ASRock Z87 OC Formula Motherboard Review

With hardened overclockers firmly in its sights, the ASRock Z87 OC Formula is an excellent motherboard that delivered strong CPU overclocking performance and equally-impressive high-speed memory support. The wealth of features also makes it a perfectly usable and comprehensive board when extreme overclocking isn't the primary objective.

While every Z87 motherboard that we have tested has managed to take our 4770K to 4.6GHz, but without complete stability, the ASRock Z87 OC Formula is the first board that we have seen grasp the chip's 4600MHz speed for such a long period of time. After many minutes of Prime95, the same unstable outcome was presented from our 4.6GHz overclocking efforts, but ASRock's Z87 OC Formula had us feeling closer to stability than any other Z87 board we have tested with this particular Core i7.

By applying some minor tweaks, we have no doubt that ASRock's Z87 OC Formula could have been the first motherboard to garner stability for our chip at 4.6GHz. Booting stably into the automated 4.6GHz profile helped to reiterate our feeling. With this in mind, we strongly believe that, in the Z87 OC Formula, ASRock has created a motherboard with excellent overclocking potential.

Support for high-speed DRAM frequencies is another strength for the Z87 OC Formula. We actually had less trouble booting with Avexir's 3000MHz memory kit using the ASRock board than we did with Asus' Maximus VI Extreme. There was no need to install one DIMM, apply the XMP configuration and then install the other stick for dual channel operation. We simply installed both sticks into the Z87 OC Formula and the motherboard booted without any hesitation.

Managing to push a 3000MHz kit of Avexir memory to 3288MHz had us very impressed with the Z87 OC Formula. The highest frequency we could manage using Asus' Maximus VI Extreme motherboard was 3240MHz. To say we were impressed by not only the ASRock Z87 OC Formula's memory tweaking performance, but its entire overclocking capability, would be a sizeable understatement. There is no doubt that this motherboard has truly excellent overclocking potential.

A solid set of general usage features is found on the ASRock Z87 OC Formula, providing evidence that it isn't a board that can overclock but not do much else. Ten SATA ports, up to thirteen USB 3.0 connections, support for 4-way CrossFire, and a strong onboard audio system are some of the notable features. There's no 3- or 4-way SLI support though, so users wanting a trio or quartet of nVidia cards for gaming purposes will have to pay more for a PLX PEX8747-equipped board.

The overclocking-related features are also worthy of praise. ASRock's Conformal Coating is an excellent idea that allows overclockers to use extreme cooling without fearing for their board's safety. The onboard status OLED is another handy overclocking and monitoring tool.

The main likes that we took from ASRock's UEFI BIOS were the quantity of customisable parameters, and the appropriate number of overclocking profiles. While the latter should be an essential for any BIOS, many ASRock boards in the past have provided only three profiles, so it's good to see the company learning from its mistakes. The built-in professional overclock profiles from Nick Shih are another good addition. Despite those positive points, the interface still requires an appearance improvement.

At the time of writing, the Z87 OC Formula is priced at £259.99 from Overclockers UK, which is ironically the same as the WiFi-equipped /AC variant. It is £55-90 cheaper than Asus‘ and MSI‘ flagship competitors and readily trades blows with them in terms of features and frequency-boosting performance. One of the main features that it lacks is support for more than dual-card SLI.

If you're an overclocker who doesn't require high-speed PCI-Express links to four graphics cards, the ASRock Z87 OC Formula is an excellent choice. Its overclocking potential is very strong, the number of customisable parameters should please most tweakers, and many worthwhile general usage features are also present. The toughest competition comes from Asus' Maximus VI Formula, so our upcoming review of the ROG board will tell exactly how potent the Z87 OC Formula is.

Pros:

• Excellent overclocking potential.
• Exceptional memory overclocking capability.
• Good BIOS configurations.
• Status OLED is useful.
• Impressive feature set (ten SATA ports, thirteen USB 3.0, high-end audio system)
• Conformal Coating protection is useful.
• Actively-cooled VRM heatsink with watercooling compatibility.
• Four x16-length PCI-E slots.

Cons:

• High ‘stock' voltage by default – 1.280V.
• UEFI BIOS is not attractive.
• WiFi-equipped /AC version is the better buy (for an identical price at time of writing).

KitGuru says: The ASRock Z87 OC Formula is a well-priced, feature-heavy, high-performance motherboard that has a number of worthwhile tweaking features and excellent overclocking potential. Just make sure you go for the WiFi-equipped version at no extra cost.

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