EVGA’s Z77 FTW motherboard is built for extreme overclocking!

Overclocking

Core i7-3770″K” CPUs are multiplier unlocked and can easily be overclocked to well in excess of 4GHz. On the other hand, the Core i3 CPUs are locked and cannot be overclocked in the traditional manner. Only the base clock may be overclocked which overclocks the entire system. Overclocks of 3-5+% with stability are reported and there can be a small performance boost. The Core i7-3770K also has an unlocked base clock although we did not attempt to adjust it.

As we mentioned in the introduction, our Core i7-3770K was clocked to 4.8GHz on the ECS motherboard, the same clockspeed that we have achieved on our Gigabyte, ECS and now EVGA FTW Z77 motherboards.  There appears to be plenty of thermal headroom left, yet when we tried a higher clock, 4.9GHz would not even boot on the ECS motherboard.  It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense until we realized – from testing the EVGA FTW motherboard with the same CPU cooler – that the temperatures were being drastically under-reported.

Here is the same Noctua NH-DH14 under identical conditions on the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard.  Notice the dramatic differences in the reported temperatures, about 9C degrees!

 We were able to match the 4.8GHz overclock of the Gigabyte mATX Z77 motherboard with our ECS motherboard, although we were unable to get 4.9GHz no matter how much reasonable voltage we applied. We could boot into Windows but the system was unstable and when we attempted 5.0GHz, the CPU throttled. Evidently, the issues were partially thermal-related as reported temperatures only appeared to be around or below 80C under load when they were probably closer to 90C at 4.8GHz and it only got worse when we tried to overclock further.

Fortunately EVGA has included a temperature sensor that reports the average temperature of the cores that appears to be quite accurate. We found that by changing a few key settings in the BIOS, we were able to achieve 5.0GHz although not at the temperatures we would have liked.

Using the EVGA BIOS to reach 5.0GHz with our i7-3770K

The settings that we adjusted to reach 5.0GHz are described in our BIOS section under Overclocking.

Here is 4.9GHz using our Noctua NH-DH14

Of course, temperatures are out of control but that is an issue with the cooling, not the motherboard.  EVGA has the tools to easily do what two other motherboards simply could not manage.  Fortunately, during this evaluation, Thermaltake sent us their Water2.0 Pro and we were even able to push our Core i7-3770K to 5.0GHz!

At last, 5.0GHz!

We are looking forward to fine-tuning our 5.0GHz overclock in an upcoming evaluation of the Thermaltake Water2.0 Performer and Pro this week as we compare high-end air cooling versus water.  However, it is very impressive that the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard allowed such a simple and stable overclock at 5.0GHz whereas the ECS and Gigabyte motherboards stopped the CPU dead in its tracks at 4.8GHz.  Overclockers looking to get every last bit of performance out of their Ivy Bridge CPU should have the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard on a very short list.

Issues with 8GB (2x4GB) of System RAM and Overclocking with ECS motherboard

When we upgraded our Ivy Bridge platform from 4GB to 8GB system RAM (2x2GB to 4x2GB) for the last round of benching games and for all of the other tests, we noticed that it took significantly higher voltage on the ECS motherboard to stabilize the CPU overclock and the system.   There were no such issues to report with the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard.  It really is engineered with stability in mind and for the maximum overclock.

Let’s head over to our test configuration.  Most of the gaming benches were run at 4.8 GHz while the synthetic benchmarks were run at 4.2GHz so as to compare with our ECS motherboard and also indirectly with the Core i7-920 we compared last month.