Taiwan-based Elmor Labs made an unofficial successor for the Asus ROG Overclocking Panel, giving extreme overclockers an updated and cleaner easier-to-access panel in a single device. This OC panel allows basic controls and certain tweaks such as adjusting voltage, monitoring temperatures, and easy access to power, force reset, booting to safe mode, and other options such as Slow Mode. It's a handy little tool to do BIOS level tweaks on the fly. This effectively continues Asus' legacy, as it seems to have discontinued its own OC Panel that connected to its in-house OC header — a header that's still provided on certain extreme overclocking specialist motherboards.
Origins of the Asus OC Panel
Asus had its ROG OC panel for motherboards like the Intel X99-based Asus ROG Rampage V Extreme, Intel Z87-based Maximus VI Impact/ Hero/ Gene, Intel X79-based Rampage IV Black Edition and the Z97-based Maximus VII Ranger/ Impract/ Hero/ Gene/ Formula range of motherboards. The last firmware update for the ROG OC panel was in June 2016. This used Asus ROG's in-house developed OC header, which gave this device the ability to monitor and tweak minor changes on the fly. It also included a 5.25" bay display.
It became outdated as 5.25" bays are no longer available on most modern cases. Asus still provides the same header on extreme overclocking specialist ROG motherboards, but the ROG OC panel hasn't seen further updates and there's no newer version for extreme overclocking enthusiasts. Granted, this represents a micro-niche with a handful of veterans globally whose contributions are regularly implemented for motherboard and graphics card development.
Still, Elmor Labs has stepped in to fill the gap with this all-in-one device for tweaking, controlling, and real-time monitoring purposes using the Asus header.
ASUS ROG Z790 Maximus Apex Encore is one recent motherboard with an OCP header that was used to showcase the function of this product during its prototype stage. Elmor Labs used their OC panel prototype to tweak their overclocks on the fly while balancing liquid nitrogen flow so as to not trigger the infamous Intel's 'Cold Boot' bug. It recorded a CPU-Z validation using the Intel Core-i9 14900KF overclocked to 9.043 GHz in October.
Fast forward to December, and we now have a retail product. There are no ROG aesthetics, yet it has all the functions, headers, and diagnostics enthusiasts could need in such a device. While this tool won't make you an expert overclocker at the drop of a fan, it's a convenient device for fine tweaking and real-time monitoring.
Elmor Labs has made many specialist products for the DIY extreme overclocking enthusiast space, but this tool picks up where Asus left off. The pricing of the Elmor Labs OC Panel is yet to be disclosed at the time of writing.
Of course, credit partially goes to the Asus ROG team as this tool wouldn't have been possible had the OCP header been discontinued in the post-Z97 chipset days. It would be even better if an open-source standard could be developed and updated that involved more brands, overclockers, and enthusiasts, but you know what they say about standards.
