Layout

At a first glance the ASRock OC Formula leaves a very good impression with its harmonic design. The manfucaturer decided to go for a combination of black, yellow and gold, which suites nicely and in the end you get an aesthetic product. The layout itself is well thought and there is for example plenty of space around the CPU socket to install even todays largest CPU coolers. The fact that there are SATA connectors which have been angled by 90 degrees allow an easy installation of oversized graphics cards. It's quite surprising to see how similar the new Z87 OC Formula is compared to the predecessor Z77 OC Formula. Apparently ASRock seems to have found a working formula, which they don't need to change regarding design.



The ASRock OC Formula comes with a digital 12 phase power design. The manufacturer decided to use a Nuvoton NCT6776D Super IO Chip as well as a Nuvoton NCT7904D Hardware Monitor Chip. As we've already mentioned on the feature's page, ASRock decided to chose a complex power design where there are for example three different filtering stages to get smooth and highly constant voltages. Especially when it comes to extreme overclocking, the power design can be what tipped the scales in the end.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the OC Formula. Officially supported are DDR3 3000+(OC) / 2800(OC) / 2666(OC) / 2400(OC) / 2133(OC) / 1866(OC) / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz. There is engough space between the DIMM-slots and the CPU socket which means that you wont encounter compatibility problems with big coolers even when you choose to install RAM with big heatspreaders. Also supported are Xtreme Memory Profiles (XMP) in version 1.3.

On the OC Formula the southbridge as well as current converters got separate cooling blocks. In case of the southbridge there is a single block made from aluminium, which provides appropriate cooling. A closer look at the current converters shows that there are two individual blocks connected to one another by a watercooling channel. Furthermore ASRock decided to equip the power design coolers with a 40 millimeter fan. For extreme overclockers this is a nice addition, but if you should decide to put this board into a case and you expect low operating noise, then you'll be disappointed after at last half a year. Those small fans quite quickly show issues related to the bearing and they are also very sensitive to dust. In case of putting this board into an enclosure we recommend to unplug the fan.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 14 - SiSoft Sandra 2
Page 2 - Specs and Delivery	Page 15 - UC Bench
Page 3 - Features	Page 16 - Super Pi 1M / 32M
Page 4 - Layout	Page 17 - wPrime 1024M Multi Core
Page 5 - Connectors and I/O	Page 18 - Cinebench
Page 6 - BIOS	Page 19 - Bioshock: Infinite
Page 7 - Test setup	Page 20 - Metro Last Light
Page 8 - Preview / Gallery	Page 21 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 9 - 3D Mark	Page 22 - Power Consumption
Page 10 - 3D Mark 11	Page 23 - Performance Rating
Page 11 - 3D Mark Vantage	Page 24 - Price Comparison
Page 12 - PC Mark 7	Page 25 - Conclusion
Page 13 - SiSoft Sandra 1