CLOSER LOOK
[one_half][singlepic id=14005 w=400 h=300 float=center][/one_half][one_half_last][singlepic id=14006 w=400 h=300 float=center][/one_half_last]GIGABYTE’s Z87X-OC is packaged in the company’s newly-styled boxes. Featuring a simple boxart on a gloss black surface, the front packaging design for GIGABYTE’s overclocking board is quite sublime with only the board’s model name adorning the front, the OC motherboard icon and Intel’s 4th gen logos. A sweet shot of the heatsink crowns this side. The Z87X-OC features a well-detailed feature map on the back with plenty of marketing highlights.
[singlepic id=14007 w=600 h=420 float=center]The Z87X-OC bundle includes SATA ports, I/O shield, multi-card bridges, a driver installation disc and some documentation.
[singlepic id=14020 w=600 h=420 float=center]As a purpose-built motherboard, the Z87X-OC continues GIGABYTE’s legacy of overclocking excellence and provides a pair of tools for overclockers: an OC brace for out-of-case applications and test probes for hooking up your multimeters easily to the boards built-in check points.
Checking out the board, we’re presented with the signature orange on black color scheme of the GIGABYTE OC line. The board features a total of four PCI-E x16 slots which will operate at x8/x4/x4/x4 when all of which are populated. You’ll immediately notice those curious looking buttons on the upper right, we’ll get to that later.
[singlepic id=14015 w=600 h=420 float=center]Checkout out the rear ports we have plenty of USB3.0 ports as is customary for today’s modern systems. Display outputs include two HDMI and a DisplayPort along with the 8-channel audio is served from an aging ALC892. Other ports worth noting are the optical out located near the DisplayPort/HDMI row. Now for the overclocker-oriented portion we have a legacy PS/2 port for older devices. Also one of the nifty new toys of the Z87X-OC is the OC Ignition which powers up some sections of the system but won’t boot it up. Great for testing watercooling loops, pre-heating some of the components etc.
[singlepic id=14010 w=600 h=420 float=center]SATA ports are powered off the Intel chipset, all six of which are SATAIII. What’s new here is the addition of two internal USB2.0 ports. Again, these are great for out-case applications.
[singlepic id=14011 w=600 h=420 float=center]The Z87X-OC features a solid 8-phase VRM powered by IR Digital PWMs. Now you may think as an OC board this may sound a bit on the weak side, but GIGABYTE’s choice of PWM components are very efficient and powerful by themselves.
[one_half][singlepic id=14012 w=400 h=300  float=center][/one_half][one_half_last][singlepic id=14013 w=400 h=300 float=center][/one_half_last]Back to those buttons we saw earlier, here they are up-close. There’s a lot to go through but we’ll focus on them as groups for easier recognition. Like the Z77X-UP7, the Z87X-OC features onboard OC buttons for easier tweaking of clocks. If you don’t know what these are for then chances are you don’t OC much and this board ain’t for you but if your mind is going berserk on the possible applications then yes, they work as advertised. The buttons include ones for powering the board on/off, changing multiplier ratio and BCLK rate, etc. Switches for toggling between the DualBIOS are also present, as well as single BIOS lock to disable the secondary BIOS. A memory safe button now makes it to GIGABYTE to recalibrate the memory to stable settings when you go unstable. And a whole lot of other stuff.
[one_half][singlepic id=14017 w=400 h=300  float=center][/one_half][one_half_last][singlepic id=14019 w=400 h=300 float=center][/one_half_last]In more overclocking goodness, GIGABYTE has included a brace again for out-case scenarios like exotic cooling with DICE or LN2. The brace makes sure the graphics cards won’t wobble around especially multi-GPU runs with custom pots keeping them in place. Great for people who can’t buy or won’t buy a test-bench and just want to focus on the benchmark runs. Great attention to detail here by GIGABYTE addressing actual needs rather than wants.
