Overclocking
Besides traditional manual overclocking, ASRock has a really cool overclock feature called EZ OC. A dropdown menu gives a list of clock speeds, you just select which one you want and the other relevant settings are done automatically, including memory clock and CPU voltage. It worked great on the last ASRock board I reviewed, the only additional tweak I had to perform is raising the Vcore a little, EZ OC didn’t raise it quite high enough. This time I was actually able to lower the vcore. It really wasn’t necessary, but I wanted to see if I could.
A third overclocking method in the BIOS is ASRock I.O.T. (Intelligent Overclocking Technology). Here, you overclock by percentage over stock rather than just punching in a number.
There is also an EZ OC for the memory too. Though memory speed is a function of the CPU speed, so you can only use one or the other, when you set the overclock speed for the processor it changes whatever you had set for the memory. But there are memory dividers and multipliers, so you have the option of memory tweaking along with the CPU overclock.
I like to spend some time with a processor before I look for the max overclock, so I really wasn’t interested in finding that today. I used the EZ OC and just grabbed a number, 4.0gHz sounded good to me, a really healthy overclock from the stock 2.8gHz. I looked at the Vcore to make sure it had changed, and dropped it down a few increments. The rig POSTed and booted just fine. Just for good measure, I went back into the BIOS and raised it to 4.2gHz, again dropped the Vcore a few notches, and still was good to go. I guess I showed how lazy I really am, I decided to leave it there, with a 40.87% overclock. I do remember how hard it once was to get that kind of overclock.
Special Features – ASRock OC DNA
As always, the ASRock P55 Deluxe has far too many features to mention here, but I like to point out at least one that I have never mentioned before. Many special features of the P55 Deluxe can be found here.
I’ve already mentioned many of those features I found very interesting with this board, the V-16 Power Phase, the SATA3 card, the DDR3-2600 capability (currently the fastest in the world), and the “Combo Cooler Option” (the ability to use either LGA 1156 or LGA 775 CPU coolers).
I thought I’d mention one feature today that though I find a little strange does have possibilities, ASRock OC DNA. OC DNA is a function of the board where you can save a set of particular overclock settings, create a file, attach it to an email or send it over IM to a friend that has the same motherboard, and he can load the settings onto his BIOS.
Yeah, I know, how many friends have the same setup as you do? But it could be someone in a forum, in a retailer’s user reviews, or a tech to someone he is helping. An experienced overclocker to a noob.
The requirement is that it has to be the same motherboard and same BIOS version. I dunno, I likely will never use it, but thought that it was pretty cool.
