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ASRock Z87 OC Formula Motherboard Review

We measured the power consumption with the system resting at the Windows 7 desktop, representing idle values.

The power consumption of our entire test system is measured at the wall while loading only the CPU using Prime95's Small FFTs setting. The rest of the system's components were operating in their idle states, hence the increased power consumption values (in comparison to the idle figures) are largely related to the load on the CPU and motherboard power delivery components.

power consumption

Our recordings show the power consumption at idle barely rising when going from stock to overclocked frequencies. There are two reasons that we would put this down to. One is due to the already-high ‘stock' VCore of 1.280V set by ASRock. The other is the tweaked fan profile for our overclocked configuration which could result in slightly reduced power consumption.

Load power consumption figures fall in line with what have seen on other Z87 motherboards, although given its lack of a PLX switch, the Z87 OC Formula's stock energy usage is high. This is due to the higher-than-average CPU power consumption forced by the 1.280V VCore.

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7 comments

  1. wow that is awesome, looks stunning too!

  2. This board looks great – good price point too, which I always like with ASROCK. plenty of detail luke, thanks for review

  3. I just ordered one, hard to find here though, they need to work on their distribution

  4. Christopher Hall-Nelson

    They are always well priced, they dont seem any worse than MSI, GB or ASUS either in my own tests, but it all depends on what board you get I guess.

  5. Not the Formula I am looking forward to but I might go with this after trying out Asrock’s Fatal1ty Z77 and loving it. Not to mention that 9.5 rating.

    That fan though >.<

    It's forcing me to wait for the other Formula (VI) before I can decide.

    Thanks for the review ^^

  6. Got the ac version of this from Overclockers abour four weeks ago. Just waiting on my custom cable extensions to arrive from Pexon to get my build started. If it is half as good as my X79Extreme11 in my main rig it will be epic

  7. Hi Luke,… was wondering. Is the PLX8605 embedded on the Z87 OC Formula AC driven from the CPU? or is it driven from the extra PCIe lanes provided by the Z87 Chipset? (I’m guessing from the lane configurations that it is the Z87? which would mean you could operate 2-way SLI without any latency?……) Thanks for any help you can provide.