Overclocking - The Hardware

With the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 in the test bench, it's pretty clear that ASRock had the foresight to see that the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 might be used for a bit of benchmarking. Onboard Power and RESET switches are, for that particular reason, clearly located at the board's bottom edge, and there is a dual-digit POST display and a USB port right next to those—handy for diagnosing boot problems and getting the board flashed to run with the latest BIOS.


The BIOS chip itself sits in a socket, which allows users to replace the chip should they need to, although I found the boot recovery options on the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 to be pretty good, especially with the ClearCMOS button on the board's Rear I/O section. Fan control, temperature, and voltage monitoring are provided by the high-end Nuvoton Super I/O pictured above.


The VRM of the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 is composed of ten phases for the CPU itself, with separate dual phases for the iGPU. All the CPU phases are managed by the Intersil ISL6367. The DIMM VRM is a dual-phase design, which is more than enough to push all four slots to high speeds.


The coolers on the ASRock Z77 Extreme11 are pretty beefy. Both are made out of large, machined pieces of metal that have been anodized in black to match the esthetics of the ASRock Z77 Extreme11. The PCH cooler makes use of two thermal pads to contact the Z77 Express PCH and the LSI SAS controller, making their removal to install aftermarket cooling truly easy. A similar pad also sits over the board's MOSFET's to help cool them down. The PLX PEX8747 is stuck to the cooler through a fairly standard dry paste that made the removal of that cooler a bit more difficult. The provided coolers are more than enough for most users, but seeing ASRock take users that remove these coolers into account by mounting things with easy-to-remove screws and thermal pads only adds to the pleasure of setting this board up with a highly overlocked and watercooled build.