Due to the precarious state of Asrock’s Hyper-OC motherboards, and strong opposition from Intel, it appeared for a long time that these boards would never be released. Asrock has now released some of them, at least, but it may be for just a short time.
What Is Hyper-OC Again?
If you haven’t been keeping up on the Hyper OC boards, you might think they are just your run of the mill motherboards, but they actually have special overclocking features. The Hyper-OC series is comprised entirely of non-Z170 chipsets that typically cannot overclock. By equipping these boards with third-party clock generators, however, Asrock was able to give them BCLK overclocking features that only Z170 boards typically possess.
Thanks to the third-party clock generator, these boards are also able to overclock non-K Skylake CPUs. With the exception of a handful of Z170 motherboards, this is something that only the Hyper-OC series of motherboards can do. The few Z170 boards that can BCLK OC non-K CPUs can do so only with one outdated BIOS revision. This leaves the Hyper-OC boards as the best option for anyone who wants to overclock a non-K Skylake CPU.
Potentially Limited Availability
For now, two of these motherboards are available on Newegg and from other online retailers. The Fatal1ty Gaming H170 Performance/Hyper is priced at $125.99, but it is currently on sale for $95.99 after a mail-in-rebate from Newegg. The Fatal1ty B150 Gaming K4/Hyper is somewhat less expensive at $115.99, and it is also on sale at Newegg for $90.99 after mail-in-rebate.
We have discussed both of these boards before, so for more in depth information on them, check out our other articles on the Hyper-OC series.
Although these boards are available now, they could be removed from the market in the near future. Intel has been attempting to stop Asrock from manufacturing motherboards with this feature for several months now. At one point, Asrock called its line of non-Z170 BCLK OC motherboards the “Sky OC” series, but it was forced to cancel that product line. It later reintroduced the Sky OC series boards rebranded as the Hyper-OC series, but as Intel has intervened with this product line before, it is quite likely to do so again.
Given the strong opposition from Intel, it's possible that Asrock will be forced to discontinue the Hyper-OC product line. If Asrock manages to keep the Hyper-OC boards on the market, however, we will likely see several more of them in the near future.
| Asrock Hyper OC Motherboards | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Fatal1ty H170 Performance/Hyper | H170 Pro4/Hyper | Fatal1ty B150 Gaming K4/Hyper | B150A-X1/Hyper | B150M Pro4/Hyper | H110-DS/Hyper |
| Chipset | H170 | H170 | B150 | B150 | B150 | H110 |
| RAM Slots | 4 x DDR4 | 4 x DDR4 | 4 x DDR4 | 4 x DDR4 | 4 x DDR4 | 2 x DDR4 |
| PCI E | PCI-E x 16PCI-E x 43 x PCI-E x 1 | PCI-E x 16PCI-E x 43 x PCI-E x 1 | PCI-E x 16PCI-E x 43 x PCI-E x 1 | PCI-E x 16PCI-E x 43 x PCI-E x 1 | PCI-E x 16PCI-E x 42 x PCI-E x 1 | PCI-E x 16PCI-E x 1 |
| Storage | Ultra M.26 x SATA-III | Ultra M.24 x SATA-III | 6 x SATA-III | Ultra M.26 x SATA-III | Ultra M.26 x SATA-III | 4 x SATA-III |
| RAID Support | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| USB | 7 x USB 3.0 Type-AUSB 3.0 Type-C6 x USB 2.0 | 8 x USB 3.0 Type-A4 x USB 2.0 | 6 x USB 3.0 Type-A6 x USB 2.0 | 6 x USB 3.0 Type-A6 x USB 2.0 | 6 x USB 3.0 Type-A2 x USB 2.0 | 4 x USB 3.0 Type-A8 x USB 2.0 |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1150 + Purity Sound 3 | Realtek ALC892 | Realtek ALC1150 + Purity Sound 3 | Realtek ALC892 | Realtek ALC892 | Realtek ALC887 |
| LAN | Intel i219V | Intel i219V | Killer E2400 | Intel i219V | Intel i219V | Realtek RTL8111GR |
| Availability | N/A | July 2016 | N/A | N/A | July 2016 | July 2016 |
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