Test Setup

 

CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard: ASRock Fatal1ty Z77 Professional

RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)

Video: Sparkle X560 Calibre

Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 320GB 7200.10

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

Stability at 4.7GHz could be obtained with a 1.280V value inside the UEFI and LLC Level 1; the same CPU on the Z68 Fatal1ty Professional needed about 1.285V to reach total stability :

With the latest version of AIDA64 utility, we can reveal more information regarding the motherboard, the CPU IMC and the Z77 chipset:

Motherboard

Ivy Bridge IMC

Z77 Chipset

On the supplied DVD, we will also find an interesting suite of applications; the first one would be F-Stream Tuning, which allows changing the system operating parameters; the menu list is located on the left, from where we can enumerate Hardware Monitor, Fan Control and so on. The Hardware Monitor menu shows the current values for the CPU Speed, Ratio, Base Clock, Temperatures, Fan Speeds and, of course, Voltages:

Inside the Fan Control tab we can find the same controls as inside the UEFI interface:

Inside the Overclocking menu, we are able to adjust the BCLK and CPU multiplier on the fly, along with the system voltages:

If we have installed the mouse in the Fatal1ty port, then the respective menu becomes active and we can change the current polling rate (default is 500Hz):

If the system is not overclocked, we can enable power saving features inside the Energy Saving menu:

XFast RAM utility can now be found in F-Stream and with it we will be able to create a RAMDisk for storing temp files or any other files (will be deleted upon reboot unless backup function is selected):