are a couple of informational LEDs. When powered, there are four lights that will pop up: VSM in yellow, VCC in red, 5VSB in white, and either a Skylake-X light in yellow, or a Kaby Lake-X light in white depending on which processor is installed. Note when the indicators are lit up it simply means the voltage is detected, but does not mean it is in spec. Next to these, EVGA has placed gold colored power and reset buttons with the reset button LED doubling as an onboard HDD LED indicator. These buttons are good for open air cases or just handy to have when working inside of the case. To the left of that is the debug LED and 24-pin ATX power connector. Next, we are able to see the BIOS selector switch as well as one removable BIOS chip and a second soldered to the board. Then we get a front panel USB 3.0 header as well as one of the chassis fan headers. Last are the two U.2 connectors as well as eight SATA ports. 

Below we see a closeup of those eight SATA ports and the two U.2 connectors. All eight SATA ports are use the chipset for its bandwidth, with SATA ports 0/1 being disabled when using a SATA based SSD in the lower M.2 slot. The U.2 ports are only active when using a 44-lane CPU.

The bottom edge of the board has several headers across its length. Unique about this board is the supplemental 6-pin PCIe power connector on the far left, used to give additional power to multiple GPUs. The 6-pin PCIe power connector is offset from the bottom of the board and will help with cable management. Along side this are additional USB headers, chassis fan headers, and an Intel VROC header. 

The bottom half of the board contains the audio bits on the left, PCIe area in the middle, then the RGB LED chipset heatsink. The audio section is isolated from the board and uses Nichicon audio caps for a warmer sound. The Realtek ALC1150 codec is not covered with EMI protection and is partially visible through the design on the shroud, just to the left of the "A" in EVGA. The ALC1150 codec is a carry over from Realtek's previous generation audio, while many mid-range or higher boards have the latest ALC1220 codec. 

There are a total of six PCIe slots on the board with four full-length slots sourced from the CPU. There are two other slots: an x4 slot up top and an x1 slot on the bottom, both fed by the chipset. The board both SLI and Crossfire, although only up to 3-way. There is a lot of lane sharing going on between these PCIe slots; for example, the top full-length slot (PCIe 2) shares bandwidth with the second full-length slot (PCIe 3). The fourth full-length slot (PCIe 5) shares bandwidth the slot above it, PCIe 4. This can make for some confusing slot breakdowns. With a two card configuration, the video cards will sit in PCIe 2 and PCIe 5 while three card configurations will use PCIe 2, 3, and 5. Single card configurations should use the top full-length slot (PCIe 2). 

So despite the motherboard allowing for x8/x8/x8/x8 in the full length slots, for whatever reason EVGA has only qualified this motherboard for 3-way multi-GPU action. With single slot GPUs, or high-end GPUs with single-slot sized water blocks in a cooling loop, this motherboard should have been able to do four-way. It is likely that the Crossfire will work in 4-way, although SLI has to have the correct keys in the firmware installed to work, which requires certification.

The M.2 slots sit between the first two full-length PCIe slots and supports up to 110mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD modules, powered by the CPU, while the second is at the bottom supports up to an 80mm PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD modules, and SATA modules, but powered by the chipset. If a SATA module is installed to this second slot, the physical SATA ports 0/1 will be disabled. 

Below is a simplified list of how the PCIe slots will work with each family of CPUs (talking PCIe lanes) when multiple cards are used (the "@" symbol is used to show slot preference for the configuration): 

EVGA X299 FTW K CPU PCIe Layout
	44-Lane 1/2-Way	44-Lane 3-Way	28-Lane 1/2-Way	28-Lane 3-Way	16-Lane 1-Way	16-Lane 2-Way
PCIe 2	@x16	@x8	@x16	@x8	@x8	@x8
PCIe 3	-	@x8	-	@x8	-	-
PCIe 4	-	-	-	-	-	-
PCIe 5	@x16	@x16	@x8	@x8	-	@x8	x4*
SLI	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	-	Yes	No
M.2 110mm	x4	x4	x4	x4	x4	No	x4*
U.2	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No

* With a 16-lane CPU, PCIe 5 will be in x4 mode if an M.2 drive is installed in the 110mm slot.

The back panel IO consists of:

• CMOS reset button
• 6 x USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) ports
• 1 x Intel I219-V Gigabit NIC
• 1 x Killer E2500 Gigabit NIC
• 2 x USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) ports Type-A and Type-C
• 5 plug audio stack with SPDIF output
• 1 x Vertical M.2 Key E slot 

In the Box

The EVGA FTW-K has one of the most sparse set of included accessories I have seen. But with that said, it does include what you need to get started. 

We get the following:

• Driver Disk
• Specs and Installation Guide
• Rear IO Plate
• 2 x SATA 6 Gbps Cables
• 2 x Thermal Pads for M.2 devices
• EVGA sticker

BIOS

The EVGA BIOS screens have a black background sea blue accents and white writing which is a good set of contrasting colors and allows for an easy read of the information.

The top portion is essentially a summary of what is currently going on in the system while the bottom part is business end where adjustments can be made. The left top portion shows which DRAM slots are populated and both their individual capacity as well as the total capacity of the system and current speed. Below those values, the CPU and Memory voltage is displayed. The middle portion shows the current state of the CPU in regards to clockspeed and the number of active cores. The right side shows a summary of the PCIe lanes and their current bandwidth state while below that are the temperatures of the VRM and CPU. For reference, we are using the latest BIOS available at the EVGA website, version 1.06. 

The magic happens in the bottom 2/3 of the BIOS screen where across the top of that we see five sections; Overclock, Memory, Advanced, Boot, and Save & Exit. The EVGA BIOS, as we will see in this section, is fairly simple and straightforward. The first thing one may notice compared to other X299 boards is the lack of an 'EZ Mode' screen; users will jump right into the Overclock tab in this case. 

The Overclock section presents users with many options associated with overclocking and getting the system beyond its normal specifications. Things like CPU Multiplier Control, BCLK Frequency settings, and several voltage domains are found in here. It really has much of what one needs to overclock the CPU right on this screen. What is missing is LLC adjustments as well as any pre-configured multi-core enhancement. Neither are a big deal in the overall scheme of things, but they are certainly not there. Also notably missing is any sort of power limit adjustments. In many boards, there are power limits in place to keep the process functioning within its parameters and this can limit overclocking capabilities. A simple adjustment to those parameters and users are on their way. On the FTW K, there doesn't seem to be an option to adjust the limits that I have run into yet. These are curious omissions, however, the board doesn't seem to blink an eye without them in our testing. 

The other curious implementation on this motherboard is when switching to manual mode (Per Core or RatioLimit), it automatically sets up a negative AVX and AVX2 offset of 3. Typically, this is something users change themselves if needed. If not changed, this will result in slightly slower performance on AVX based tasks. 

 

The Memory tab is where all the memory options reside. Here is where the user will set XMP profiles, or manually set memory speed and timings. I do like how they added the XMP profiles to the memory information as some DRAM sets do come with two XMP profiles so it easier to see which one you want and select it. The supported memory speeds on the FTW K are the lowest we have seen on an X299 board so far at DDR4-3200. It does have memory multiplier settings up to 4400, but I was only able to test to DDR4-3600 with the set of DRAM used. Both sets of sticks worked just fine using the XMP profile at DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3200. 

The Advanced screen is where adjustments to the CPU (EIST/C-States/Turbo/etc), CPU Storage (CPU attached storage such as PCIe, one M.2 slot, and the U.2 slots), PCIe (bandwidth adjustments), PCH, SATA (enable/disable), and USB configurations can be edited. The Power Management section feels like a tease and has adjustments for enabling/disabling LEDs, ERP mode for EU standard energy efficiency, and sleep states. Again, no power limits or LLC found. The Onboard Device configuration section is where users can enable/disable the LAN, Audio, USB 3.1 Controller, as well as U.2 and M.2 sockets. 

The H/W monitor configuration section is where users will find system temperatures such as the powe delivery, motherboard, and the CPU temperature. It also displays voltages from the power supply like the +12V, +5V, and 3VSB. This is also where the user can adjust fan speeds. There are options such as SMART and Max as well as percent values for fine control, although there isn't a manual graph that can be adjusted with curve points. The two CPU fan headers are PWM only while the five chassis/system fans are able to do both PWM and DC control. We do not have the ability to create custom curves. 

 

 

The Boot section is where any boot-related functionality can be adjusted. 

Last is the Save & Exit tab where we are able to restore defaults or load the last saved settings. Also in this section is where users are able to save BIOS profiles internally or to a USB stick as well as updating the BIOS. 

Overall the EVGA FTW K BIOS worked fine. There were really only a couple of complaints. First was the missing overclock options: while not a huge deal, it didn't stop me from reaching our temperature limited overclock of 4.5 GHz, but they are still options found on nearly every board. The other issue I had was with the system not loading from a cold boot. It would start to POST, beep a couple of times, then give 5 long beeps and hang or occasionally it would even boot after the five long beeps. This happened with both the 1.01 BIOS it shipped with as well as the 1.06 BIOS we used from the website. 

Software

The DVD contains all the drivers needs to get up and going, as well as the E-Leet utility. Installing the motherboard drivers worked without issue. One thing not found in EVGA's software suite that others have is an automatic update program. Users will have to periodically check for updates to the system. 

The EVGA E-Leet Tuning Utility X is a windows based utility for Monitoring and Overclocking. In recent iterations, it also can now be used to change the onboard LED effects. The first three screens, CPU, Mainboard, and Memory should all be familiar as they are more or less a CPU-Z twin displaying information for each part.

The LED section (in the gallery) was a bit lackluster allowing a total of four adjustments; Static On, Static OFF, Breathing, and Rainbow. I would like to see more options than that if only to keep up with the other board partners which tend to have several more preset LED functions. 

The overclocking and voltage sections allow for adjusting major voltages, CPU multiplier, RING, and BCLK within Windows. Depending on how the user has it set in the BIOS, this determines which cores are able to be adjusted from the Intel spec to a per core ratio where all are adjustable, to Ratio Limit where one slider controls all. 

The E-LEET utility worked flawlessly until I set the RAM speed manually at DDR4-3600. Once that happened, I was unable to apply voltage without the system freezing requiring a hard reboot. The system was plenty stable if I set the voltage and speed through the BIOS but would just hard freeze if I tried while using a manual multiplier. 

The EVGA FTW K comes with two NICs: the Intel I219-V and the Killer E2500. The Killer NIC comes with its own software for monitoring traffic as well as the ability to prioritize traffic in applications. This is an updated software stack from previous generations of motherboards that used older controllers, designed to be more user friendly and allow the user to combine downloads with gameplay and streaming by having traffic configured by priority with a whitelist autodetect feature. 

Board Features

The EVGA FTW K is the mainstream ATX offering. The FTW K gives users the full complement of eight SATA ports, but also with two U.2 ports, two NICs (including a Killer E2500), the ability to use 3-way GPU configurations. A downside is perhaps the use of the older, last-generation Realtek ALC1150 codec. 

EVGA X299 FTW K
Warranty Period	3 Years
Product Page	Link
Price	$329.99 Newegg US
Size	E-ATX
CPU Interface	LGA2066
Chipset	Intel X299
Memory Slots (DDR4)	Eight DDR4 Supporting 128GB Quad Channel Up to DDR4-4000 (quad channel) Up to DDR4-4133 (dual channel)
Network Connectivity	1 x Intel I219V GbE 1 x Killer E2500
Onboard Audio	Realtek ALC 1150
PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU)	4 x PCIe 3.0 - 44 Lane CPU: x16/x8/x8/x16 - 28 Lane CPU: x16/x8/-/x8  - 16 Lane CPU: x8/-/-/x8
PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH)	1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1
Onboard SATA	8 x - RAID 0/1/5/10
Onboard SATA Express	None
Onboard M.2	2 x PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA mode
Onboard U.2	2 x
USB 3.1	ASMedia ASM2142  1 x Type-A 1 x Type-C
USB 3.0	Chipset 6 x Back Panel 2 x Onboard Headers
USB 2.0	Chipset 2 x Onboard Headers
Power Connectors	1 x 24-pin ATX 1 x 8-pin CPU 1 x 8-pin CPU (optional)
Fan Headers	2 x 4-pin CPU (PWM) 5 x 4-pin Chassis (PWM and DC) * All headers max 1A/12W
IO Panel	2 x LAN (RJ45) ports 2 x USB 3.1 10 Gbps, Type-A and Type-C 4 x USB 3.0 2 x USB 2.0 1 x SPDIF out 5 x Audio Jacks 1 x M.2 E Key Vertical Header 1 x BIOS/CMOS Reset

The power delivery on this board is on par with others in the price range. The 8-phase Infineon setup and heatsink did not have any issues pushing our CPU to its temperature limited 4.5 GHz result. The power delivery heatsink handled things just fine in both stock testing and overclocking. In fact, the highest temperature I registered was during an hour-long stock OCCT test where the VRM topped out at 55C while idle was around 42C. 

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC sub timings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend our testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency/monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

Test Setup
Processor	Intel i9 7900X (10C/20T, 3.3G, 140W)
Motherboard	EVGA X299 FTW K (BIOS version 1.06)
Cooling	Corsair H115i
Power Supply	Corsair HX750
Memory	Corsair Vengeance LPX 4x8GB DDR4 2666 CL16 and 4x4GB DDR4 3200 CL16
Memory Settings	DDR4 2666 CL16-18-18-35 2T
Video Cards	ASUS Strix GTX 980
Hard Drive	Crucial MX300 1TB
Optical Drive	TSST TS-H653G
Case	Open Test Bed
Operating System	Windows 10 Pro 64-bit

 

Many thanks to...

We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this testbed specifically but is used in other testing.

Thank you to ASUS for providing us with GTX 980 Strix GPUs. At the time of release, the STRIX brand from ASUS was aimed at silent running, or to use the marketing term: '0dB Silent Gaming'. This enables the card to disable the fans when the GPU is dealing with low loads well within temperature specifications. These cards equip the GTX 980 silicon with ASUS' Direct CU II cooler and 10-phase digital VRMs, aimed at high-efficiency conversion. Along with the card, ASUS bundles GPU Tweak software for overclocking and streaming assistance.

The GTX 980 uses NVIDIA's GM204 silicon die, built upon their Maxwell architecture. This die is 5.2 billion transistors for a die size of 298 mm², built on TMSC's 28nm process. A GTX 980 uses the full GM204 core, with 2048 CUDA Cores and 64 ROPs with a 256-bit memory bus to GDDR5. The official power rating for the GTX 980 is 165W.

The ASUS GTX 980 Strix 4GB (or the full name of STRIX-GTX980-DC2OC-4GD5) runs a reasonable overclock over a reference GTX 980 card, with frequencies in the range of 1178-1279 MHz. The memory runs at stock, in this case, 7010 MHz. Video outputs include three DisplayPort connectors, one HDMI 2.0 connector, and a DVI-I.

Further Reading: AnandTech's NVIDIA GTX 980 Review

 

Thank you to Crucial for providing us with MX300 SSDs. Crucial stepped up to the plate as our benchmark list grows larger with newer benchmarks and titles, and the 1TB MX300 units are strong performers. Based on Marvell's 88SS1074 controller and using Micron's 384Gbit 32-layer 3D TLC NAND, these are 7mm high, 2.5-inch drives rated for 92K random read IOPS and 530/510 MB/s sequential read and write speeds.

The 1TB models we are using here support TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667 (eDrive) encryption and have a 360TB rated endurance with a three-year warranty.

Further Reading: AnandTech's Crucial MX300 (750 GB) Review

 

Thank you to Corsair for providing us with Vengeance LPX DDR4 Memory, HX750 Power Supply, and H115i CPU Cooler. 

Corsair kindly sent a 4x8GB DDR4 2666 set of their Vengeance LPX low profile, high-performance memory for our stock testing. The heatsink is made of pure aluminum to help remove heat from the sticks and has an eight-layer PCB. The heatsink is a low profile design to help fit in spaces where there may not be room for a tall heat spreader; think a SFF case or using a large heatsink. Timings on this specific set come in at 16-18-18-35. The Vengeance LPX line supports XMP 2.0 profiles for easily setting the speed and timings. It also comes with a limited lifetime warranty. 

Powering the test system is Corsair's HX750 Power Supply. This HX750 is a dual mode unit able to switch from a single 12V rail (62.5A/750W) to a five rail CPU (40A max ea.) and is also fully modular. It has a typical selection of connectors, including dual EPS 4+4 pin four PCIe connectors and a whopping 16 SATA power leads, as well as four 4-pin Molex connectors.

The 135mm fluid dynamic bearing fan remains off until it is 40% loaded offering complete silence in light workloads. The HX750 comes with a ten-year warranty. 

In order to cool these high-TDP HEDT CPUs, Corsair sent over its latest and largest AIO in the H115i. This closed-loop system uses a 280mm radiator with 2x140mm SP140L PWM controlled fans. The pump/block combination mounts to all modern CPU sockets. Users are also able to integrate this cooler into the Corsair link software via USB for more control and options. 

Benchmark Overview

For our testing, depending on the product, we attempt to tailor the presentation of our global benchmark suite down into what users who would buy this hardware might actually want to run. For CPUs, our full test suite is typically used to gather data and all the results are placed into Bench, our benchmark database for users that want to look at non-typical benchmarks or legacy data. For motherboards, we run our short form CPU tests, the gaming tests with half the GPUs of our processor suite, and our system benchmark tests which focus on non-typical and non-obvious performance metrics that are the focal point for specific groups of users.

The benchmarks fall into several areas:

Short Form CPU

Our short form testing script uses a straight run through of a mixture of known apps or workloads and requires about four hours. These are typically the CPU tests we run in our motherboard suite, to identify any performance anomalies.

CPU Short Form Benchmarks
Three Dimensional Particle Movement v2.1 (3DPM)	3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, derived from my academic research years looking at particle movement parallelism. The coding for this tool was rough, but emulates the real world in being non-CompSci trained code for a scientific endeavor. The code is unoptimized, but the test uses OpenMP to move particles around a field using one of six 3D movement algorithms in turn, each of which is found in the academic literature.
	The second version of this benchmark is similar to the first, however it has been re-written in VS2012 with one major difference: the code has been written to address the issue of false sharing. If data required by multiple threads, say four, is in the same cache line, the software cannot read the cache line once and split the data to each thread - instead it will read four times in a serial fashion. The new software splits the data to new cache lines so reads can be parallelized and stalls minimized.
WinRAR 5.4	WinRAR is a compression based software to reduce file size at the expense of CPU cycles. We use the version that has been a stable part of our benchmark database through 2015, and run the default settings on a 1.52GB directory containing over 2800 files representing a small website with around thirty half-minute videos. We take the average of several runs in this instance.
POV-Ray 3.7.1 b4	POV-Ray is a common ray-tracing tool used to generate realistic looking scenes. We've used POV-Ray in its various guises over the years as a good benchmark for performance, as well as a tool on the march to ray-tracing limited immersive environments. We use the built-in multi threaded benchmark.
HandBrake v1.0.2	HandBrake is a freeware video conversion tool. We use the tool in to process two different videos into x264 in an MP4 container - first a 'low quality' two-hour video at 640x388 resolution to x264, then a 'high quality' ten-minute video at 4320x3840, and finally the second video again but into HEVC. The low-quality video scales at lower performance hardware, whereas the buffers required for high-quality tests can stretch even the biggest processors. At current, this is a CPU only test.
7-Zip 9.2	7-Zip is a freeware compression/decompression tool that is widely deployed across the world. We run the included benchmark tool using a 50MB library and take the average of a set of fixed-time results.
DigiCortex v1.20	The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up.

 

System Benchmarks

Our system benchmarks are designed to probe motherboard controller performance, particularly any additional USB controllers or the audio controller. As general platform tests we have DPC Latency measurements and system boot time, which can be difficult to optimize for on the board design and manufacturing level.

System Benchmarks
Power Consumption	One of the primary differences between different motherboads is power consumption. Aside from the base defaults that every motherboard needs, things like power delivery, controller choice, routing and firmware can all contribute to how much power a system can draw. This increases for features such as PLX chips and multi-gigabit ethernet.
Non-UEFI POST Time	The POST sequence of the motherboard becomes before loading the OS, and involves pre-testing of onboard controllers, the CPU, the DRAM and everything else to ensure base stability. The number of controllers, as well as firmware optimizations, affect the POST time a lot. We test the BIOS defaults as well as attempt a stripped POST.
Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5	Testing onboard audio is difficult, especially with the numerous amount of post-processing packages now being bundled with hardware. Nonetheless, manufacturers put time and effort into offering a 'cleaner' sound that is loud and of a high quality. RMAA, with version 6.2.5 (newer versions have issues), under the right settings can be used to test the signal-to-noise ratio, signal crossover, and harmonic distortion with noise.
USB Backup	USB ports can come from a variety of sources: chipsets, controllers or hubs. More often than not, the design of the traces can lead to direct impacts on USB performance as well as firmware level choices relating to signal integrity on the motherboard.
DPC Latency	Another element is deferred procedure call latency, or the ability to handle interrupt servicing. Depending on the motherboard firmware and controller selection, some motherboards handle these interrupts quicker than others. A poor result could lead to delays in performance, or for example with audio, a delayed request can manifest in distinct audible pauses, pops or clicks.

Gaming

Our gaming benchmarks are designed to show any differences in performance when playing games. 

System Performance

Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however, this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the Corsair HX 750 power supply. This power supply is Platinum rated. As I am in the US on a 120 V supply, leads to ~87% efficiency > 75W, and 92%+ efficiency at 375W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.

While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.

In our Long Idle test, the EVGA X299 FTW K used the least amount of power compared to all X299 boards we have tested far. During the long idle, the system sat at 62W, while the OS idle was 66W. The Prime 95 Blend load yielded 183W, 20W less than the next board and up to 60W less than the SLI Plus which used the most power. The reason we see this result is due to the BIOS, by default, setting the AVX offset to -3 which is something we haven't seen so far in our testing. When you are doing less work, the system draws less power.

Non UEFI POST Time

Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time using a stopwatch. This is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows 10 starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.

Post times for the FTW K also managed to be the fastest tested so far at 24.8 seconds with everything enabled and at default, while the stripped setting dropped a bit more than a second to 23.7. The FTW K has a very short time to access the BIOS during POST; If you blink, you will likely not get into it. A 'goto BIOS' function would be a plus on this board or at least an option to delay startup in order to enter the BIOS. 

Rightmark Audio Analyzer 6.2.5

Rightmark:AA indicates how well the sound system is built and isolated from electrical interference (either internally or externally). For this test we connect the Line Out to the Line In using a short six inch 3.5mm to 3.5mm high-quality jack, turn the OS speaker volume to 100%, and run the Rightmark default test suite at 192 kHz, 24-bit. The OS is tuned to 192 kHz/24-bit input and output, and the Line-In volume is adjusted until we have the best RMAA value in the mini-pretest. We look specifically at the Dynamic Range of the audio codec used on board, as well as the Total Harmonic Distortion + Noise.

Due to circumstances currently out of our control, we were unable to get RMAA results for this board. The problem does not lie with the board itself. Once we are able to get it working properly, the space will be updated with data. 

DPC Latency

Deferred Procedure Call latency is a way in which Windows handles interrupt servicing. In order to wait for a processor to acknowledge the request, the system will queue all interrupt requests by priority. Critical interrupts will be handled as soon as possible, whereas lesser priority requests such as audio will be further down the line. If the audio device requires data, it will have to wait until the request is processed before the buffer is filled.

If the device drivers of higher priority components in a system are poorly implemented, this can cause delays in request scheduling and process time. This can lead to an empty audio buffer and characteristic audible pauses, pops and clicks. The DPC latency checker measures how much time is taken processing DPCs from driver invocation. The lower the value will result in better audio transfer at smaller buffer sizes. Results are measured in microseconds. 

DPC Latency is in the expected range, below 300 with an X299 board leading results of 271ms. This was towards the higher end of our group, but again, its well within the expected range. 

CPU Performance, Short Form

For our motherboard reviews, we use our short form testing method. These tests usually focus on if a motherboard is using MultiCore Turbo (the feature used to have maximum turbo on at all times, giving a frequency advantage), or if there are slight gains to be had from tweaking the firmware. We leave the BIOS settings at default and memory at the CPU manufacturer's recommended frequency (with JEDEC sub-timings) for these tests, making it very easy to see which motherboards have MCT enabled by default.

Rendering - Blender 2.78: link

For a render that has been around for what seems like ages, Blender is still a highly popular tool. We managed to wrap up a standard workload into the February 5 nightly build of Blender and measure the time it takes to render the first frame of the scene. Being one of the bigger open source tools out there, it means both AMD and Intel work actively to help improve the codebase, for better or for worse on their own/each other's microarchitecture.

For our Blender testing, the FTW K landed in the middle of the pack group. Nothing out of the ordinary here. 

Rendering – POV-Ray 3.7: link

The Persistence of Vision Ray Tracer, or POV-Ray, is a freeware package for as the name suggests, ray tracing. It is a pure renderer, rather than modeling software, but the latest beta version contains a handy benchmark for stressing all processing threads on a platform. We have been using this test in motherboard reviews to test memory stability at various CPU speeds to good effect – if it passes the test, the IMC in the CPU is stable for a given CPU speed. As a CPU test, it runs for approximately 2-3 minutes on high-end platforms.

POV-Ray results show the FTW K coming in last. The difference here we found during our sanity checks was to see the CPU running at its base clock of 3.3 GHz throughout this testing. Most of the CPUs run from 3.6-3.7 GHz in this test, and it comes down to EVGA's automatic -3 AVX offset which cannot be removed.

Compression – WinRAR 5.4: link

Our WinRAR test from 2013 is updated to the latest version of WinRAR at the start of 2014. We compress a set of 2867 files across 320 folders totaling 1.52 GB in size – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30-second 720p videos.

WinRAR results place the FTW K the slowest of the bunch here at 38.7 seconds.  

Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link

As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.

7-Zip results have the EVGA board right in the middle of the very tightly packed group. No anomolies here.  

Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link

3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz, and IPC win in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores. For a brief explanation of the platform agnostic coding behind this benchmark, see my forum post here.

The 3DPM results were also positive coming in second place leading a tight group results behind it. 

Neuron Simulation - DigiCortex v1.20: link

The newest benchmark in our suite is DigiCortex, a simulation of biologically plausible neural network circuits, and simulates activity of neurons and synapses. DigiCortex relies heavily on a mix of DRAM speed and computational throughput, indicating that systems which apply memory profiles properly should benefit and those that play fast and loose with overclocking settings might get some extra speed up. Results are taken during the steady state period in a 32k neuron simulation and represented as a function of the ability to simulate in real time (1.000x equals real-time).

In the DigiCortex testing, the FTW K managed 1.14 score which is towards the lower end of our results. but still within a few percentage points of the top result. 

Gaming Performance

Ashes of the Singularity is a Real Time Strategy game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The original AoTS was released back in March of 2016 while the standalone expansion pack, Escalation, was released in November of 2016 adding more structures, maps, and units. We use this specific benchmark as it relies on both a good GPU as well as on the CPU in order to get the most frames per second. This balance is able to better display any system differences in gaming as opposed to a more GPU heavy title where the CPU and system don't matter quite as much. We use the default "Crazy" in-game settings using the DX11 rendering path in both 1080p and 4K UHD resolutions. The benchmark is run four times and the results averaged then plugged into the graph. 

Our AOTSe testing continues to be a tight-knit dataset with almost 2 frames per second separating things in the more CPU heavy 1080p and less than 1 frame per second in 4K.  The ROG Strix was in the middle of both results able to pull 44.1 frames per second in 1080p and 34.9 in 4K UHD. 

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider is a third-person action-adventure game that features similar gameplay found in 2013's Tomb Raider. Players control Lara Croft through various environments, battling enemies, and completing puzzle platforming sections, while using improvised weapons and gadgets in order to progress through the story.

One of the unique aspects of this benchmark is that it’s actually the average of 3 sub-benchmarks that fly through different environments, which keeps the benchmark from being too weighted towards a GPU’s performance characteristics under any one scene.

 

Overclocking

Experience with the EVGA X299 FTW K

The board does not come with any automatic overclocking presets or abilities, however, when left on auto, it will adjust the Vcore voltage via the VID for the clock speed. This tends to overvolt things a bit, and that was the case here. Leaving the voltage on auto and setting 4.5 GHz yielded almost 1.3V which is too much for the clock speed and failed our testing. Although the BIOS was missing some features like LLC to prevent Vdroop, the board really didn't have much at all to begin with. The other major options missing, power limits, also didn't appear to affect our overclock, In the end, we landed right around where the other boards did with 1.23V @ 4.5 GHz. 

The major overclocking options are under one section, and in this case, one page worth so there is no jumping around required for an average ambient overclock. Options like the CPU multiplier, BCLK, and Voltages for multiple domains are all found in the same section.

As far as DRAM goes, the board had no issues with either the DDR4-2666 set or the DDR4-3200 set. It was 'set XMP and go', just how we like it. We were able to overclock past the XMP settings of our 3200 sticks and reached DDR4-3600 speeds. The E-Leet utility worked without issue for the majority of my testing. Though once we set the memory multiplier manually, it would not apply any settings, including only voltage, or even a lower CPU multiplier.  

We did not run into any thermal issues on the VRM on this board in stock or overclocked form. The maximum VRM temperature E-Leet read was 55C during a longer duration stress test of OCCT.  

Overclocking Methodology

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with POV-Ray 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 the 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 (90ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Overclocking Results

The EVGA FTW K topped out at 4.5 GHz along with the other boards tested as expected. The voltage to reach the clock speeds were all within a small variance so nothing out of the ordinary there. But again, we read from software, so there is a built-in variance already. With no LLC setting in sight, we did not see any vdroop and voltages stayed remarkably stable as we have seen with all boards reviewed so far. At the top overclock of 4.5 GHz and 1.23V, the system pulled 295W from the wall which is the lowest peak power of any board tested so far, although the board still applies an automatic -3 AVX offset.   

 

Conclusion

The EVGA FTW K is currently priced at $329.99 on Newegg US and is not found on Amazon. The board competes with the likes of the MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon AC ($350), ASRock X299 Taichi XE ($323), and the GIGABYTE X299 AORUS Ultra Gaming Pro ($350 - on sale for $300 now) by price. 

Ultimately, the FTW K tries to be a jack of all trades type of motherboard. It has features listed as 'for the gamer', including the Killer E2500 NIC, support for 3-way graphics, but runs with the last generation high-end Realtek ALC1150 codec. Professionals will like its ability to use two U.2 based drives (when using a 44-lane CPU) for ultra-fast storage, compared to most X299 boards that have zero or one U.2 port. This motherboard, to a certain extent, is a unicorn on the X299 platform.  

RGB LED implementation was bright, and the number of locations wasn't overkill with the chipset heatsink, back panel IO, and audio shrouds all lighting up. The lighting effects are limited compared to other boards, with only four modes to choose from. Related to this, the back panel IO/audio shroud did not come attached to the board and is something the user will have to do if they choose. I understand needing to install GPU struts and such, but I would have preferred to see these already attached since the vast majority of people will use them. 

There should be enough fan headers to control CPU and case fans through the motherboard, but users need to be aware only the Chassis fans support both PWM and DC control. Both CPU headers do not. Also, many boards in this class/price range, typically have high-power header for pumps, but this board is missing such an option and all headers are good to 1A(12W). 

Our overclocking hit the same speeds as all the other motherboards we have tested so far. This is an expected result since we are temperature limited by our cooling. The BIOS is pretty basic and not the most refined, however, it was able to do its job within the scope of our testing and this was EVGA's intent (it says 'straight and to the point, the way a modern BIOS should be'  on the retail packaging). That being said, to not have LLC and power limit adjustments available was odd. It doesn't appear to be a huge deal in our environment, but I would have preferred to see the options. 

Overall, the EVGA FTW K is a more than capable board for a large set of users and has a pretty unique feature with two U.2 ports on the board. Outside of the curious the curious behavior during any tests which include AVX instructions, performance was right around the other boards with it excelling in fast boot times as well power consumption (a result of this lower clock speeds during testing). The BIOS doesn't have every single option others have, but for ambient overclocking, at least to where we take things, it doesn't appear to be needed. It's a tough segment to be in, this mid-range segment, and other boards may have more bells and whistles in the BIOS and RGB LED department, but the EVGA FTW K presents us with a solid foundation for an X299 based system. 

Other AnandTech X299 Motherboard Reviews 

Prices checked Jan 25th

• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7980XE and Core i9-7960X Tested
• The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9-7900X, i7-7820X and i7-7800X Tested
• The Intel Kaby Lake-X Review: Core i7-7740X and i5-7640X Tested
• Intel Announces Basin Falls: The New High-End Desktop Platform and X299 Chipset
   
• ($400) The ASRock X299E-ITX/ac Review [link] 
• ($400) The GIGABYTE X299 Gaming 7 Pro Review [link]
• ($390) The ASRock X299 Professional Gaming i9 Review [link] 
• ($370) The ASUS Strix X299-XE Gaming Review [link] 
• ($350) The MSI X299 Gaming Pro Carbon Review [link] 
• ($340) The ASUS X299 TUF Mark 1 Review [link] 
• ($330) The EVGA X299 FTW-K Review (this review)
• ($290) The ASRock X299 Taichi Review [link]
• ($280) The MSI X299 Tomahawk Arctic Review [link]
• ($260) The MSI X299 SLI Plus Review [link]