TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Exactly like used to do in the past each mainboard to arrive in the lab will get mounted on an open-air test bench and will be used for no less than two full weeks (daily tasks and gaming) with a fresh Windows 10 Pro installation. All motherboards arriving here will be tested with the top CPU of that line available to me at the time of each review (I9-9900K for Z390/I9-10900K for Z490/I9-11900K for Z590/I9-12900K for the Z690/Ryzen 9 5900X for X570 and B550/Ryzen 9 7900X for X670E and B650E/i9-13900K for Z790/Core Ultra 9 285K for Z890) together with 32/48GB of RAM (different models for different motherboards/CPUs). Needless to say, I’ll be clocking CPUs at the same speeds between same chipset models (unless a motherboard is not capable of getting the same speeds) for a more accurate performance comparison.

   To measure performance, I’ll be using several benchmarking programs (6 repeats after which the average numbers will get recorded in the charts) like AIDA64, CINEBENCH R20, CPUZ, Passmark Performance Test, RealBench, 3Dmark, GeekBench AI and the Sisoftware Sandra Titanium version. Games like Cyberpunk 2077 (Phantom Liberty), Dying Light 2 and Forza Horizon 5 were also added for people who care about FPS*.

* Since October 2024 I added more benchmarking suites and even game titles.