ASRock Z87 OC Formula Review
Published by Marc Büchel on 27.08.13Conclusion
| Allgemein | + | - | |
| The first
impression the OC Formula from ASRock makes us want more. Like with the
predecessor we like the individual design of this board, which actually isn't that
easy to achieve anymore. Since ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI and co finally found
out that people, especially in the western part of this world, prefer
simple and decent color designs, quite a lot of color combinations have
already been chosen. The OC Formula is a motherboard that really targets extreme overclockers, but nevertheless ASRock succeeded in crafting a product that is equally attractive to the guys handling LN2 or watercooling/aircooling setups. Both worlds will be able to squeeze maximum out of their systems using this board. Apart from overclockers also gamers and modders will enjoy this board, since there is a beefed up audio solution and the chipset can be integrated into a custom water cooling loop. |
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Design - PCI-Express 3.0 Slots - 10x SATA3 (6Gbps) - Chipset Watercooling - Audio |
- 40 millimeter fan to cool power design | |
| Layout | + | - | |
|
Basically the ASRock OC Formula's Layout has been very well thought. Once more practical are the angled SATA connectors as well as the power- and reset-buttons. There is also a debug display, which in this case features a high resolution display. Even the placement of the PCI-Express x16 is well chosen. There is a total of four of these slots and between two slots there is always an empty slot. We think this is a good number of PCI Express x16 slots for a overclocking/gaming motherboard altough most gamers will never use four graphics cards in their build. But still it leaves you with plenty of options if you want to plug in other expansion cards. Overclockers will also like the voltage readouts and we're quite sure overclockers will really enjoy the conformal coating layer, which basically makes this board waterproof. |
-
Angled SATA
connectors
- Power/Reset-Button onboard - Debug display - Space around the CPU socket - Voltage readouts - Watercooling - OC Buttons - Conformal Coating |
||
| Performance | + | - | |
| Let's first have closer look at overall 3D performance as well as 2D performance. Calcualting the average of all 3D and 2D benchmarks we ran, we see that this board ranks in the center span in both cases. Overall we would like this board to be a bit faster, but manufacturers do have a tendency to ship overclocking motherboards with lose memory subtimings, which helps improving memory compatibility. In case of overclocking this certainly makes sense. On another note we had a look at power consumption and in this case we clearly see that we have a board here that has been equipped with many additional chips, which in the end means, that power consumption is quite high. | -
3DMark FireStrike Physics - Sleeping Dogs low |
- 3DMark Vantage CPU - PCMark 07 - Super Pi 32M |
|
| Overclocking / BIOS | + | - | |
| As we meanwhile expect from ASRock you get a BIOS which offers more than plenty of features. Overclockers will be happy that they can manipulate virtually everything they can possibly think of. Apart from that there are practial presets, which help unexperienced users achieve decent results more quickly. Apart from that we didn't like the design of the BIOS. We would really love to see ASRock overwork it completely and give it much more decent looks. | - Sheer amount of options | - Design | |
| Recommendation | + | - | |
| Should you be looking for a high-end overclocking motherboard, then the ASRock Z87 OC Formula is a great choice, but obviously you should have the necessary cash. | -
Overclocking - Enthusiast - Gaming |
||
| Rating | |||
| We give the ASRock Z87 OC Formula very good 4 out of 5 stars. | |||
Author: m.buechel@ocaholic.ch
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ASUS Z87-Deluxe Review
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