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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kmmatney - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
In the gaming benchmarks the ASRock Extreme4, $100 cheaper, gets the same result, even after the massive overclock on this board. While the overclocking is impressive, you can get a decent overclock with any cheap Z77 motherboard, and spend the difference in price on a better on a better video card, or the next grade of processor.Onus - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
I'd like to pass along my own experience with ASRock Customer Support. Cutting to the chase, it was entirely positive. I had obtained the review sample of an ASRock board from another site, which meant there was no warranty coverage. Unfortunately, the board died in the middle of a game. CPU temps were good, and I'd not [yet] had any reason to OC. Although I'd kept it at stock, it was a mini-ITX in a PC-Q08R, and the presence of a HD7870 in the build may have allowed something on the board to overheat, despite the pair of case fans. Anyway, I initiated an RMA request, fully explaining this situation, not trying to avoid their $50 service fee for out-of-warranty products. All correspondence was by email, and was handled quickly, with same or next day (if late) responses. I did pay the fee, but the RMA was handled quickly, and the new board is now just waiting for a brain (I used the original i5-3570K CPU in another build).watersb - Thursday, January 17, 2013 - link
Ian, you are a MOTHERBOARD MADMAN!!! I can't keep up, but I try anyway.Sincere THANKS for these recent reviews. Wow.
The Magpie - Friday, January 18, 2013 - link
I like this board. In fact I like ASRock more and more. I remember the old days when their entire lineup was silly looking, bad performing boards. Those days are gone now and that is great. But that is not the point of this comment.The point is to say that I'm feeling a bit offended by having to read through the same bloody lines, once at the very beginning, and again at the very end of the article. Great technical knowledge Ian, but have some kind of respect for yourself and your work, and don't copy\paste the same lines from the first to the last page. What happened, ran out of things to say? Embarrassing and outrageous for someone who takes the time to read through your entire piece.
waldojim42 - Sunday, January 20, 2013 - link
I see that you are finally testing for some idea of sound quality, and I am quite grateful, but why aren't we hammering on these companies over missing features here? I care about one thing and one thing only; Dolby Digital Live encoding. I don't see why I should be forced to by a $150 Creative labs POS just so I can use the fiber connection for my 5.1 audio.This is a feature that was available as far back as the Nvidia Nforce 2 for crying out loud! Why is this not standard on $200+ motherboards? It cannot be that difficult, and I am sure there are more than a few gamers out there that would be happy to see this.
As of right now, the ONLY motherboard on my radar is the Gigabyte Sniper 3. Sadly, they used a Creative chipset to get the job done, but at least it is built into the board.
Anand, could you possibly reach out to these manufacturers and get them to understand people want this? The worst part, is that it is quite obvious there is very little in licensing costs involved, if Creative is anything to go by ($5 to get DDL on your current product!) and that is money well spent.
IanCutress - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
Would you be interested in B75 with a Creative chip? Drop me an email with specifics. I'm not an audio nut (tone deaf too), but I can pass on some info :)Ian
jimmyzaas - Tuesday, January 22, 2013 - link
I was very close to picking up the Z77 OC Formula. The only thing that I didn't like was that tiny fan for the VRM. I've had an Abit board before with the southbridge fan and about 2 years in, it started to get louder and louder until all you hear is grinding noise. Issue was that whole assembly was proprietary and replacing the fan means replacing the entire heatsink. Since then, I've vowed not to get any mobo that needed a fan of any kind.My question is.. do the VRMs get that hot that they require active cooling? I mean no other boards, including that monster Gigabyte UD7 needed fans? Or is it just for show.. if so, it is a retarded move. Second question, is it like a standard 40mm fan that can be replaced easily? If not, is the board still stable with NO fan attached.
To the poster above wondering about the Sniper board.. I have it and that audio is the best I've ever had from a motherboard. I have a Gigabyte board with Realtek 889 audio and the Core3D just crushes it in every way. Now I haven't heard Realtek 898 on my sound system, so I can't compare.. but I'm really blown away by the sound. Not really impressed by Killer NIC though.
IanCutress - Friday, January 25, 2013 - link
The VRM fan is predominantly there in case (a) low air flow situation, like a closed-loop liquid cooler, or (b) hot ambient climate. You are perfectly justified in taking the connector out if neither of those apply to you. VRMs during normal stock usage are easily cooled by cross air flow, but as you start hitting 4.8 GHz+, they might start kicking out some heat if you are constantly hammering the CPU with loads. A small 40mm fan probably doesn't do much in that case, but it does something.With regard to the UP7, they use IR3550s, which are designed to pump out less heat for the same power - and there's 32 of them, so the heat generated is spread around such that the long extended heatsink can take care of everything.
Ian