Test System

Initial Setup

Initial boot-up with the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC was quick and simple, and installing device drivers off the CD was quick and painless. There's not a lot for me to say here because everything worked exactly as expected.

Some boards have custom Turbo profiles that boost performance at "stock" settings, giving the appearance of having more performance than they really should. Gigabyte has told me that they don't condone such custom profiles without informing the user but do understand that some users want this function to be available. A boosted Turbo profile becomes available when XMP is enabled, but it can simply be disabled via an option in the BIOS. I personally feel that a coupon for Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan should be included in the box to protect against CPU failures if boards do this without giving the end user a way to turn it off, or don't explicitly state that they are doing so. For more information on Intel's Performance Tuning Protection Plan, check their site found HERE

The Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC uses a normal Turbo profile and leaves all customization up to the end user. Voltages and power profiles are moderate, which its power consumption numbers reflect.


Due to the inclusion of four full PCIe x16 slots for multi-GPU overclocking, slot spacing for normal use is fantastic, with plenty of space all around.


The provided buttons on the board's edge are easy to access. However, the huge number of buttons does make it rather tight and cluttered once fully wired up; but there was still the perfect amount of room left for the DIMM slots to be far enough up the board's surface to make the installation of the fan that came with my G.Skill TridentX memory painless. The ASUS GRYPHON board I looked at last didn't allow for the use of the fan at all.


Although the heatsinks are big and beefy, I can not think of a way for them to interfere with any cooler on today's market; even those big dual-fan tower coolers aren't going to have many issues here, although some may foul with the top PCIe slot.


I can really tell that Hicookie thought of just about everyone when it came time for normal use of the Z87X-OC as both PCIe and a PCI slot can still be accessed with dual VGAs installed--many users have asked for both to be possible concurrently.

Power Consumption

We measure CPU power consumption since one of our first tasks is to truly verify system stability. I isolate the power coming through the 8-pin ATX connector using an in-line meter that provides voltage and current readings, and total wattage passed through. While this may not prove to isolate the CPU power draw in all instances, it does serve as a good indicator of board efficiency and effective VRM design. Total system power consumption is no longer reported as this figure can change depending on what VGA is installed. The sole board-only power measurements possible without physically modifying a motherboard are those taken via the 8-pin CPU connector, making it the only figure of value worth reporting. I use wPrime with eight threads selected in the options, since it provides a consistently high workload throughout the full length of the test and runs long enough for the VRM and CPU to produce a fair bit of heat. Most average workloads will draw far less than this, although distributed computing applications are quite similar. This is not supposed to test stability since I use several other applications to do so, but merely to provide repeatable power draw numbers that anyone can replicate. The meter used is an off-the-shelf Zalman unit that has been on the market for some time. It provides quite similar results in my test environment when compared with a FLUKE 337 clamp meter.


Power consumption with the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC was great at idle and right where I expected it to be at load. Gigabyte's tight VRM management and this board's Turbo profiles go a long way towards curtailing power consumption while keeping performance high. The Intel "Haswell" platform was all about providing great flexibility and customization for the end user where required, and Gigabyte really seems to provide exactly that with initial BIOSes. This meant that power consumption was low, which affected performance numbers too. However, its preformance loss is not a big deal because Gigabyte's also has a new BIOS to go along with the new board, and it's just as customizable as the rest of the platform.