GIGABYTE Z87X-OC Review: Overclocking Oriented Orange at $200
by Ian Cutress on October 11, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Gigabyte
- Z87
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our test bed:
Thank you to OCZ for providing us with 1250W Gold Power Supplies.
Thank you to G.Skill for providing us with memory kits.
Thank you to Corsair for providing us with an AX1200i PSU, Corsair H80i CLC and 16GB 2400C10 memory.
Thank you to ASUS for providing us with the AMD GPUs and some IO Testing kit.
Thank you to ECS for providing us with the NVIDIA GPUs.
Thank you to Rosewill for providing us with the 500W Platinum Power Supply for mITX testing, BlackHawk Ultra, and 1600W Hercules PSU for extreme dual CPU + quad GPU testing, and RK-9100 keyboards.
Thank you to ASRock for providing us with the 802.11ac wireless router for testing.
Test Setup
| Test Setup | |
| Processor |
Intel Core i7-4770K Retail 4 Cores, 8 Threads, 3.5 GHz (3.9 GHz Turbo) |
| Motherboards |
ASRock Z87 Extreme6/AC ASRock Z87 OC Formula/AC ASRock Z87M OC Formula ASUS Z87-Pro Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H Gigabyte Z87X-OC MSI Z87-GD65 Gaming MSI Z87 XPower MSI Z87I |
| Cooling |
Corsair H80i Thermalright TRUE Copper |
| Power Supply |
OCZ 1250W Gold ZX Series Corsair AX1200i Platinum PSU |
| Memory |
GSkill TridentX 4x4 GB DDR3-2400 10-12-12 Kit Corsair Vengeance Pro 2x8 GB DDR3 2400 10-12-12 Kit |
| Memory Settings | XMP (2400 10-12-12) |
| Video Cards |
ASUS HD7970 3GB ECS GTX 580 1536MB |
| Video Drivers |
Catalyst 13.1 NVIDIA Drivers 310.90 WHQL |
| Hard Drive | OCZ Vertex 3 256GB |
| Optical Drive | LG GH22NS50 |
| Case | Open Test Bed |
| Operating System | Windows 7 64-bit |
| USB 2/3 Testing | OCZ Vertex 3 240GB with SATA->USB Adaptor |
| WiFi Testing | D-Link DIR-865L 802.11ac Dual Band Router |
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.
No big shocks from the GIGABYTE in power consumption, falling in the batter half of the field and under 500W for our dual GPU gaming test.
Windows 7 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 7 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.
POST time for the Z87X-OC is a little longer than I would have liked (ideally we prefer under 12 seconds). I would have said that the additional USB 3.0 controllers might have been to blame, but the stripped boot option which disables these controllers only saved 2/3 of a second. However the numbers do coincide with a fair number of other GIGABYTE boards, including the Z77X-UP7.
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IanCutress - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
With the last few generations, it's always been about 'have you got a good chip?'. A good OC chip of Ivy (or Sandy) has always been better than a bad chip this gen, and sometimes there isn't the certainty of getting a good chip this time around. That means the only jumps where it makes sense is when a bad chip in the newest gen beats your good chip. Each gen seems to give a 200-500 MHz IPC advantage (at 4GHz) depending on the CPU benchmark test (less in gaming), and you need to decide when that jump takes place if you're on the cutting edge of performance.But if you had a bad chip/ran at stock, then perhaps every two generations it makes sense to upgrade due to the IPC benefits. There are some pretty awesome low power chips this generation for example.
iTzSnypah - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
I guarantee you that setting your Uncore to x34/35 will make the chip require less Vcore to be stable at any frequency.DanNeely - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
Another use for the on board USB2 ports would be a thumbdrive to store bitlocker full disk encryption keys since the board doesn't appear to include a TPM keystore. Using an external USB port for that strikes me as mildly dangerous since it would be easy for someone to accidentally borrow the drive for something else.Nirvanaosc - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
Hi everyone,I've read a lot of reviews already and most of the time I feel that the given motherboard is not enough or too much for what I need.
What would be the best for a day-to-day PC with a 4670K OCed and single GPU? This motherboard looks impressive but I think it's overkill for that purpose.
just4U - Monday, October 14, 2013 - link
It's different for everyone.. For me right now it's the G1 Sniper M5. While Anandtech has mentioned it I don't believe they've reviewed one yet.. I like the onboard sound/lan options which are not the generic Realtek stuff and tend to go matx.. but still want a board that's a cut above.. Asus also makes something similar in their Maximus6 Gene.vailr - Friday, October 11, 2013 - link
Did your board include the updated version Intel C2 chipset? And: did Gigabyte change the board version to 1.1, in order to indicate the presence of the updated C2 chipset? The review's photo shows board version 1.0.HardwareDufus - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
I really appreciate the inclusión of 2 HDMI ports instead of a DVI. I would love to find a Premium mini-ITX board that offered 2 HDMI ports.samsp99 - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
Does the audio codec really make that much of a difference these days? An old receiver for d2a, or a headphone amp like a fiio e10 solve that deficiency pretty well.CatheyBarrett48 - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
First time i trusted an online job add and managed to make 90$ in 5 hours... ℰxit35.comgenzai - Saturday, October 12, 2013 - link
I'm not sure what you mean by "for some reason only two of the chipset USB 3.0 ports are used. There are two USB 3.0 hubs for another eight USB 3.0 ports, and it seems..."If they used all 6 PCH SATA ports and put the FlexIO into PCIe, then they have 4 USB 3.0 ports to work with. 2 of those are routed directly to a FP header and then the other 2 each go to 4 port hubs to give another FP header and 6 rear ports. Seems perfectly logical and maximizes the available configuration.
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