ASRock Z87M OC Formula Review: mATX OC at $190
by Ian Cutress on August 14, 2013 10:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- ASRock
- Haswell
- Z87
ASRock Z87M OC Formula Conclusion
One of the more amusing things to happen to my Z87M-OCF sample was with the small plastic protectors that ASRock use for the name areas of the motherboard that say ‘ASRock’ and ‘Z87M OC Formula’. On the latter portion, the sticky plastic ASRock used actually removed some of the letters, meaning that I technically have a Z87M OC FO_MU_A. 8/19 Edit: Message from ASRock, this has been fixed on retail samples!
Amusing tales aside, from the perspective of the 24/7 user, ASRock cannot really claim to have a design win similar to that of the Z77 OC Formula. There are substantial things missing from the platform that we enjoyed both with the Z77 OCF at around this price range and the full size ATX that even a mATX motherboard should have. For $240 we had Rapid OC buttons and a combination air/water heatsink, with voltage read points as well. Even though we are moving down to a smaller form factor, we should not have to compromise on some of the better aspects of the range. If ASRock wanted to produce a smaller stripped out model, then this begs the question why Purity Sound is included, meaning that this is meant to be an ROG competitor more than a $200 OC masterpiece.
The issue with MultiCore Enhancement/Acceleration/Turbo rears its head yet again, and it would be nice if one of the motherboard manufacturers came out with a defining policy regarding its usage at stock. ASUS have a plan in place but was not widely advertised, and ASRock might be considered to be playing games by having stock media BIOSes with it enabled but public BIOSes without. We played with both sets of settings, and of course performance in multi-threaded scenarios without MCT takes a 7% cut. One could argue that as this is an OC board, it does not matter about stock performance, but I would counter argue that most motherboards, even of this model, will probably not be overclocked in daily systems, making out-of-the-box performance important.
Update 2013.08.13: ASRock have confirmed that the Z87M OC Formula, from BIOS 1.50, will have MCT enabled by default.
Perhaps I have high standards in what stock settings should be, or that manufacturers should come down on one side of the fence or the other, and let their position be known. As a daily motherboard the ASRock Z87M OC Formula works well, although I feel that other boards in this price segment offer more for the money for the daily user.
Input from K404, Admin of ProOC Team 5XP, top UK/SA team in ProOC Cup of Q2-2013
I have already taken several 3DMark gold medals with the board - the first coming within nine hours of receiving it. That kind of reassuring start is exactly how a board should make itself "at home" on a test bed. If benching 3D, a bencher does not want to be second-guessing their hardware and the ASR board blends right in.
Using this ASRock Z87 board has been a joy. To be honest, based on the layout and limitations of a M-ATX format, trying to run two GPUs is a bit of a pain, but for single cards, it is a very solid board. The BIOS is quite possibly the best I have ever seen. The setting descriptions are better than any I have seen from any vendor in ten years of overclocking. The memory profiles are not original (first seen on Asus Z77), but their presence is very welcome. It is worth noting that after a memory profile is selected, the ratio still has to be selected manually.
Most Haswell boards appear to have condensation problems around the memory slots when the CPU is frozen. The ASR board is no exception, but with an application of dielectric/vaseline front and back, sessions should be fairly problem free.
The performance efficiency is very good, which makes sessions far more satisfying. To quote "The Oracle" in The Matrix: Reloaded: "The ones doing their job, doing what they were meant to do, are invisible. You'd never even know they were here."
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Pessimism - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Who overclocks anymore? Better off to just save your money and buy the next CPU up IMO.Horza - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
So if I buy a 4770k and overclock it to 4.5hgz (kind of the point with the K series) what's your advice?Overclocking is an easy way to get some free performance and can be a bit of fun at the same time.
Pessimism - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Since you're already at the top end for desktop parts, my advice would depend on what task you perform that saturated the 4770K at stock speeds.RealiBrad - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
So if I'm a gamer, its better for me to buy an I7 over an I5, even though I can get an I5 and OC it past the base performance of any I7.Why?
Pessimism - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
You will spend more on the rest of the computer to do it than if you had bought the i7 in the first place. You will also spend more on electricity to power your PC. Yes you will gain a little CPU capacity over a stock i7, I can't deny that. However you haven't provided any example of an everyday gaming or computing scenario that saturates an i7 and justifies all the extra expense, energy consumption and hassle. Don't get me wrong, I was clocking the snot out of a 2500 Barton back in the day like everyone else, I just think the cost/benefit ratio isn't there anymore when you look at how far hardware is past software right now.karasaj - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Starcraft II. I can bring my 4.6ghz 4670k to its knees in real world scenarios if I want too. That wasn't hard :Pkarasaj - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
Real world scenarios being team games and intense 1v1's.owan - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
"All the extra expense"... how much do you think it costs? With an unlocked multiplier on the CPU's, its quite easy to overclock and doesn't incur much added expense. Any halfway decent motherboard that has the features you want on it is going to be fully capable of overclocking quite a bit anyway. The electricity difference is going to still be there, but is probably fairly small.. Maybe 20-30W ? With TDP's on the Intel chips these days, it really doesn't take a big cooler to cool them, even if overclocked. A CM Hyper 212+ can be bought for something like $20 and does the job really well. Lots of people would be buying an HSF capable of handling the additional heat anyway. You could easily build a rig capable of overclocking for less than it would cost to jump to a high-end i7 and get equal or better performance.RealiBrad - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
So if I'm building a new system, and the game I'm likely to play will have a cpu bottleneck with an i5-4670, its cheaper for me to spend more on upgrading to a locked i7-4770 for $90 more and get a few frames increase at best? Why would it not be better to take that same $90 and get a i5-4670k and a mobo that can adjust the multiplier? If an i5 is bottlenecked then getting any locked i7 will do nothing. Its far better to get an unlocked i5 and OC it to reduce the bottle neck. yes, the mobo will cost a little more, but the jump from an i5 to an i7 is still more expensive than getting a i5 k and mobo.IanCutress - Wednesday, August 14, 2013 - link
It depends what you do. If you overclock and get another 25% performance, that enables you to complete 5 tasks in the same time as 4. If the reward for doing that task is more than the cost of the electricity, then it's a no brainer. This is particularly relevant in the financial industries, where every millisecond counts, or for careers that are throughput limited.That's just for workloads - gamers are often not worried about the cost of electricity when it comes to pure performance, and overclocking to increase single core performance, particularly in games like Civilization V that respond well to overclocking (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6985/choosing-a-gami... result in a rise of FPS.
There is also the aspect of competitive overclockers, who see it as a challenge to out-overclock their competitors. As mentioned in the review, this is one of the target groups for OC-oriented motherboards, and the motherboard needs to have features to appeal to this crowd.
Just because you do not overclock anymore does not mean that the activity is dead/no longer useful. It is alive and kicking - the amount of pre-overclocked systems on sale today is just one prong of this.
Ian