Gauging the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC is pretty simple because the product-line itself, color scheme included, is something that Gigabyte has now produced over several product generations. However, those past products were very much high-end "halo" products that were more showcases of engineering than anything else. Users could often only lust over the feature set of Gigabyte's past "OC"-branded boards. With users complaining about the price, Gigabyte listened and has, as seems to be a common theme with all brands of Intel Z87-based products, catered to user requests with this product whose design- and care considerations were put into the hands of their resident overclocker extraordinaire, Hicookie. What he came up with is definitely not your everyday motherboard, and while the lineage to past OC boards is very clear, what is offered is still very much an evolution, taking everything past Gigabyte OC boards taught and improving on each critical point. Users get great clocking abilities and freedom of customization while performance is relatively average as that has been left to the end user to tweak for themselves. I like it that way because it serves its purpose, but I know that most users simply get their parts, plug them in, and work with what they get directly "out-of-the-box". This board simply does not cater to all users, and it does seem weird to have a board with so many fully sized PCIe x16 slots and no Tri- or Quad-SLI support, leaving me with the nagging impression that it is only half as capable as it could be. That said, the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC board really did impress me as an entry-level OC board, although I find the buttons to be in a space too small for them all; far too close to the 24-pin to be really useful, especially if you are like me and focus on memory overclocking at normal temperatures.

What is offered is fantastic for the asking price, and Gigabyte deserves some congratulations for that, but I fear that the horsepower of today's systems will have the real overclocking market shape out like that of past high-end "OC" boards, and amongst a limited number of users.