- Joined
- Nov 21, 2005
- Location
- Atlanta, GA, USA
I've been out of the seen for a couple of years, and I'm just now diving back into overclocking. The last CPU I did any overclocking with was with Sandy Bridge, and the last CPU I did any REAL overclocking with was Gulftown. SB was such a bore, I decided to take some time off and focus on RL stuff. When Haswell came out, I grabbed a few CPU/motherboard combos from Microcenter, trying to find some golden 4770k samples. I've been through about 10 of them, and am still on the hunt for something notable. After trying out a few boards, my old friends at Gigabyte were nice enough to send me their Z87X-OC motherboard for testing.
I've already seen some really talented reviewers' takes on this board, so instead of listing all of the features you've already read so much about over the past few months, I'll just give a brief overview, and jump straight into what this board is made to do: OVERCLOCKING!
Here we see the usual I/O shield, user guide, driver disc, etc. There are also a couple of extra accessories worth mentioning:
OC Brace - Keeps multiple graphics cards standing together.
Voltage leads - Easy, neat attachment to the Z87X-OC voltage read points.
Now let's take a look at the board itself.
On first glance, we see the nice and simple color scheme: orange on black. Gigabyte's board designs have come a long way since the bubble-gum-colored offerings from years ago, like my old X48T-DQ6.
First stop is the OC Panel. Everything Gigabyte has going on here is seriously insane. Like the rest of this motherboard, every component is placed very deliberately to maximize real estate and ensure ease of use. I like that the power and reset buttons are very easy to find, and very easy to tell apart. Even better is the clear cmos button is far away from either of these. This may not seem like a big deal, but I've definitely hit the clear cmos button by accident on other motherboards in the past, during an intense benching session.
While most of this board's real estate is completely packed with components and features, the CPU socket area is kept very clear of any obstacles. This will make insulating for sub-ambient cooling a breeze!
Now for the lower half.
I/O Panel. And no, there's no weird camera angle. The board is pretty warped. It's not hurting anything so I'm not worried about it.
And the back of the board.
Now let's get her naked.
Like I said above, there are already a ton of great reviews of this board, with my favorite being this one. What I'm here to show is how well this product can do what Gigabyte's marketing people say it's designed to do.
Testing setup:
Core i7 4770K
Gigabyte Z87X-OC
Various DDR3 kits
Reference HD 7950
BFG 1000w PSU
KPC F1 EE
KPC Tek-9 Fat
Starting back up after so long, my first goal is to break all of my best scores on hwbot. Most of them were with Gulftown and GTX 580. I had a handful from air testing some Retail 2660Ks when Sandy Bridge was released. My previous top scores are as follows. I'll mark them as they go down. These are only the benchmarks with global points enabled. For 3D, I'm going after my single GPU scores first.
2D:
CPU-Z - 7520 MHz - Pentium 4 631 (not going to beat this one with Haswell)
PiFast - 13.44 sec. - 2600K @ 5488 MHz
Super Pi 1m - 6.750s - 2600K @ 5488 MHz
Super Pi 32m - 6m 14.703s - 2600K @ 5488 MHz
wPrime 32m Quad Core - 4.140s - X5677 @ 5778 MHz
wPrime 1024m Quad Core - 134.766s - X5677 @ 5590 MHz
PCMark 2005 - 26164 - Phenom II X4 940 @ 5523 MHz
The other 2D benches didn't have points or didn't exist.
3D:
Aquamark - 439186 - 990x @ 6250 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1300/1200 MHz
3DMark 01 - 107487 - 2600K @ 5388 MHz, GTX 580 @ 940/1200 MHz
3DMark 03 - 143866 - 980x @ 5491 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1325/1200 MHz
3DMark 05 - 52844 - 990x @ 6190 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1265/1217 MHz
3DMark 06 - 40978 - 990x @ 6045 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1300/1200 MHz
3DMark Vantage - 31579 - 2600K @ 5300 MHz, GTX 580 @ 945/1200 MHz
Heaven Xtreme - 2179.79 - 990x @ 4610 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1273/1230 MHz
The other 3D benches didn't have points or didn't exist.
Here's what we'll be cooling with, the best tools for the job.
Before doing anything, I had to prep the Z87X-OC for the cold. First I removed the heatsinks and CPU hold down. I liked the old Intel CPU sockets much better, where the protective socket cover attached to the socket itself, instead of the hold down. I've always preferred the brush-on conformal to the spray. Silicone is my preference, but apparently Fry's quit carrying it. Acrylic cracks and flakes, but it was the best thing I could find locally. I'll definitely be ordering some silicone brush-on and spray (for the back of the board) soon. I only painted the upper half of the board so far, since I'm not running LN2 on the GPU yet.
Now that the board is coated, we can put the socket bracket back on and start insulating. I don't like eraser for insulation. I used it when it became popular a loooong time ago, but I've switched back to foam. I think it's great for live competitions (actually, I prefer modeling clay over eraser, but same principle), but I just like having drop-in foam gaskets to make switching between air and LN2 easier.
1..2..3.. Presto!
I didn't have any sheet neoprene, so I even used Frost King for the very top layer. Now that I have neoprene (thanks to Viss for including a bunch when I bought a spare F1 EE from him), I'll be using that instead.
Checking for good CPU contact...
Mounted up.
I ran out of paper towels, so I used a shop rag.
Everything ready to go.
For my first 4770K, I only had access to dry ice, since I sold my LN2 dewars a couple of years ago. This one needed about 1.45v for 5GHz, and wouldn't validate past 5.8GHz. It was only good to 5.4GHz for multi-threaded benchmarks, and validated at 5.7GHz.
I found a nice 36L LN2 dewar on Craigslist for about $40 during a vacation. It had no distinguishable markings, and was sold to me as a 20L dewar. It looked much larger than I remembered my old 20L being, so I filled it up with water, and was very pleased when it took 36L! A great deal, even if it didn't have a good vacuum. As it turns out, the vacuum is pretty decent
The next couple of 4770Ks I tried weren't very good either. They had similar air results as the first one, so I didn't bother testing them under cold.
I finally found one that was at least the best one so far, though still not what I've been looking for. It did 4.8GHz on 1.2v and 5GHz on 1.3v. Unfortunately, that died before I could test it under cold. Intel RMA sent me the first Costa Rica batch I'd seen (the rest were all Malay), but it turned out to be a pretty big let down.
The first CPU I tested after the CR chip from RMA was at least in top 4 of the samples I'd tested on air (still not saying much), so I decided to run this one on LN2. This is also when I took the LN2 prepping pictures above.
Pulling it down before powering up. It's easier to cool a CPU when it's not fighting back
Now hang out in Windows for a bit while we pull down, so the whole board doesn't freeze.
Now that's it cold enough, we can start getting some work done
And after a few hours.
I guess I need to show some results now.
I've already seen some really talented reviewers' takes on this board, so instead of listing all of the features you've already read so much about over the past few months, I'll just give a brief overview, and jump straight into what this board is made to do: OVERCLOCKING!
Here we see the usual I/O shield, user guide, driver disc, etc. There are also a couple of extra accessories worth mentioning:
OC Brace - Keeps multiple graphics cards standing together.
Voltage leads - Easy, neat attachment to the Z87X-OC voltage read points.
Now let's take a look at the board itself.
On first glance, we see the nice and simple color scheme: orange on black. Gigabyte's board designs have come a long way since the bubble-gum-colored offerings from years ago, like my old X48T-DQ6.
First stop is the OC Panel. Everything Gigabyte has going on here is seriously insane. Like the rest of this motherboard, every component is placed very deliberately to maximize real estate and ensure ease of use. I like that the power and reset buttons are very easy to find, and very easy to tell apart. Even better is the clear cmos button is far away from either of these. This may not seem like a big deal, but I've definitely hit the clear cmos button by accident on other motherboards in the past, during an intense benching session.
While most of this board's real estate is completely packed with components and features, the CPU socket area is kept very clear of any obstacles. This will make insulating for sub-ambient cooling a breeze!
Now for the lower half.
I/O Panel. And no, there's no weird camera angle. The board is pretty warped. It's not hurting anything so I'm not worried about it.
And the back of the board.
Now let's get her naked.
Like I said above, there are already a ton of great reviews of this board, with my favorite being this one. What I'm here to show is how well this product can do what Gigabyte's marketing people say it's designed to do.
Testing setup:
Core i7 4770K
Gigabyte Z87X-OC
Various DDR3 kits
Reference HD 7950
BFG 1000w PSU
KPC F1 EE
KPC Tek-9 Fat
Starting back up after so long, my first goal is to break all of my best scores on hwbot. Most of them were with Gulftown and GTX 580. I had a handful from air testing some Retail 2660Ks when Sandy Bridge was released. My previous top scores are as follows. I'll mark them as they go down. These are only the benchmarks with global points enabled. For 3D, I'm going after my single GPU scores first.
2D:
CPU-Z - 7520 MHz - Pentium 4 631 (not going to beat this one with Haswell)
PiFast - 13.44 sec. - 2600K @ 5488 MHz
Super Pi 1m - 6.750s - 2600K @ 5488 MHz
Super Pi 32m - 6m 14.703s - 2600K @ 5488 MHz
wPrime 32m Quad Core - 4.140s - X5677 @ 5778 MHz
wPrime 1024m Quad Core - 134.766s - X5677 @ 5590 MHz
PCMark 2005 - 26164 - Phenom II X4 940 @ 5523 MHz
The other 2D benches didn't have points or didn't exist.
3D:
Aquamark - 439186 - 990x @ 6250 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1300/1200 MHz
3DMark 01 - 107487 - 2600K @ 5388 MHz, GTX 580 @ 940/1200 MHz
3DMark 03 - 143866 - 980x @ 5491 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1325/1200 MHz
3DMark 05 - 52844 - 990x @ 6190 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1265/1217 MHz
3DMark 06 - 40978 - 990x @ 6045 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1300/1200 MHz
3DMark Vantage - 31579 - 2600K @ 5300 MHz, GTX 580 @ 945/1200 MHz
Heaven Xtreme - 2179.79 - 990x @ 4610 MHz, GTX 580 @ 1273/1230 MHz
The other 3D benches didn't have points or didn't exist.
Here's what we'll be cooling with, the best tools for the job.
Before doing anything, I had to prep the Z87X-OC for the cold. First I removed the heatsinks and CPU hold down. I liked the old Intel CPU sockets much better, where the protective socket cover attached to the socket itself, instead of the hold down. I've always preferred the brush-on conformal to the spray. Silicone is my preference, but apparently Fry's quit carrying it. Acrylic cracks and flakes, but it was the best thing I could find locally. I'll definitely be ordering some silicone brush-on and spray (for the back of the board) soon. I only painted the upper half of the board so far, since I'm not running LN2 on the GPU yet.
Now that the board is coated, we can put the socket bracket back on and start insulating. I don't like eraser for insulation. I used it when it became popular a loooong time ago, but I've switched back to foam. I think it's great for live competitions (actually, I prefer modeling clay over eraser, but same principle), but I just like having drop-in foam gaskets to make switching between air and LN2 easier.
1..2..3.. Presto!
I didn't have any sheet neoprene, so I even used Frost King for the very top layer. Now that I have neoprene (thanks to Viss for including a bunch when I bought a spare F1 EE from him), I'll be using that instead.
Checking for good CPU contact...
Mounted up.
I ran out of paper towels, so I used a shop rag.
Everything ready to go.
For my first 4770K, I only had access to dry ice, since I sold my LN2 dewars a couple of years ago. This one needed about 1.45v for 5GHz, and wouldn't validate past 5.8GHz. It was only good to 5.4GHz for multi-threaded benchmarks, and validated at 5.7GHz.
I found a nice 36L LN2 dewar on Craigslist for about $40 during a vacation. It had no distinguishable markings, and was sold to me as a 20L dewar. It looked much larger than I remembered my old 20L being, so I filled it up with water, and was very pleased when it took 36L! A great deal, even if it didn't have a good vacuum. As it turns out, the vacuum is pretty decent
The next couple of 4770Ks I tried weren't very good either. They had similar air results as the first one, so I didn't bother testing them under cold.
I finally found one that was at least the best one so far, though still not what I've been looking for. It did 4.8GHz on 1.2v and 5GHz on 1.3v. Unfortunately, that died before I could test it under cold. Intel RMA sent me the first Costa Rica batch I'd seen (the rest were all Malay), but it turned out to be a pretty big let down.
The first CPU I tested after the CR chip from RMA was at least in top 4 of the samples I'd tested on air (still not saying much), so I decided to run this one on LN2. This is also when I took the LN2 prepping pictures above.
Pulling it down before powering up. It's easier to cool a CPU when it's not fighting back
Now hang out in Windows for a bit while we pull down, so the whole board doesn't freeze.
Now that's it cold enough, we can start getting some work done
And after a few hours.
I guess I need to show some results now.
