Six $160-220 Z77 Motherboards, Benchmarked And Reviewed

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Combining the newest features with moderate expandability, Intel’s mainstream platforms provide high value to most gaming and overclocking enthusiasts. We compare six examples with Z77 Express to find the best features, overclocking, and efficiency.

Z77 Extreme6 Firmware

The Z77 Extreme6 pushes a solid 4.77 GHz from our Core i7-3770K at 1.30 V, using a 101.4 MHz base clock and 47x core multiplier.

ASRock’s current OC Tweaker menu also puts XMP configuration on its main page, along with power limit adjustments. Shown at DDR3-2704, the board pushed our memory to a still-respectable DDR3-2700 with complete stability.

All significant voltage controls are found further down the main menu, just above the Z77 Extreme6’s three user profile firmware configuration storage options.

A separate DRAM Configuration submenu provides primary, secondary, and tertiary timings. Light-colored menus offer direct control, while dark menus much be switched from Auto to Manual to reveal a hidden settings menu.

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Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom
Thomas Soderstrom is a Senior Staff Editor at Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews cases, cooling, memory and motherboards.