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Trio of Z87 OC Motherboards Tested

Motherboards/Intel S1150 by leeghoofd @ 2013-07-26

Today we will be looking at 3 high end Overclock optimized mainboards for Intel's 4th generation processors. Madshrimps received the Z87-OC Formula sample from ASRock, the Gigabyte Z87X-OC and MSI's Z87 XPOWER flagship. Three boards, although all listed in total different price categories, targeted specifically at the enthusiast crowd. Fully equipped to squeeze the last MHz out of your Haswell. Due to the specific nature of these particular boards we have adapted the review method slightly to go more into the efficiency aspect instead of listing all of the onboard features/chips.

MSI XPOWER OCing features:

MSI labels it's overclocking features as OC Essentials. Comprising out of the following: Voltage measuring points, OC Genie4 button, Discharge button (CLR Bat), Direct2Bios button, Frequency and multiplier buttons, Bios switch and the PCIe Crossfire switches.

Again all that you ever will need is, sadly, spread out over the XPOWER's PCB. Let's have a look at them individually.

The Bclock and Multiplier buttons don't need any explenation.

The Discharge button, with the lightning strike symbol, has the same function, but at the press of a button as removing the CMOS battery.

The Bclock step switch allows the user to go for either 1MHz or 0.1 increments in Bclock.

Voltage measuring points are also standard

The OC Genie4 button presets a 4 or 4GHz Oc for your processor, dependaing on how the OC Switch is set.

As with all other OC boards, the MSi XPOWER also has the fail safe of a dual bios configuration and idem ditto switch.

The GO2BIOS button allows the user to directly entering the bios without having to hammer the DEL key on the keyboard. Last but not least the CEASEFIRE dip switches provide the option to enable or disable manually the different PCIe slots.

Comment from Teemto @ 2013/07/26

Really like the editor's note

Comment from NordWolfe @ 2013/08/03

Finally somebody with the balls to tell it like it is. Now I would just like somebody to call-out Intel, for their woeful/unacceptable manufacturing quality control on their CPUs, and AMD, for their incompetence that permits these abuses from their rivals. At least, so it seems, AMD is now hiring the right people for their CPU division. Hope this pays off quickly so that Intel loses it’s arrogance, and total lack of respect for it’s customers. For that to happen we need many more true reviewers, such as yourself, and not Corporate Whores, such as we see in most sites, and youtube channels.
I salute your courage, integrity, and the knowledge you have on your mission.
Cheers.

Comment from leeghoofd @ 2013/08/04

Thx guys for the feedback. It's not what the manufacturers or people from the PR team want to read, but at least it's the truth based on hard facts... apreciated that my hard works is applauded

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