ASRock Z77 Extreme6 Intel Z77 Motherboard Review

Overclocking
Overclocking in Windows using ASRock’s AXTU utility is fairly straightforward. You choose the Overclocking tab, and then you proceed to change your system settings and voltages to overclock. The available features were detailed in AXTU’s software section, so I’ll refer you to the previous page if you’d like to know more about in-Windows overclocking.

However, I, like many others, like to overclock in the UEFI. I was able to boot at 4.4ghz at stock voltage. Attempting to boot 4.5ghz at stock voltage resulted in a BSOD at the login screen. Bumping offset voltage to +0.010v resulted in a bootable 4.5ghz clock, but I wasn’t stable in 12+hrs of Prime95 until +0.045v offset.

I continued to push the chip, and was able to run 4.8ghz and run Prime95 without crashing, but the limitations of my CPU cooler meant the processor was very hot so I had to scale back my overclock to 4.5ghz for peace of mind and a processor that doesn’t burn out after a few weeks!

4.5ghz is a 1.1ghz overclock (32%), but if I had a better cooling solution, 4.8ghz is a 1.4ghz overclock (41%) – which is really impressive.

validated