**Official** ASRock Z77 Discussion/Owners Club - Page 2

Oh I love it, but more on that in a momemt. I bought both the Z77E-ITX and Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe as seen in my last post. When testing with a 3570K, they both needed 1.3v to hit 4.5Ghz (not the best chip lol). I then did some testing with a 2600K @ 4.5Ghz, and the Asrock board could get through stability with a much lower VCore (1.264 vs. 1.3) compared to the Asus. After doing some comparisons, my system shut down for the second time in a week, sort of like a cold/hard reset (no bluescreen), and I started getting worried about the Asrock board. After doing a bit more testing and realizing the Asus needed more voltage with the 2600K @ 4.5Ghz (1.3 vs Asrock's 1.264 with all LLC/Vdroop settings the same), I'm now concluding that the Asrock shut down due to the lack of voltage. I couldn't even boot into Windows with the Asus without providing 1.288, and it needed a little more voltage for stability, so lack of voltage clearly must have been the reasoning for the sudden non blue screen shut down while using the Asrock. Apart from that, I like a lot of things about the Z77E-ITX. It has a lot less overclocking features in the UEFI, but that only makes the overclocking process simpler. Moreover, all the extra eye candy Asus provides (Digi+ VRM, etc.,) doesn't seem to do a damn thing when it comes to overclocking potential. Next the Asrock cold boots in 15 seconds, while the Asus takes 25 or so. The Asrock also provides slightly better SSD benchmark performance, has a better layout for internal neatness, Good Night LED (love this), simpler overclocking (mentioned above), and of course it's less expensive. I have another 3570K coming tomorrow and plan to do some more comparing but I'm currently leaning towards the Asrock. Hope it's okay I sort of did a comparison

Thank you and the ITX boards overclock just as well as the other boards. In fact, the Z77E-ITX has a 6 + 2 Power Phase Design, while the Z77 Pro4, Z77 Pro4-M, and Z77 Extreme4-M only have a 4 + 2 Power Phase Design.
Edited by Jocelyn84 - 5/8/12 at 4:48pm

Jocelyn,

Weren't you earlier leaning toward the Asus? What's behind the flip-flops?

If I had both boards to play with I might flip-flop, too. Other things (e.g. build quality) being equal I like the Asrock's price and fast boot. I like the Asus' daughter board and greater number of software and hardware widgets even though I may use but a small fraction of them.

Harry

I mentioned the reason in my last post. I had two fluke hard/cold long resets, which initially had me worried about the Asrock's build quality, but I'm now attributing them to lack of voltage. I needed more voltage just to get into Windows with the Asus board, and even more to pass 12 hours of Prime & plenty of LinX compared to the Asrock. If I had similar voltages using the Asrock, I'm willing to guess those fluke shut downs would have never happened. Going to make my decision after testing with a second 3570K, which arrives tomorrow.

Checking in with my Z77E-ITX

Welcome! I really do like the board.

Get her an SG05 and GTX 680 too! lol

Same setup here; looks like you guys might've gotten lucky? MC cancelled the chip but still sent me the board.

Anyway, I'm new to OCing a Sandy or Ivy. I'm coming from Conroe so its been awhile.

At 4.4, 1.25V, LLC 1 I seem to be stable when using Prime, my issue though is when the volts come back down...I get locked up frequently..Ill have to check my addition turbo voltage (might be set to auto); shouldnt we just turn that off if we dont want the fluctuation in voltage?

Nice, I'll start there.. Thx bud.