The Z77 OC Formula employs ASRock’s familiar overclocking presets. However, the firm hired a reputable overclocking guru to develop this board’s settings beyond those of previously-reviewed models. The top overclock, Stage 11, uses a 50x CPU multiplier and 1.45 V. Each step down drops around 1x from the multiplier and 0.05 V from the CPU core.

Generic overclocking profiles are designed to support a broad range of CPU samples, but some cores are inherently better than average. We were able to reach 4.70 GHz at 1.25 V, though the actual setting needed to get us that voltage was 1.240 V.



Most disconcerting was that we needed to set our DRAM to 1.61 V in order to reach its rated 1.65V setting. We’ve noticed that motherboards have been getting better at memory overclocking, and that voltage creep appears to be part of this trend. Even at the lower voltage setting, we were able to slightly exceed our memory’s DDR3-2666 rating.


A full set of primary and secondary memory timings are available for tweaking, along with clock skew controls.

The most unusual setting we found in the Z77 OC Formula UEFI was ASRock Dehumidifier. This feature simply wakes the computer from S3/S4 states periodically to warm the hardware up and prevent the collection of moisture, with user-defined waking and sleeping times.

The Z77 OC Formula provides ten storage registers for custom BIOS configurations, allowing users to experiment with various overclocking techniques and return to previous versions. Though its competitors offer similar functionality, we’ve never seen (nor needed) this many user profiles.
- Intel's Mainstream Z77 Express Goes High-End
- Panther Point's Thunderbolt Connection
- ASRock Z77 OC Formula
- Z77 OC Formula Software
- Z77 OC Formula Firmware
- Asus Sabertooth Z77
- Sabertooth Z77 Software
- Sabertooth Z77 Firmware
- ECS "Golden Board" Z77H2-AX
- Z77H2-AX Software
- Z77H2-AX Firmware
- Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UP5 TH
- GA-Z77X-UP5 TH Software
- GA-Z77X-UP5 TH Firmware
- Intel DZ77RE-75K
- DZ77RE-75K Software And Firmware
- MSI Z77A-GD80
- Z77A-GD80 Software
- Z77A-GD80 Firmware
- Test Settings And Compatibility
- Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11
- Benchmark Results: PCMark And SiSoftware Sandra
- Power And Heat
- Overclocking
- Picking The Right High-End Z77 Board
"Six $220-280 Z77 Express-Based Motherboards, Reviewed"
Also, the time taken to show the windows loading screen/ BIOS page..
you really liked the black/grey dimms and PCI slots of the gigabyte better than the blue/black of the MSI!
Andrew Ku tests drive controllers. I'm trying to get him to "write the book" on controller performance, since dozens of boards use only a few different controllers. As for testing things like Z77 controller performance on board A vs Z77 controller performance on board B, it's a waste of time unless something is broken. So the article looked for "broken stuff". See the red bar on the first chart:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/z77x-up5-th-z77a-gd80-z77-oc-formula,3305-22.html
With nothing broken, there's no excuse to test the Z77 controller six times. Back to me begging Andrew Ku for a comprehensive comparison of every SATA controller currently available on mainstream-brand enthusiast boards.
This allows ocer's to achieve higher overclocks while still retaining the power saving functions, instead of being forced to either reduce the overclock, or be forced to run high voltage 24/7.
MSI doesn't have this key feature.
Overclocking the BLCK is very unlikely to cause any damage, it's just likely to not give much of a stable overclock.
And as much as I like ASRock, I realy wish they'd put more PWM headers on their boards.
On a side note, in a future I would love to see a comparison including boards like the Z77X-UP7 from Gigabyte, haven't got a chance to see that one in action
The problem isn't the review, the problem is that only two people didn't realize that the performance is supposed to be identical. Those two people are you, and the person who gave you the "thumbs up".