ASRock Z87M OC Formula Review: mATX OC at $190
by Ian Cutress on August 14, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Haswell
- 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
| 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 MSI Z77A-GD65 Gaming |
| 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.
Being a smaller board with a reasonable power delivery designed for OC, it is not surprising that the Z87M OC Formula performs well, particularly during full CPU loading where it sups a miniscule 125W.
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.
The Z87M OC Formula carries on the trend from its bigger brother, by coming in less than ten seconds in our boot time test.
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Pessimism - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Who overclocks anymore? Better off to just save your money and buy the next CPU up IMO.Horza - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
So if I buy a 4770k and overclock it to 4.5hgz (kind of the point with the K series) what's your advice?Overclocking is an easy way to get some free performance and can be a bit of fun at the same time.
Pessimism - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Since you're already at the top end for desktop parts, my advice would depend on what task you perform that saturated the 4770K at stock speeds.RealiBrad - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
So if I'm a gamer, its better for me to buy an I7 over an I5, even though I can get an I5 and OC it past the base performance of any I7.Why?
Pessimism - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
You will spend more on the rest of the computer to do it than if you had bought the i7 in the first place. You will also spend more on electricity to power your PC. Yes you will gain a little CPU capacity over a stock i7, I can't deny that. However you haven't provided any example of an everyday gaming or computing scenario that saturates an i7 and justifies all the extra expense, energy consumption and hassle. Don't get me wrong, I was clocking the snot out of a 2500 Barton back in the day like everyone else, I just think the cost/benefit ratio isn't there anymore when you look at how far hardware is past software right now.karasaj - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Starcraft II. I can bring my 4.6ghz 4670k to its knees in real world scenarios if I want too. That wasn't hard :Pkarasaj - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Real world scenarios being team games and intense 1v1's.owan - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
"All the extra expense"... how much do you think it costs? With an unlocked multiplier on the CPU's, its quite easy to overclock and doesn't incur much added expense. Any halfway decent motherboard that has the features you want on it is going to be fully capable of overclocking quite a bit anyway. The electricity difference is going to still be there, but is probably fairly small.. Maybe 20-30W ? With TDP's on the Intel chips these days, it really doesn't take a big cooler to cool them, even if overclocked. A CM Hyper 212+ can be bought for something like $20 and does the job really well. Lots of people would be buying an HSF capable of handling the additional heat anyway. You could easily build a rig capable of overclocking for less than it would cost to jump to a high-end i7 and get equal or better performance.RealiBrad - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
So if I'm building a new system, and the game I'm likely to play will have a cpu bottleneck with an i5-4670, its cheaper for me to spend more on upgrading to a locked i7-4770 for $90 more and get a few frames increase at best? Why would it not be better to take that same $90 and get a i5-4670k and a mobo that can adjust the multiplier? If an i5 is bottlenecked then getting any locked i7 will do nothing. Its far better to get an unlocked i5 and OC it to reduce the bottle neck. yes, the mobo will cost a little more, but the jump from an i5 to an i7 is still more expensive than getting a i5 k and mobo.IanCutress - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
It depends what you do. If you overclock and get another 25% performance, that enables you to complete 5 tasks in the same time as 4. If the reward for doing that task is more than the cost of the electricity, then it's a no brainer. This is particularly relevant in the financial industries, where every millisecond counts, or for careers that are throughput limited.That's just for workloads - gamers are often not worried about the cost of electricity when it comes to pure performance, and overclocking to increase single core performance, particularly in games like Civilization V that respond well to overclocking (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6985/choosing-a-gami... result in a rise of FPS.
There is also the aspect of competitive overclockers, who see it as a challenge to out-overclock their competitors. As mentioned in the review, this is one of the target groups for OC-oriented motherboards, and the motherboard needs to have features to appeal to this crowd.
Just because you do not overclock anymore does not mean that the activity is dead/no longer useful. It is alive and kicking - the amount of pre-overclocked systems on sale today is just one prong of this.
Ian