ASRock includes several handy integrated overclocking profiles, including 4.6 and 4.4 GHz. The lower of those two profiles worked most of the time, switching core voltage between 1.05 and 1.28 V under various loads. That would have been perfect, except that the system did occasionally (and rarely) crash. We decided to use manual settings to achieve similar results, without any occasional instability.

Our memory willingly complied with an increase from its standard 1,600 MT/s data rate to DDR3-2133. Further down the BIOS page, we set a fixed CPU core of 1.28 V.

When paired with the Core i5-3570K CPU, the Z77 Extreme4’s “Level 1” Load-Line Calibration provided an extremely stable voltage range between the set 1.28 and a maximum of 1.296 V. Keeping the processor below 1.30 V provides the added insurance of longevity.

We were actually able to hold 4.5 GHz for extended benchmarking sessions, without overheating, but again faced occasional and almost mysterious instability. Unwilling to push past 1.30 V, we settled for 4.40 GHz.

We would have expected low-profile 1.35 V DIMMS to get hot at 1.60 V, but Crucial’s Ballistix Tactical LP had no such issues. That extra voltage helped us retain stock 9-9-9-24 timings at this 33% overclock, edging out the CAS 10 timings we achieved last quarter using standard-voltage modules at the same DDR3-2133 data rate.
PowerColor’s Tahiti-LE-equipped Radeon HD 7870 reached 1,200 MHz GPU and GDDR5-6400 fairly easily, though we did need to change the maximum fan speed temperature from 90° to 80° Celcius. Running short of time for fine-tuning, we tried adding 50 MHz, only to have one of our games crash.
- Can $1,000 Buy A High-End PC?
- Graphics, CPU, And Motherboard
- DRAM, Storage, And Optical Drive
- Case, Power, And CPU Cooling
- Hardware Installation
- Overclocking
- Test Settings And Benchmarks
- Results: 3DMark And PCMark
- Results: SiSoftware Sandra
- Results: Battlefield 3 And F1 2012
- Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim And StarCraft II
- Results: Audio And Video Encoding
- Results: Adobe Creative Suite
- Results: Productivity
- Results: File Compression
- Power, Heat, And Efficiency
- Could We Have A Value Winner At $1,000?


Now instead of insults I can tell people "Don't be a stoogie". Thanks!
Otherwise, not much wriggle room here. Nice build!
Using the drive performance measurement to reflect program load times means loading all the programs on the SSD. And that explains why SSD capacity wasn't sacrificed to make more room in the budget for an HDD.
Looking from another perspective, these two builds, with two different builders, with $200 difference, just show(again) how much better price/performance wise are Intel CPU's and AMD GPU's.
I see your point, but I'd rather see slower game loads and better FPS , than faster game loads and lower FPS. And, the OS is accelerated in both cases anyway.
But hey, I'm on board with the 7870 Myst Edition CrossFire suggestion...I'll see if we can make it happen!
I think theres something to be said about the value at above $1000 though.. past this price range, people really start caring about having a nice case, nice cooler, etc that are more than just performance but aesthetics too.
Most likely they'd end up with a similar ugly case that no one would really want, possibly the same memory and hard disk, but the heart of the system would always be different.
Besides, people love rivalries. Sure, AMD processors blow in absolute performance, but they're cheap, and maybe the video card can save the day against the evil Intel/NVIDIA empires. It's a lot more interesting than testing two essentially identical machines, except for the hard disk.
Do it for different price ranges, and it might even be more competitive. $500, $750, and $1000 might not all have the same winner.
Pair a AMD CPU with a Nvidia GPU. So its expensive and may not perform as well.
(I will be extremely happy if this build performs well)