ASRock Z77 OC Formula Review: Living In The Fast Lane
by Ian Cutress on January 15, 2013 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Z77
- Overclocking
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly donating hardware for our test bed:
OCZ for donating the 1250W Gold Power Supply and USB testing SSD
Micron for donating our SATA testing SSD
G.Skill for donating our memory kits
ASUS for donating AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit
ECS for donating NVIDIA GPUs
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-3770K Retail 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 ASRock Z77 Extreme6 ASRock Z77 Extreme9 ASRock Z77 OC Formula ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional ASUS P8Z77-V Pro ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe ASUS P8Z77-V Premium Biostar TZ77XE4 ECS Z77H2-AX EVGA Z77 FTW Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD5H Gigabyte GA-Z77MX-D3H Gigabyte G1.Sniper 3 Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP4 TH MSI Z77A-GD65 |
| Cooling | Thermalright TRUE Copper |
| Power Supply | OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series |
| Memory |
GSkill RipjawsZ 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 9-11-11 Kit GSkill TridentX 2x4 GB DDR3-2666 11-13-13 Kit |
| Memory Settings | XMP (2400 9-11-11) |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 12.3 NVIDIA Drivers 296.10 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed - CoolerMaster Lab V1.0 |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| SATA Testing | Micron RealSSD C300 256GB |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
Alongside our normal testing procedure, we also ran the computational and gaming benchmarks at an overclocked setting based on our overclocking results: an i7-3770K at 4.8 GHz and 2800 MHz on the memory.
Power Consumption
Power consumption was tested on the system as a whole with a wall meter connected to the OCZ 1250W power supply, while in a dual 7970 GPU configuration. This power supply is Gold rated, and as I am in the UK on a 230-240 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, which is 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.
A motherboard designed for overclocking such as the Z77 OC Formula does not necessarily have to use less power, but efficiency is often a key element when designing such a product. Nevertheless, the Z77 OC Formula does a great job in our power tests while holding two 7970s, featuring near the bottom end of the table in all of them.
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 are now going to look at the POST Boot Time - this is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) These results are subject to human error, so please allow +/- 1 second in these results.
Unfortunately the Z77 OC Formula misses out on a great 12 second POST time, albeit not by much. For an overclocking board, it is often helpful to have that quick POST time when changing a lot of settings repeatedly or encountering BSODs during benchmarks.
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IanCutress - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
We haven't got around to testing those. I have the Z77 MPower and Z77X-UP7 in to test at the minute, and they will be reviewed in due course.Also, comparing against a board that I gave an award to is perfectly valid - it gives at least a standard and a comparison point. Over a certain price point, various groups of users will refuse to spend money on a motherboard unless there is a tangible benefit.
Ian
Paazel - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
How can this board/company be awarded anything from this site? I thought you guys factor in post sale support/RMA procedure when reviewing boards?My Z68 board has been a nightmare, I upgraded to the newest BIOS and had installed Windows seven times before I realized that the board must be bad. It was a nightmare to get them to send a new BIOS (as the BIOS could not be rolled back). The forgot to ship it, then shipped it to my home rather than the location the computer was at. The BIOS didn't work so I had to RMA the board. ASRock does NOT do advance RMA at all (even if you secure it by credit card). How can this be OK for a silver award at all? Additionally the RMA procedure takes 5-7 business days to examine, upon which they send it out fedex ground. This is typically 2.5 weeks all said and done (I shipped via FedEx 2day). This is among the worst support possible, this should be factored in to all ASRock product reviews.
threeclaws - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
Customer Support should be a major factor in reviews but nobody is doing it. I was "chatting" with a reviewer on hardocp about this and he was saying it would be impossible to do it for every board but that maybe a yearly round up could be implemented. I hope hardocp does it because it will force sites like anandtech (and others) to follow suit whether they want to or not.With companies like Asus running around getting awards left and right, paired with the worst customer service in the industry (this seems fairly well known at this point) there will be no change unless major review sites start taking them to task over it.
p.s. I haven't really experienced asrock customer support but am enjoying my z77 board from them.
A5 - Wednesday, January 16, 2013 - link
None of these companies have good support because they don't need it and the market has clearly shown that it doesn't really care about it. Most motherboards that go bad will do so within the return period.Voldenuit - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
Dear Anandtech,Please stop wasting our time with $200 motherboard reviews.
Thank you,
The Internet.
Razorbak86 - Tuesday, January 15, 2013 - link
Dear Voldenuit, please stop trying to speak for "The Internet". tyvmDear Ian, please continue with your motherboard reviews. I read almost every one, including those in the $200 price category. I suspect I am not alone, but I will not presume to speak for others.
Best regards,
Razorbak86
vwgtiron - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
I concur sir, I am all about bang for the buck. And as it is currently time for me to update my gaming rig well. I am trying to decide to pull the trigger or hold off 2 more months. But this motherboard for me hits the sweetspot and offers me a lot for my dollar, still allows me to add in a separate sound card if I deem so. Throw my intel NIC in and boom, cream machine.Also Ian I really like your reviews. Your getting better all the time. Thank you.
A5 - Wednesday, January 16, 2013 - link
What do you want instead?$80 motherboards are boring and $300+ motherboards are just stupid (so incredibly stupid).
irsmurf - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
I couldn't disagree more. $200 motherboards are the sweet spot between high performance and enthusiast / superfluous.iamkyle - Wednesday, January 16, 2013 - link
Why haven't the award medals been updated? They still use the old Anandtech logo and style!