Overclocking

When I first received the ECS Z370-Lightsaber, I was unable to get a meaningful overclock. I believe that similar power limitations to what I initially experienced with the Biostar Racing Z370GT6 were at work here. Intel seems to have put pretty strict parameters into the Coffee Lake platform to ensure the chips do not exceed their TDP. Luckily, board manufacturers are hard at work to circumvent these; an email to ECS and I had a BIOS update that cleared the issue right up a surprisingly short time later. The ECS Z370-Lightsaber performed up to expectations where CPU overclocking is concerned. I managed 4.9 GHz on all cores at 1.35V, and for most users, this board will be more than adequate. The clunky BIOS is still holding it back, but since most users will find a clock that works and leave it be, a clunky BIOS isn't a deal breaker.


The ECS Z370-Lightsaber does feature a dedicated "Quick_OC" button, which automatically pushes the CPU to its maximum potential. To activate the Quick OC function, press the leftmost of three buttons on the bottom of the board while it is powered on. Once the button is pressed, you should see "OC" on the POST code display, which is your prompt to restart the system. Windows loaded for me normally, but no special indication was given on the board or in Windows that the OC was active, so I started up CPUZ and wPrime to have a look.

The BCLK had been increased to 105 from 100, and the voltage had been increased to around 1.35 volts, which seemed promising. Running through a few iterations of wPrime, the board favored a multiplier of 46 and a BCLK of around 105. In this mode, the board has full control of the multiplier, BCLK, and voltage. My tests showed a slight performance increase over a manual overclock to 4.8 GHz. However, CPU temperatures hovered at around 86°C throughout the benchmark, a full 10°C higher than on my own overclock. Power consumption was also much higher at 170 watts.

I believe the "Quick OC" function on the ECS Z370-Lightsaber to be a valuable tool, but I don't think users should rely on it for a 24/7 overclock. I should state that you can do so, however. CPU voltage stayed at around 1.36 volts, and while 86°C is toasty, it is well below the thermal cutoff point for Coffee Lake. The function should instead be used as a tool to find the upper limits of a chip's capabilities, saving you the time and hassle of figuring it out manually. Then, you can go in and set your clocks manually, getting nearly the same performance at much lower temperatures and power consumption. There, however, are no instructions on how to turn the Quick OC off, and hitting the button again and rebooting doesn't work. I would recommend resetting the BIOS, though I did find that any manually entered settings in the BIOS seem to override the Quick OC, so in theory, you could just go in and do a manual overclock instead.

After all that, my RAM overclocking experience with the ECS Z370-Lightsaber was exactly what I expected it to be. It booted fine at stock settings with both of my RAM kits and failed to post using the XMP settings for the GSKILL 3866 MHz kit, but did just fine with the XMP profile of the T-Force 3000 MHz kit. This board has some RAM overclocking potential, but your mileage will vary.


The POST code display on the ECS Z370-Lightsaber is one of the best I have ever seen - a big, bright display with a button to switch between the POST code, CPU voltage, DIMM voltage, CPU temperature, and PCH temperature. It and a nice button instead of a jumper for clearing the CMOS, as well as a "boot to BIOS" button, are the standout features of this board.