GIGABYTE Z87X-OC Review

👤by David Mitchelson Comments 📅01-06-13
Test Setup & Overclocking

Test Setup
CPU Intel Core i7 4770K (Haswell) 3.50GHz
Cooling Noctua NH-U14
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 2400MHz CL10 DDR3
Graphics XFX R7970 Black Edition
Storage Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD
PSU Corsair HX1050 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU



Benchmarks
Cinebench 11.5 – CPU Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA 2013 – CPU & Memory benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks
3DMark FireStrike – DX11 3D Benchmark
3DMark 11 – DX11 3D Performance and Extreme preset
Games – Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, Metro Last Light


Other Software
Temperature Analysis: Core Temp
Stress Testing Software: LinX
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z


Overclocking

The introduction of Z87 brings a return to BCLK overclocking. This will in turn deliver more flexibility for Overclockers compared to previous generations where the BCLK was locked to 100MHz and only the ratio could be adjusted.

For our overclocking tests we indulge in both practises – leaving BLCK on auto (100MHz) and only adjusting the ratio and adjusting the BCLK to establish how much flexibility there is.

We managed to squeeze 4.7GHz out of the 4770K with Z87X-OC and then 4.6GHz via BCLK tuning. Both results are very good and this appears to be the limitation of the chip we currently have. Even after increasing the voltage up to 1.5v the frequency would not exceed this milestone, so we then lowered the voltage to the minimum it would operate at and work without stability issues – 1.34v.





With the 4.7GHz overclock being our best, we will take this into our benchmark suite and test both stock and overclocked results on the subsequent pages. Our comparison results will obviously grow in the forthcoming weeks as we review more and more Z87 motherboards.

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