EDITOR’S CHOICE AWARD
GIGABYTE Z87X-OC RRP: $199.99 | Website: www.gigabyte.com
Test Machine • INTEL Core i7 4770K • CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 2x4GB DDR 2666MHZ C10 • ADATA SX910 SSD • Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1500W • Windows 7 64-bit SP1 • Bios Version X04
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t’s very rare that you come across incredible hardware these days at prices virtually anyone remotely interested in overclocking can afford. After all, overclocking can be very costly and one could argue that by the time you’re at a competitive level, it’s even more so. Consider the LN2, the pots, the insulation, the time and the potential of bricking your hardware. It’s a daunting task even for the most experienced overclockers. That aside, what makes it even more problematic is sorting through numerous motherboards to find the one
38 The OverClocker Issue 26 | 2013
that you are most comfortable with, but one that won’t be the limit of your overclocking capabilities or hardware. To that end, more times than not. We find that we tend to go with the tried and tested motherboards as you’d rather buy once, for increased odds of success than be left wondering if perhaps you’ve gone astray in your purchasing decision. Despite the fact that most motherboards in this day from the major vendors are great, we want more than that for our investment. We seek excellence. To that end, we find ourselves faced with perhaps, GIGABYTE’s best effort to date. In fact, we are willing to put money on it as far the best motherboard to ever come from the minds at GIGABYTE. As usual the features list is on the website, so we’ll not run through them here. What we will tell you though is that feature for feature, there aren’t any boards that we are aware of that offer much more than what you have here. Whatever you may need for your LN2 session,
you’ll find. So be it getting the most efficient runs possible or shooting for those validations, you’ll be hard pressed to not achieve any milestone as a result of the Z87X-OC. As with most Z87 boards save for the MAXIMUS VI EXTREME. The OC didn’t hit the ground running, however - right now it’s impeccable and it’s been so for quite a while. We are impressed by the new UEFI but still find ourselves reverting to the older BIOS menu which is familiar and quick to navigate. Tuning in the BIOS is simple and straight forward. Not much info is given in the description box about how any of the settings affect your OC (something that such a motherboard rightfully deserves), but you’ll eventually figure it out. Be it you’re overclocking using an air cooler or LN2, this board is equally adapt. For the novice overclocker, it’s best you read some of the tutorials on the net. Be sure to not miss Sin0822’s excellent overclocking guide on this board, which can be found