Gigabyte Z87X-OC Force Motherboard Unboxing & Overview
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,797 words · ~8 min read
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buy a qualifying Intel product and get entered in the Intel Dynamic ticket
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giveaway for a chance to win great prizes visit Intel gaming promo.com to
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learn more welcome to my unboxing and overview of a product that's probably
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designed more for people who don't pay for Hardware than for people who
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actually buy their own Hardware so it is expensive and overbuilt to the point
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where it's hardly even practical unless you're one of those guys who's going for
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every possible frequency record whether it's on CPU or memory or whatever
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else and it farted or whatever else the
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case may be this is the z87x OC force
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from Gigabyte a proud continuation of the OC board traditions of orange slots
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black pcbs beautiful Aesthetics and
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overbuilt design so we've got a two-way
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SLI Bridge a three-way SLI Bridge a four-way
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SLI Bridge a 16-way SLI no I'm just
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kidding actually this is really cool so this is what they're calling the OC
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brace and it is basically a way to attach PCI brackets to the back of the
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board when it's on a test bench to support your cards so they don't lean
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over I mean that is so cool it's the
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kind of thing that no one one who actually pays for hardware and puts a motherboard inside a case will ever care
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about but like come on that's so cool I love it anyway two-way Crossfire
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Bridge uh V checkpoint adapter so you
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can monitor your voltages I'll show you those on the motherboard itself six SATA
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cables uh looks like yeah three right angle three straight connectors antennas
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for the builtin wireless so there you go
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Wireless N as well as Bluetooth card so
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that's a PCI e1x card you could install it in this board you could buy this
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board install it in some other board wouldn't matter it's just a proper PC
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e1x card uh front panel 3 and 1/2 in Bay
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USB 3.0 doohickey um some kind of USB cable for
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probably something ah yeah that's right that's for the Wi-Fi card and then we've
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got an IO Shield as well as all the documentation that you can conveniently
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find on the internets which to my
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understanding is something to do with tubes or something like that which leads
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us to the motherboard itself so I'm going to take you guys on a tour I
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actually had someone uh tell me sockets are sockets not that long ago when I was
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doing a video and I was saying how Gigabyte has their whole uh 15 micro
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goldplated CPU memory PCI Express pin
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thing going on and the truth of the matter is that no not all sockets are
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manufactured and provided by Intel and there are more expensive and less
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expensive of socket implementations that the manufacturers can put on their
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motherboard so Gigabyte has gone ahead and called out that they have a better
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socket for the CPU as well as for memory
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and the PCI Express slots they've also implemented a very high current 8 Pin
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plus four pin Design This is only going to be relevant if you're the kind of
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person who is even capable of using a board like this to its maximum potential
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and speaking of using the board to its maximum potential you have the option to
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either use air cooling or liquid cooling so the vrm cooler is using a hybrid
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design so you can turn on this fan which Gigabyte claims is silent but I'm going
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to go ahead and call them on that one because small fans are never silent or
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you can disable it completely or just take it off which is what I would
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probably do and use the 38 in integrated
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barbs to liquid cool the vrm which would
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be very very sweet around the CPU socket
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we find the vrm design which is Extreme beefy on this board using all
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International Rectifier brand components for the pwm as well as the ic's although
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most of that is hidden by the cooling solution here you can also see that
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whether it's here around the CPU socket or in other parts of the board is using
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all what Gigabyte is calling their durable black solid caps so it's all
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kind of part of the overall Ultra durable branding that Gigabyte has which
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refers to their 2 O copper PCB their glass fabric PCB design that improves
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humidity resistance as well as generally the use of better quality components
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which is useful not only from a better performance perspective because if you
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guys saw our recent video comparing a high performance ATX board to an ITX
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board performance-wise there might not be that much of a difference but there
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can be a longevity difference and a stability difference when we're talking
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about pushing things to the absolute limit I mean the board must have every
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possible onboard button reset power One
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Touch overclocking with the turbo button the tag button recalls a favorite
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setting that You' set up within the BIOS the ignition button I can't even
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remember what that one does ah yes allows you to jump allows you to keep
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the power on to the motherboard even once it is turned off so there are a
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variety of reasons overclockers might want to do this particularly not wanting
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the components to get too cold and have condensation form in an outof control
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fashion you've also got base clock up
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and down as well as multiplier up and
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down and a gear button that changes the ratios of up and down this for the other
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functionality and finally the Facebook button which allows you to fire up
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Facebook and tell your other social media followers all about your
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overclocking exp points no that's not actually what this does that is the
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trigger button which allows you to set up your benchmarking run you're ready to
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go boom boom boom okay at a nice low stable frequency flip the button boom
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you're running at your extreme frequency then once your benchmark run is done
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flip it back and now it's stable enough to submit your scores and all that
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you've got all of your voltage checkpoints whether it's for VC cor vdm
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blah blah blah etc etc etc as well as an onboard post debug led the 24 pin
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connectors it's an ideal location along the right hand Edge and the front USB 3
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connectors in its almost ideal location on the right hand Edge but not in a
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right angle configuration this is cool right here these are PCI Express
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switches that allow you to actually turn on and off different PCI Express slots
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these can be great for diagnosing issues whether you're on open test bench and
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there's the doorbell or whether you are just have something like a complex water
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cooling setup on your board and you're trying to figure out what's going wrong
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and it's a lot easier to turn off a PCI Express slot than it is to pull a
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graphics card also related to the PCI Express slots is this extra auxiliary
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SATA connector if you're installing more than two graphics cards plug a SATA
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connector in there and it'll give you a little bit extra power for those cards and those slots we've got six SATA 3 6
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GB per second ports powered by the Intel controller and then four more powered by
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a Marvel controller then finally we've got a SOS clear switch down here on the
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bottom right and more fan headers we'll cover those later front panel connectors
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for if you are installing this board in an actual case another front USB 3
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header two front USB 2 headers a com
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Port of all things and front panel audio although there isn't a particularly
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high-end audio implementation on this board unlike the more gaming optimized
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board from their G1 Series so this is really overclocking optimized not
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necessarily gaming optimized now I want to point out where all the fan
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connectors are on this board so we've got two up here on the top not a whole
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lot down the right hand Edge so there's basically just one here so that's three
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total now and boom High concentration on the bottom two more for five one more
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for six another two for eight and finally the ninth one is over here at
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the back which is great if you have a rear 120 mm fan that you want to install
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it on the PCI Express configuration is very very ample so Gigabyte is using a
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switching solution in order to achieve 4X or rather 8X 88x 8X 8X bandwidth
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required for four-way Crossfire or
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four-way SLI configuration so you can
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put pretty much whatever graphics cards you could possibly want on this
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particular board once we get around to the rear IO we find two usb2 ports two
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HDMI ports DisplayPort a PS2 keyboard
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mouse combo Port six USB 3.0 ports optical audio out 2 GB Ethernet ports
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and 7.1 audio out although most overclockers probably won't even care
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about the audio out I think I missed the memory support so of course it supports
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dual Channel DDR3 memory up to 8 gig dims at this point in time and pretty
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much any speed you could possibly see fit to put in it remember though the
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maximum speed achievable particularly on the Haswell platform is going to be
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determined by your CPUs integrated memory controller as well as the
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frequency you're pushing for on your CPU because the higher that frequency goes
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the lower your max memory over clock will be unless you happen to be
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particularly talented thank you for checking out this unboxing and overview
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of the z87x OC force from Gigabyte I
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think I actually missed one very important thing here and that is the
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dedicated switch to go between the two bioses on this board so if you do happen
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to Brick something or it just sort of the power goes out in the middle of a flash you will be able to recover it
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he