ASRock Z77 OC Formula Intel LGA 1155

[cadaveca]

Like a high-priced premium sports car, the ASRock Z77 OC Formula races to the finish line, equipped with XFast speed. Bred with nothing other in mind than breaking clock limits while retaining full stability, ASRock has enrolled Nick Shih, to help them design one of the best overclocking-centric products.

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[HumanSmoke]

OK, Carson Kressley...what have you done with the regular reviewer?
A conclusion banging on about the colour scheme?....really?

Any card with a black PCB/non clashing CPU cooler/black or yellow heatspreader RAM would ( I guess) be an ok match colour wise ? (Hang on, I'll just ask my Feng Shui advisor!)..so that should limit the card to pretty much any high-end offering excepting Gigabyte. At least the MSI Lightning owners now have a suitable board to match the yellow accents on their Lightning and 680 PE cards- add in some Crucial Ballistix RAM and you've got an instant Yinzer build*

Personally, I would have thought the Gigabyte Green/Black boards a tougher colour scheme to match...but I didn't take interior design at school, so I stand to be corrected.

*Get a tard rapist to wear the No.7 jersey while playing CoD for the max effect

 

[Quake]

Yes, I also have to agree about completely wrong conclusion and that is on several things...

Color scheme matched by very few other parts on the market today.

Ha? which one uses yellow scheme? If that, you can add this pros to almost all boards

Add-on PCIe power plug cannot provide 3.3 V.

I didn't see anywhere you mention this problem, except here. Only GB have it

Also at the 239$ price, this board is really good. It OCs same if not even better then e.g. MVF, GB UP5... For me, I think you were writing conclusion for the old ASRock brand, not the board itself..

 

[mediasorcerer]

Good read!!


Drew me in all the way through and you wound it up perfectly.
i thought you dished it up quite honestly, without detracting from the boards positive aspects.
i can appreciate that.

 

[dj-electric]

Dave, you be dissin

 

[MyTechAddiction]

Yeah pretty much what other reviewers said.
I don't understand why you were so excited in this review.

 

[badtaylorx]

seems to me, a better clocking cpu would serve you well dave.....

come on intel .....through him a bone

 

[roberto888]

SATA performances are mixed up. SATA 2 shows SATA3 speeds, and backwards.

 

[dj-electric]

Hell, i stabled a 2500K at 5200Mhz on this Mobo with reasonable voltage of 1.42v and temps aswell

 

[cadaveca]

OK, Carson Kressley...what have you done with the regular reviewer?
A conclusion banging on about the colour scheme?....really?

Yeah, i mean..it's yellow. Eww. NO...really. Eww. And then gold caps and gold on the heatsinks? Is it gold..or yellow..or...go l d..o r yel lo ow...it's like a big bee with a gold chain.

Wiz Khalifa:

"Black and Yellow, Black and yellow...."




:shadedshu


I dunno...maybe i'm getting old.

Personally, I would have thought the Gigabyte Green/Black boards a tougher colour scheme to match...but I didn't take interior design at school, so I stand to be corrected.

Green = AMD and nVidia. well, OK, AMD is red now, but still...you can buy green fans, green cables, green cases...yellow...well....yeah, there are parts, but they aren't quite so common.



That's my opinion. You're entitled to your own, too.

I didn't see anywhere you mention this problem, except here. Only GB have it

Yeah, they do. There seems to eb soem trends towards 3.3 V being needed now, perhaps. Multi-GPU use, in and of itself, is really still in it's infancy, and not widely supported, although I personally feel some may want to say otherwise.

I think from this point here on out, yes, this is an issue, and it's one that I will be raising time and again until all board makers do it right.

 

[HumanSmoke]

Yeah, i mean..it's yellow. Eww. NO...really. Eww. And then gold caps and gold on the heatsinks? Is it gold..or yellow..or...go l d..o r yel lo ow...it's like a big bee with a gold chain.

This is you right?

Although that's a lot of gold, in person it's not so overbearing as to be too much gold, but it definitely makes a strong impression

In any case, I'm not sure exactly how much of the gold (or yellow) you're actually likely to see

From a personal PoV, the only colour I even tend to notice is the shit-brown PCB on budget boards- but only because function tends to follow form in many cases. Given that white chassis seem to be making a comeback, it's a pity that the white PCB motherboard hasn't also returned.
As for the review- all good, but a couple of queries and observations;
Asus continue to go against Intel's Turbo Boost spec by going with a "turbo all cores", do they not- and thus gaining incrementally in benches run at stock config ?
Asus (and Gigabyte) tend to filch on BCLK. ASRock and some other vendors keep to the 100MHz specification. Asus AFAIW implement 100.3 as standard. This, allied with the all-core turbo tends to keep Asus boards at the top of most benchmarks graphs.
Would like to see some indications of board stability (either long term or accelerated system "aging"), NIC performance, third-party (non-chipset) port (SATA etc) performance etc.

Anyhow, cheers for the review.

 

[mediasorcerer]

Color scheme is always going to be subjective,[green & gold =shocka!!!] what use is a reviewer if they dont tell it how they see it,
then the consumer misses out on an honest opinion, which may affect there perception of a brand or product in the long run ie, they buy it misinformed ,end up not happy, and loose loyalty to a brand because of that, and the company making the product misses out on an honest appraisal and feedback, which may negatively impact how they develop a product over generations, or how they cater to consumers perceived needs, so i believe its vital for a good review to be as honest as possible, so long as its presented with some discretion of course, its a win/win for consumer and product maker,
thats why i said, glad he didnt seem to piss in anyones pocket when i read the piece.

 

[HammerON]

Nice review as always Dave

I did notice that you used the word "butting":
"I was so eager to get things going, excited by what I saw looking the board over and butting it up for the first time,"

 

[Quake]

Yeah, they do. There seems to eb soem trends towards 3.3 V being needed now, perhaps. Multi-GPU use, in and of itself, is really still in it's infancy, and not widely supported, although I personally feel some may want to say otherwise.

I think from this point here on out, yes, this is an issue, and it's one that I will be raising time and again until all board makers do it right.

I don't see a reason to mention that on this platform as only one PCI-E x16 is full speed and using 3-Way SLI/CFire would mean a lot of perf lost due to the limits of PCI-E slots, so I don't think there would be many people running 3-Way where you MIGHT be needing 3.3v plug...

I think that you as a reviewer should be objective and not mentioning things you personally like/dislike which have almost nothing to do in reality..

I personally always read TPU reviews and I find them to be the most accurate ones, so don't think I'm some kind of hater..

 

[cadaveca]

This is you right?

In any case, I'm not sure exactly how much of the gold (or yellow) you're actually likely to see
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/ASRock/Z77_OC_Formula/images/install_a_small.jpg

From a personal PoV, the only colour I even tend to notice is the shit-brown PCB on budget boards- but only because function tends to follow form in many cases. Given that white chassis seem to be making a comeback, it's a pity that the white PCB motherboard hasn't also returned.
As for the review- all good, but a couple of queries and observations;
Asus continue to go against Intel's Turbo Boost spec by going with a "turbo all cores", do they not- and thus gaining incrementally in benches run at stock config ?
Asus (and Gigabyte) tend to filch on BCLK. ASRock and some other vendors keep to the 100MHz specification. Asus AFAIW implement 100.3 as standard. This, allied with the all-core turbo tends to keep Asus boards at the top of most benchmarks graphs.
Would like to see some indications of board stability (either long term or accelerated system "aging"), NIC performance, third-party (non-chipset) port (SATA etc) performance etc.

Anyhow, cheers for the review.

As to the turbo things..yes, and I do mention such things when they do. Hence me taking OC benchmarks, and filling them all out with OC clocks...as that's when all things are "even". The true comparison in scores and such should be seen here, but of course, a good third of our readers do not OC, going by a recent poll, so I gotta cover what they will see as well.


As to my colour comments...either all gold..or all yellow..fine. Both? Get the !@#$% out of here. should have taken the gold off of the heatsink, or made all the yellow plastics gold.


See, there's not much that can really seperate a board form another, but color is what first catches the eye. Yes, I purposely installed a bunch of stuff to hide al lthat.

I don't see a reason to mention that on this platform as only one PCI-E x16 is full speed and using 3-Way SLI/CFire would mean a lot of perf lost due to the limits of PCI-E slots, so I don't think there would be many people running 3-Way where you MIGHT be needing 3.3v plug...

I think that you as a reviewer should be objective and not mentioning things you personally like/dislike which have almost nothing to do in reality..

I personally always read TPU reviews and I find them to be the most accurate ones, so don't think I'm some kind of hater..

I need to start somewhere...her eit is. There are 3 full x16 slots, and they market the board as being tri-fire capable. Maybe not many users will use it like that, but then, why have a plug at all, when mayn X79 boards make due without?

It's hipocritical to put one where you never intend it to be used...so why is it there? to add cost? For looks?

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

Cool thanks Dave...like what I see and hear from ASRock lately and in fact just ordered their Z77 Mini-ITX today (VT-d support for future purposes was one tipping point).

Yeah color scheme is a bit funky...though, yes, such is definitely subjective. Hey though if you are a Steelers or Bruins or Iowa Hawkeyes fan this is definitely the board for you, man!

 

[Frogger]

Looks like it might be time to look @ Asrock for a Z77 board.

you really do try harder Thanks Dave!! as always great copy

 

[DOM]

Nice write up

I also just got this board for my bench rig but yet to test it on ln2

but im running it on the ss with my de lid cpu since it runs better on the ss then my bench chip XD

 

[ChaoticG8R]

I don't see a reason to mention that on this platform as only one PCI-E x16 is full speed and using 3-Way SLI/CFire would mean a lot of perf lost due to the limits of PCI-E slots, so I don't think there would be many people running 3-Way where you MIGHT be needing 3.3v plug...

I think that you as a reviewer should be objective and not mentioning things you personally like/dislike which have almost nothing to do in reality..

I personally always read TPU reviews and I find them to be the most accurate ones, so don't think I'm some kind of hater..

Limits of a chipset and imperfect implementation of design are different. Why you are trying to throw the two together doesn't exactly make sense.

Being objective is to be critical without preference. If color is a choice factor that a company utilizes and it's follow through is not ideal (Dave seems to be focusing on the lack of uniformity from the color, not just that the color was "personally" distasteful), why should he refrain from commenting?

I like the review and beyond the gold/yellow mismatching, this totally reminded me of the good ol' DFI Lanparty boards....Ugly as sin but can OC so well! Oh my 4400+, I do miss you so!

 

[reverze]

dave , between this and the msi mpower, what is the best if overclocking is the main focus , price and other unrelated features aside.

 

[Widjaja]

Personally the colour scheme is not bad.
MSI seem to have gone with it as well.
Better than old ASUS mustard yellow or low end-motherboard brown.

 

[cadaveca]

dave , between this and the msi mpower, what is the best if overclocking is the main focus , price and other unrelated features aside.

depends on what ram you are using, IMHO.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

I don't think you should end that statement with "IMHO" (IMHO lol). You're the reviewer; isn't such what you actually found as opposed to just think? Of course, I am assuming you also reviewed the MPower....

 

[cadaveca]

I am assuming you also reviewed the MPower....

Well, you see, results can be greatly varied depending on your CPU too. For me, it's all about BIOS ram support. My CPU seems to be pretty good...decent, anyway, so pushing that isn't that hard. However, when it comes time to clocking ram...man, BIOS support is a big thing, and every board has what I like to call a "favorite" kit that it works best with.


Way back when, when DFI was the thing, they had many many boards built with the NForce SLI chipset(Venus, SLI, SLI-DR, etc, etc). The main reason for so many boards was each board was suited to use for a specific type of ram.

So, for me, and my experience, it's all about what ram you are using. For some CPUs, even getting 2400 MHz is hard...or so I hear...but that's not the case for me.



So IMHO applies. Someone start feeding me many CPUs to test with, and I'll come up with a real answer, but until then, I gave the best answer I could. Deal with it.

 

[DOM]

I'm on the 1.15g bios I think it us lol

But it has profiles for different types of mem and speeds

I been running 2800 Samsung profile for benching

But you need to add some ln2 into your reviews