Gigabyte Z370N WIFI Review

Overclocking and Temperatures

As I mentioned before, we try to keep ambient temperatures as close to 21°c, or 70°f as possible. Where it’s still cold in the North East, that wasn’t an issue. The temperature in my office was a cool 16°c or about 61 °f. To get the idle temperature, we let the pc idle for about 30 minutes or so after a cold boot. To get an accurate load temperature, we run the AIDA64 CPU stability test for no less than 5 minutes. The 8600k has a stock frequency of 3.6 GHz. However, even at stock settings, it ran at a constant 4.1 GHz. At this speed, we recorded an idle temperature of 28°c. I ran the AIDA64 stability test until the temperature evened out. This took about 5 minutes and the temperature maxed out at 46°c, this is a 17° delta T between idle and load. Due to XMP issues, I did have some issues overclocking this processor. However, once I finally got it dialed in, the retail 8600k hit a max overclock of 4.8 GHz at only 1.212 volts. Same overclock we got on our 8700k review, but with less voltage.

Since we’re on the topic of temperatures, The Z370N WIFI is equipped with Gigabytes new Thermal Guard. This is a passively cooled heatsink for the front M.2 port on the board. This test system has a 250 GB Samsung 960 Evo as its boot drive. So, we recorded temperatures both with and without the Thermal Guard on the M.2 drive. Without the Thermal Guard, the 960 EVO idled at 39°c. To test it under load, we ran ATTO Disk Benchmark and Crystal Disk Mark back to back. The 960 EVO maxed out at 51°c. With the Thermal Guard on, we got significantly lower temperatures. At idle, the 960 EVO sat at a cool 35°c, a four-degree difference. Under the same load, the drive maxed out at 46°c, a five-degree difference. So, the Thermal Guard isn’t just for looks. It keeps your drive cooler, which should extend the life of your drive.