I mentioned not so long back, that as soon as I'd built my new rig I'd give Asus 5WO a bash, as opposed to my usual approach, namely manual overclocking in the BIOS. Well finally that time has come. I 'd noticed how many that criticise the software had either confused 5WO with the "one size fits all" TPU 1 and TPU 2 fixed overclocks, or simply weren't aware of the capabilities of the software and had made bad choices with the settings. It's true however that some do have genuine issues, as with all software.

 

My first bash was less than impressive, I elected to enable AVX for the 5WO stress test and achieved a meagre 4.4 GHz. No point really as I never run Prime95, Adobe Premier, Photoshop or any software that utilises CPU Advanced Vector Extensions.

 

 

For my second attempt, I didn't select AVX but did select "Enable OC Tolerance for Higher Overclock". Results were far better!

 

I managed to achieve 4.6 GHz with ease at 1.31 volts under load. Not a bad voltage at all for 4.6 GHz. In fact, it seems I'm more thermally limited than voltage limited. 5WO clocked my RAM at 2932 MHz, so I nipped into the UEFI and enabled the XMP profile. (3200 MHz at 1.35V) No issues, still 100% stable in Real Bench.

 

The ambient temp was high (25C). Running ROG Real Bench CPU temp was 83C, so a 58 degree delta temp. I'm pretty sure that if the ambient temp had been closer to the average for the UK, 5WO would have hit perhaps 4.7 GHz.

 

I'd bet that with a Custom loop and delidding this chip would exceed 4.8 GHz with relative ease. 

 

So a pleasant experience with 5WO really, no issues. I was careful to enter the BIOS and restore defaults before each 5WO bash, in case the software didn't take too kindly to repeated attempts.

 

I could manually enter the BIOS and nudge the overclock up a little I suppose, shouldn't be an issue, especially when the weather calms down but no point really, 100MHz or so equates to less than one frame per second at 30 frames per second, so pointless. 

 

Settings were...

 

TPU 1

 

Extreme Tuning

 

All Cores

 

Start From Asus Optimal Ratio

 

Encoding Stability on ( I don't run Handbrake but Real Bench does, so to avoid the known issue with Handbrake overloading certain parts of the CPU, worth selecting)

 

Enable Memory Stress Test - Duration of Stress Test 10 Minutes (The default 15 seconds is only stable for 80% of systems)

 

DTS Temp On (Displays offset from TJ Max)

 

 

EPU Off

 

Fan Xpert Off (Had previously run Fan Xpert)

Edit: The above was adaptive voltage, thus under load CPU voltage was approximately 1.41 volts. Not excessive, but greater than my manual overclocking endeavours.