Overclocking With Gigabyte Z77X Motherboards @ HotHardware
I think by most of Ninjalane readers know that I'm a bit of an overclocker and have dabbled with just about every cooling method you can imagine including a single stage phase backed waterchiller with some rather surprising results. The one thing my overclocking experence has taught me is that motherboards, despite what anyone tells you, play a very small role in the maximum achievable overclock in a modern PC.
In fact you can look at it this way. CPU is the most important, with a bad processor you'll get a bad overclock regardless of how much voltage or power stability you have. Next would be memory which is quickly followed by your motherboard. BIOS(UEFI) programming helps to tune a link between everything and if you have a solid BIOS you'll have a solid overclock.
It is no surprise that the Hothardware reviewer was limited to 4.6Ghz in his overclocking tests given that was the frequency limit of his processor.
Although on paper the UP7 looked like it would be the toughest board in the bunch, it couldn’t quite push past the 4.6GHz mark, either; however, it did manage to achieve stability at that clock speed at just 1.18V, which was a bit batter than both the UP5 TH and UD4H. Keep in mind, to maintain stability while overclocked, it's not just a higher voltage that helps, but clean, smooth power delivery as well. And the UP7's beefier power array seems to have paid off here.
At the end of the day, then, all three mainboards achieved the same 4.6GHz overclock, but at three different voltages. The UP7 was the winner by a hair.
Of course those had he included memory frequency and results under LN2 I think the end result would have been more definable however, under air/water cooling your maximum clock frequency isn't so much determined by the motherboard but rather the quality of the BIOS programming and how good your particular CPU is.
Funny thing about the UP7, it is an amazing motherboard but due to the complexity of the motherboard design you'll find that memory overclocking isn't all that great. Now, if you roll down to a lower end board like the UD4H you'll find that signal integrity is better and just makes memory overclocking that much easier.
Related Web URL: http://hothardware.com/Reviews/Overclocking-With-G...
