ASRock's Z170M OC Formula motherboard is without any doubt an overclocking champion in a tiny form factor. There were some special DDR4 kits being handed around at the recent industry event Computex that have reached over 5000 MHz when paired with this ASRock Z170M OC Formula, and at the time of writing, it does holds the highest record for DDR4 frequency. When it comes to overclocking memory, only your CPU and memory chips are the limit; this board is clearly not. If you want an affordable way to set records, the US$200 ASRock OC Formula is the board to buy; that is, if you can find one. They are limited in number it seems, and are not readily available in all global regions. The addition of an external SATA controller also makes it possible to run Windows XP should you be looking for the utmost in HWBOT benching performance.

For daily use, the ASRock Z170M OC Formula is just as good as it is in overclocking. Its audio design ensures PCIe cards are kept to a minimum. You can stuff in two powerful, energy hungry VGAs and clock both your memory and CPU to high ambient limits for a killer-fast rig that doesn't need a full tower case to hold it. With 32 GB kits available in dual-stick configurations, the missing two RAM slots are a non-issue for today's gaming systems. 16 GB is more than adequate, anyway.

I almost wanted to give this board a 10 out of 10. It does exactly as you'd expect, has an affordable price, and excels in everything you might want to do with it. However, I found the M.2 drive's location to be far from optimal since thermal throttling can take place when some drives are used with powerful VGAs (the M.2 port is covered by most modern VGAs and hardly gets any airflow). However, there can be no doubt: the ASRock Z170M OC Formula is most definitely a high-performance benchmarking dream made reality. Got one? Let us know in the forums!