ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard

Conclusions

The ASRock Z77 OC Formula is targeted to the sophisticated overclocking enthusiast, who wants to play with a system based on an “Ivy Bridge” CPU.

The most important features of this motherboard are “under the hood.” The voltage regulator circuit, for example, uses a digital design (which is better than the hybrid design commonly used by ASRock),  three different kinds of capacitors for better filtering, high-end MOSFETs, and supports liquid cooling solution. The board has an EPS12V and an ATX12V connector at the same time, allowing your CPU to pull more current from the power supply. The product uses an eight-layer printed circuit board, which is more expensive to manufacture but reduces electromagnetic interference (EMI). All of these features were added in order to increase the probability of a higher overclocking.

The Z77 OC Formula is not shy on additional features. It has three PCI Express x16 slots (x16/x0/x4 or x8/x8/x4; the first two slots are 3.0 and the third slot is 2.0), six SATA-600 ports and eight USB 3.0 ports, and uses a PEX8605 switch chip to make sure the bandwidth won’t drop when you have several peripherals transferring data at the same time.

Also noteworthy is the high-end audio codec used by this motherboard, the Realtek ALC898, which provides very high signal-to-noise ratios (110 dB for the outputs and 104 dB for the inputs), i.e., non-noticeable background noise.

In summary, the ASRock Z77 OC Formula is highly recommended for the serious overclocker.