Layout

At a first glance the ASRock OC Formula leaves a very good impression with its harmonic design. The manufacturer decided to go for a combination of black, yellow and gold, which suites nicely and in the end you get an aesthetic although aggressive looking 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 Z97 OC Formula is compared to the predecessor Z87 OC Formula. Apparently ASRock seems to have found a working formula, which they don't need to change too much regarding design.



The ASRock OC Formula comes with a digital 12 phase power design. Like we've already explained on the features page ASRock is making use of an extensive solution. There are for instance Dual-Stack MOSFETs, NexFET MOSFETs as well as 12K Platinum caps on this motherboard. The Dual-Stack MOSFETs are taking care of stable and efficient current delivery to the CPU and compared to standard MOSFETs the offer a significantly lower RDS(on) value of just 1.2 milliohm. The memory gets backed-up by NexFET MOSFETs, which also offer a very low ROD(on) value of 2.9 milliohm. Last but definitely not least there 12K Platinum Caps that are good for no less than 12'000 hours of on time.

Totally you'll find four DIMM-slots on the OC Formula. Officially supported are DDR3 3400+(OC) / 2933(OC) / 2800(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 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 adequate cooling. A closer look at the current converters shows that there are two individual blocks connected to one another by a heatpipe. Compared to the predecessor, ASRock decided to get rid of the 40 millimeter fan, that used to sit on top of one of the heatsink coolers, which is something quite a few users will really appreciate. Other than that the weight of this board is astonishingly high, which also partially due to the fact, that the cooling blocks are rather heavy.

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