Z87 Extreme4 Firmware
ASRock changed little in the firmware transition from Z87 Extreme6 to Z87 Extreme4, keeping all of its pre-defined overclocks in place. That made it easy for us to start with its Turbo 4.4 GHz setting and manipulate other settings from there.
A top clock rate of 4.7 GHz at our old 1.3 V setting was impressive, though we’ve since found that AVX-heavy tests push our CPU to its thermal limits at that voltage. Retesting at 1.25 V was successful at 4.6 GHz.
Our DDR3-3000 kit from G.Skill failed to operate at its specified values on this board, though we increased the BCLK setting enough to push a 2666 MT/s data rate to 2746 MT/s.
ASRock compensates high memory ratios with beyond-spec voltage, which we'd prefer not to see. Dropping to the DDR3-2666 memory setting allowed us to reach an actual 1.65 V at a fairly reasonable 1.635 V setting.
Primary, secondary, and tertiary memory timings can be individually changed from automatic to manual mode, allowing users to configure familiar values.