Gigabyte Z87X-OC (Z87) Motherboard Review

Gigabyte have a large stack of motherboards launching for Z87, and at the top of that stack is the overclocking based motherboards including the Z87X-FORCE and the Z87X-OC which have some fundamental differences. The Force is aimed at pro overclockers who will constantly be pushing hardware to its limits while using extreme cooling methods including LN2. The Z87X-OC that we have today, while it can do that, is aimed at multiple markets, allowing average users the facility to use it while pro overclockers can dabble at the same time, and vice versa. With that in mind, as it is an overclocking based motherboard, we find it utilises that funky orange colour scheme that made their X58OC and Z77X-UP7 boards famous. Starting things off, we will be taking a look at what's on offer inside the box, before moving onto the design and features of the board. Once that's out of the way, we can take a look at the BIOS and what extra features overclockers get the chance to work with, before we unleash our own overclocking skill to see how far we can push things. Once we have our maximum stable overclock, we will have the chance to see how performance compares against stock results on this board among other Z87 based products. So lets get straight into it, shall we? The box has an extreme style to it, which has changed for the whole Z87 range. Inside we find the typical user guides including multi-lingual guidebook, driver installation CD, rear I/O panel shield plate, single CrossFire and SLI bridges, casebadge sticker, four SATA data cables (2 right-angled), and V-check cable. Also inside is something quite new, which is the OC brace which assists with supporting your graphics cards when benchmarking as most pro-overclockers use a test bench or simply the box that the board comes in. Taking a first look at the board, you can see the lairy orange colour scheme that we've seen on overclocking boards before. The general layout is what we expect, with a lot of features being packed into the board, though without making it look cluttered, which Gigabyte have done a fantastic job of. The orange and black works really well on the expansion lanes, DIMM slots and passive heatsinks. For an overclocking board, the CPU socket looks completely bare which is quite shocking, as it only includes a single Ultra Durable branded heatsink, with 8-pin and 4-pin ATX power connectors close by. Also close by are relevant CPU cooler fan headers. Having a lot of room around the CPU socket will allow those wishing to use LN2 the relevant space to insulate the board while still protecting the main core components of the PWMs. A new heatsink design is covering over the Intel Z87 chipset with simple Gigabyte branding and the orange colour scheme which is used throughout the board. Four dual-channel DIMM slots are present, following the orange and black contrast. Support for up to 32GB of DDR3 with speeds up to 2400MHz + and of course fully supports Intel XMP based memory. Nearby we find a lot of features including an ATX 24-pin power connector and USB 3.0 header, but also a lot of features that are specifically aimed at overclockers branded as the OC Touch panel. These include a debug LED, clear CMOS button, settings lock, reset, memory safe button and direct to BIOS button saving you the need to repeatedly press the Delete key. We also have a total of 8 buttons branded as OC Hardware buttons which include an OC Turbo button, buttons for changing the CPU BCLK Frequency and CPU ratio. Also a power button is next to it to blend in. One more button that is new is the "Tag" button which allows you to load your customised settings so that even if CMOS has been reset, your OC profile will automatically be applied without having to manually change all of your settings again. Lastly there is a set of 4 sliders which comprise of turning the PCI-Express functionality on or off for each individual lane, allowing users to remove graphics cards without physically removing them from the system by shutting down the lane completely which is perfect for those using LN2 and other extreme cooling solutions. Moving over to the expansion slots, we find a simple layout of four PCI-Express x16 lanes, a single PCI-Express x1 slot and two legacy PCI lanes. Now normally I'd complain about a board having legacy PCI slots, but on a board like this, it's always handy having debug PCI cards for troubleshooting and overclocking, which happen to come on PCI cards generally speaking. The PCI-EXpress x16 lanes run at x16/x8/x4/x4 for those wishing to utilise quad SLI and CrossFireX technology and remember that this board has the ability to power down individual lanes thanks to the sliders on the OC Touch panel. SATA wise we have 6 SATA 6Gb/s connectors utilising the Intel Z87 chipset but also nearby we have 2 USB 2.0 ports that you'd generally find on the rear of your chassis or front, but instead sees them snugly fitting in internally labelled as OC Connect allowing overclockers to use the functionality for controllers and other USB devices that will assist them when pushing their hardware to the limits. The bottom of the board shows nothing out of the ordinary with a front audio header, SPDIF_OUT, system fan headers, COM port header, 2 x USB 2.0 connectors, another USB 3.0 header and the usual front panel LED and switch headers for connecting your chassis to your motherboard. Finally we move around to the rear I/O where we find two USB 2.0 ports, an OC Ignition switch which keeps power running to the motherboard and eliminates cold bug situations among other extreme situations involving water cooling. Moving along we see two USB 3.0 ports, two HDMI ports and a full-size DisplayPort. Also present is an optical SPDIF port, a ps2 keyboard/mouse combo port, Intel Gigabit LAN and 8 channel audio connectors courtesy of Realtek's ALC892 audio controller. The BIOS on all Gigabyte boards have been dramatically changed and the Z87X-OC is no different. Even the colour scheme matches the mad orange colours that the board incoporates and includes a lot of new monitoring features on either side of the screen including voltages, temperatures and clock speeds. For those who are familiar with the classic UEFI style, a simple press of a button brings you back here once again. To test this board, we are able to run all of our tests at stock speeds using a pre-defined setup of hardware. We will also be overclocking the processor to its limits on this board to see how it compares against the stock speed. Test system: Gigabyte Z87X-UD3H Intel i7-4770k Corsair Vengeance Pro 1866MHz 16GB XFX Radeon HD 7970 Corsair H100i Corsair HX1050 Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD Lian Li T60 AOC E2795VH We would like to thank AOC, Asus, Corsair, Kingston and Lian Li for supplying us with our test system components. Many different software applications are also used to gain the broadest spectrum of results, which allows for the fairest testing possible. Software used: 3DMark 11 AIDA64 Cinebench R11.5 CPU-Z PCMark 7 Super PI 3DMark 2013 Taking a look at the type of board we have here and the power delivery to the CPU, we are expecting a lot from this board with some fantastic results, and of course there is only one way to see if the proof is in the pudding. We find ourselves jumping into the BIOS and going into the classic mode to see how far things can be pushed, while keeping the voltage at a reasonable level, and therefore keeping temperatures at suitable levels at both idle and load. We find ourselves starting with the 46x multiplier and a 100MHz bus speed, leaving us with 4.6GHz to see how things progress from there, and with a voltage of 1.4V we knew that we had a lot more left to go in terms of overclocking potential. We then moved up to the 47x multiplier and found this to be 100% stable and it was very much the same story with the 48x multiplier. Moving ever closer to the 5GHz mark, 4.9GHz was also 100% stable across our whole benchmark suite, but without stopping there, we found ourselves moving to the magic 50x multiplier and booting into Windows with no issue. Moving through our benchmark suite, we find things to be concrete in terms of stability and we then focused on dropping the voltage down as far as we could while keeping the whole system stable. We ended up at 5GHz using the 51x multiplier and a core voltage of 1.36V which is remarkably good considering how our CPU has clocked on other boards, showing that the Z87X-OC really does do what it says on the tin and is a true overclocking board. Cinebench R11.5 CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It's completely free. Super PI Super PI is a computer program that calculates pi to a specified number of digits after the decimal point—up to a maximum of 32 million. It uses Gauss–Legendre algorithm and is a Windows port of the program used by Yasumasa Kanada in 1995 to compute pi to 232 digits. 3DMark 11 3DMark 11 is the latest offering from Futuremark, taking full advantage of DirectX 11 by utilising tessellation features and volumetric lighting. It takes your graphics and CPU hardware to the edge to simulate the most extreme conditions whilst working as a stand point to compare results with other users online. 3DMark 2013 "The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets, to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. And it's not just for Windows. With 3DMark you can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It's the most powerful and flexible 3DMark we've ever created. Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today." AIDA64 AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. AIDA64 AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. PCMark 7 PCMark 7 provides a set of 7 suites for measuring different aspects of PC performance with a high degree of accuracy. Overall system performance is measured by the PCMark Suite. The Lightweight Suite measures the capabilities of entry level systems and mobility platforms unable to run the full PCMark suite. Common use performance is measured by the Entertainment, Creativity and Productivity scenario suites. Component performance is measured by the Computation and Storage hardware suites. The Storage suite is ideal for testing SSDs and external hard drives in addition to the system drive. AIDA64 AIDA64 Extreme Edition is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. AIDA64 Extreme Edition provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives. AIDA64 is compatible with all current 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems, including Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. Power Consumption To test power consumption, we monitor the overall power of the system through a plug-in electricity usage monitor at an idle and load state. This allows us to show the fluctuation between how much power draw the system takes at idle and at load. By monitoring the overall usage of the whole system, it gives an easy comparison if you wish to do the same yourself as opposed to buying very expensive individual testing equipment. After Gigabyte initially released their overclocking range of boards, they have simply gone from strength to strength with a new addition appearing for all new Intel chipsets. Before this Z87 offering, we find the likes of the X58-OC, Z77X-UP7 and other key products in Gigabyte's catalogue and all have been a success, therefore meaning the Z87X-OC had a lot to live up to, and it certainly has done that. Gigabyte have positioned this board in such a way that it offers fantastic overclocking potential and is definitely feature-rich but is aimed at those wanting an affordable solution, as the FORCE board offers more for those with deeper pockets. This gives Gigabyte an edge over the competition as they have a product for everyone, but for the most part, those wanting to do extreme overclocking, will find the Z87X-OC more than enough for their needs, as we saw today. To prove this, at Computex this year, we attended an overclocking event sponsored by Intel and Corsair, which consisted of records being broken and large sums of money being won by extreme overclockers using this very board. If that's not proof, then I don't know what is. Now that I have that aside, I want to focus on the design which can only be described as sexy. It's so ludicrous that it works, and I think only Gigabyte are able to get away with making a motherboard so bright and vibrant, but it works and I'm glad to see the orange colour scheme retaining its glory among the Gigabyte range. Feature wise, it's certainly plentiful and includes some features that hardcore overclockers will appreciate, such as the OC brace, as we all know; overclockers tend to use the motherboard box when overclocking and pushing their hardware to the limit, and this added accessory helps to give support to expansion cards that feature large LN2 pots. Other features such as the OC touch panel and the sliders to easily turn off PCI-Express lanes is frankly such a simple yet effective idea, and a welcome addition to the board. Performance wise, we saw the Z87X-OC at the higher-end of our charts across multiple tests, and one surprising result was the power consumption used at idle and low which was extremely low in comparison to other boards that aren't as powerful and feature rich. Moving on to the important part, which is of course overclocking. The board is aimed at doing this task and it does is extremely well, as it should. 5GHz was and still is the furthest we've had our Haswell processor, and while 5.1GHz is achievable, it's not doable at a safe voltage, meaning that temperatures aren't within safe limits for a 24/7 overclock. We were very surprised by the low voltage needed to hit 5GHz on this board, and we can only assume that other i7 4770k processors should be able to mimic our results easily thanks to the simple BIOS. Priced at £179.99 we can only comment to say that this board is slightly under priced for what it is, as we were expected around the £199.99 mark, which is great for both consumers and Gigabyte, as plenty of this boards should be selling across the retail channel, and consumers will be getting an amazing deal with fantastic value for money. The Z87X-OC really does tick all of the boxes with design, features, overclocking potential, performance and price, leaving the consumer with one amazing deal if looking to move to the Z87 platform and squeezing every last drop of performance out of their conjoining hardware. Pros Unique design Feature rich Good accessory bundle Strong stock performance Huge overclocking potential Improved BIOS High-end overclocking functionality Suitable for extreme conditions such as LN2 Fantastic pricing Cons Some may not like the colour scheme eTeknix Says: Gigabyte have managed to create an amazing board that appeals to overclockers and those wanting the very best without spending huge amounts of money. The Z87X-OC offers amazing functionality with huge overclocking abilities while keeping value at the forefront of the board. Thanks to Gigabyte for providing this review sample.