ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard Review

Not too long ago we had the pleasure of covering ASRock’s mid-range offering, the Z77 Extreme6. Since then, ASRock have continued to release new motherboards to fit each market segment, including the board we have in front of us today, the Z77 OC Formula.

Geared towards overclockers and tweakers, the Z77 OC Formula sports both air and watercooled VRMs, 12 CPU power phases, an 8-layer Copper PCB, dual stack MOSFETs, Multi-Filter caps and a whole slew of other features and benefits, this new board promises to be the best performing board from ASRock that we’ve seen to date.

As an overclocker, I love to see boards like this. Anything that can help increase stability or achieve clock speeds at lower voltages gets a big grin from me. I usually spend more time getting the last drop of performance out of my components than I actually spend utilizing said performance, so having a product like this to play with is like Christmas come early.

I’m going to be putting the OC Formula through its paces with a battery of benchmarks and test suites. I can’t wait and hopefully you can’t either, so we’re going to dive right in and find out.

Special Thanks to ASRock for providing us with the Z77 OC Formula for review!

Packaging
The packaging for ASRock’s OC Formula is all built around the “speed” theme. A sports car bearing a striking resemblance to a Lamborghini is present on the front, with a blurred rear that indicates the vehicle has obtained ludicrous speed.  The front can actually be lifted to reveal detail on ASRock’s signature features for the product within; the power kit, connector kit, and cooling kit. These are the three aspects of the board that ASRock state they have improved in order to produce significant overclocking results.

ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard

The rear of the box showcases the board visually, and that aside the main point of focus is the big “7Ghz” in the middle. Surrounding the lucky number 7 are all the technologies and features used to make this possible. We know it is, of course, because Nick Shih recently broke the world record with a massive frequency of 7.136Ghz!  The side of the box lists some specifications of the board in multiple languages.

ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard

Inside the box you’re offered manuals and documentation, a driver disc, and a very smooth faux suede bag. Inside this bag are six SATA cables, an I/O shield, a USB 3.0 front panel bracket, hardware to mount the USB bracket in the rear, an SLI bridge, 10 “OC Stands”, a tube of Gelid GC Extreme thermal compound, 2 MOLEX to SATA adapters, and an ASRock case badge specific to the OC Formula.

ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard ASRock Z77 OC Formula Motherboard

For a good idea of how the ASRock Formula arrives, check out our unboxing video below!