ASRock Z77 OC Formula motherboard detailed
Ryan Martin / 12 years ago
ASRock’s Z77 OC Formula motherboard has been in the works for a while now, since Computex 2012 – or at least thats when details first went public. Anyway, as the name would suggest this board is solely aimed at the overclockers on Z77. ASRock is looking to bring this board to market to fend off stiff competition from MSI, ASUS and Gigabyte in the form of the MPower Z77, Maximus V and G1.Sniper 3.
The Z77 OC Formula is slightly bigger than ATX, with a CEB form factor. ASRock is using the usual premium gold Japanese made high-quality Conductive Polymer Capacitors all over the board. There are a number of OC features like Digi-Power 12+4 phase power design, high density power connectors and gold contact points for CPU and memory. ASRock is offering active air cooling or water cooling options for the CPU VRM. One 8-pin and one 4-pin EPS connectors are present for powering the CPU. It’ll come with GELID GC-Extreme Thermal Compound and with ‘NickShih’s OC Profile’ pre-loaded in BIOS.
In terms of memory, Z77 OC Formula supports up to 32 GB of memory with DDR-3000+ speeds. It comes with two PCI Express 3.0 x16, one PCI Express 2.0 x16 (x4 electrical) and two PCI Express 2.0 x1 slots; supporting up to 3-Way NVIDIA SLI and AMD CrossfireX. For sound just the usual 7.1 channel Realtek ALC898. Broadcom BCM57781 provides the gigabit LAN.
For storage connectivity, Z77 OC Forumla comes with 6 SATA III 6 Gb/s ports (two via Intel Z77 and four via Marvell SE9172) and four SATA II 3 Gb/s ports. In terms of other on-board options, it comes with one front panel USB 3.0 connector, voltage measurement points, 8 fan connectors (two PWM), three USB 2.0 headers, post LED, power/reset button, Rapid OC Button (+/- buttons to adjust OC frequency) and PCIe on/off switch. ASRock also packs two 64Mb AMI chips loaded with UEFI.
The back panel IO has one PS/2 mouse/keyboard combo port, HDMI, Optical SPDIF Out Port, six USB 3.0, four USB 2.0, LAN, clear CMOS switch and audio connectors.
The ASRock Z77 OC Formula is expected to hit market by the end of this month or in the start of next month with a “moderate price tag”.
