BIOS Walkthrough

The BIOS on the ASRock Z77 OC Formula is the usual ASRock fare, although there are some OC Formula-specific options here, such as added voltage options and Nick Shih's OC profiles. There are 11 profiles here, each with very reasonable settings that should be fairly stable with most hardware combination. Higher setting will, of course, require some exceptional cooling.


Yes, MORE voltage options. I'm not sure how often normal users are going to need them, but they have to be there for a reason if Nick said they were needed. Both VTT and PCH voltage options are doubled here.


You can see the tweaked voltages I used for overclock testing. All of them did, in the end, lead to pretty decent temps for my CPU. Admittedly, my CPU isn't at the limit here, but the way this BIOS behaves is quite different from others. I found it far more responsive to changes with things like memory timings, which made hunting down max clock that much easier. Literally no option is skipped, including independent controls for nearly every fan header except for the two CPU fan headers that are linked together. Even the VRM fan has selectable options. If you look at the last image above, you'll see ten temperature listings, functionality that has been provided by the extra Nuvoton Super I/O chip I showed earlier and a ton of sensors in various places around the board.


Internet BIOS flashing, spots for profiles to be saved, and all the other usual options that seem to be the norm for ASRock's UEFI BIOS, are all still here. Overall, this is by far the most functional BIOS of them all, and I did try all of those OC profiles provided by Nick Shih, too. There's really a lot here that cannot be explained in words, and is all in the feel, something that those looking to break records will truly appreciate.