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

Conclusion

It is clear to us that if you want to overclock your Ivy Bridge CPU, most overclocking friendly motherboards will get your CPU to a decent overclock.  However, if you want to overclock so as to get the absolute highest maximum overclock, there are only a handful of motherboards that can do this and one of the very best is the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard.  Couple that with stable support for 4-way SLI plus PhysX, and your list will become very short indeed, with the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard topping it in our opinion.

We held back on upgrading to Sandy Bridge last year, partly because our old Bloomfield X58 motherboard supports the full PCIe 2.0 16x+16x specification whereas Sandy Bridge is 8x+8x PCIe 2.0. Now that the PCIe bandwidth has been nearly doubled with Ivy Bridge to 3.0, 8x+8x PCIe 3.0 offers no disadvantage to running the GTX 680 on the ECS motherboard.  However, a pair of overclocked GTX 690s would exceed 8x bandwidth and the FTW’s PLX chip that extends the 16x/16x PCIe 3.0 bandwidth to Slots 2 and 4 would be very useful in maintaining the very highest graphics performance.

Although the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard is $90 more than the ECS Golden Series Z77H2-A2X board, it is well-worth the extra expense for the serious overclocker.  The FTW BIOS just has that many more useful options than the ECS motherboard and there is a lot more stability built into the EVGA board itself.

Having two power connectors for the CPU and two for PCIe may seem like overkill when most motherboards have one or none, yet this board can handle a much higher CPU overclock than the others.  We were also impressed with the FTW being able to overclock to 5.oGHz with all the DIMMs filled using the same voltage to the CPU.  In contrast, the ECS motherboard had issues maintaining its 4.8GHz overclock when we upgraded from 4GB (2x2GB) to 8GB (4x2GB) DDR3.

The EVGA Z77 FTW is built to support the most extreme graphics setups with support for 4-way SLI/CrossFireX and extreme graphics overclocking.  And 14 SATA ports and 16 USB ports mean great convenience and functionality.  And there is Dual-LAN for faster connections.

We see the EVGA has a great layout for easy accessibility and visibility whether it is open on a bench or in a case.  The LED debug/temperature sensor is a great feature and it is easy to view through most case side-panel windows.  The angled ATX power connector and PCIe connector make sense in making extra room on the board itself.

The active cooling fan probably isn’t necessary until all the PCIe slots are filled, then it becomes critical; and fortunately it is very quiet.  There are many system fan headers on the motherboard and they are well-placed and very useful.  We might nitpick the BIOS for lacking mouse support and the necessity to use PCIe Slots 2 and 4 for 16x/16x PCIe 3.0 bandwidth to each card in 2-way SLI, but this is one of the best motherboards of its kind anywhere and a side case fan should be used for extreme graphics anyway.  If you are looking for extreme multi-graphics capability, this is one of the few boards that can handle 4-way SLI plus PhysX, and CrossFireX.

A potentially more serious fault is requiring an expensive active mini-DisplayPort adapter that will add $100 to the cost of the board if end users want to use the integrated Intel CPU graphics and if they do not have a native DisplayPort display.  This will probably not affect too many end users of this board as they are looking for overclocking multi-GPU PCIe graphics cards instead of bothering to use integrated graphics at all.  Overall, we have come to love and appreciate the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard over the past couple of months and it has become our flagship motherboard at ABT.

EVGA Z77 FTW Pros and Cons

Pros

• The EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard is a very good looking motherboard and a uniquely capable overclocker’s dream
• It is a fully-featured Z77 motherboard with premium components which have proved itself to be stable and able to get an excellent 5.0GHz overclock on Core i7-3770K that two other Z77 motherboards simply could not achieve.
• There are three distinct BIOSes which contribute to worry-free testing.  The BIOS has all the options an extreme overclocker could desire
• The layout of the EVGA Z77 FTW motherboard is superb.  The easy-to-see debug LED/temperature monitor is a very useful feature and the CMOS reset is right on the IO panel.  The FTW motherboard uses a well thought-out design that makes great use of limited space.
• Two PCIe power connectors and two CPU power connectors along with premium components guarantee great stability.  Convenience is everywhere with fan headers and even the individual PCIe lanes can be switched on or off.
• EVGA has excellent support and they promise great warranty service if your motherboard ever needs RMA service with 3 years tied to the serial number, not the user. And the warranty can even be extended by registering it with EVGA.
• EVGA has an amazing community with great support for the end user in getting the fullest potential out of their PC
• If you are looking for a superb overclocking capable motherboard that supports 4-way SLI and PhysX or CrossFireX with a PLX chip to supply 16x/16x PCIe 3.0 bandwidth and many USB and SATA headers, EVGA’s Z77 FTW motherboard is the prime motherboard to consider.

 

Cons

• The EVGA BIOS could be mouse-friendly.
• The IO panel only has a mini-DisplayPort out.  It costs about $100 for an active adapter if the end user does not have a native DisplayPort Display.  However, most users of this board probably wouldn’t use Intel’s CPU graphics anyway.

 

We feel that EVGA has produced one of the best fully-featured and extreme graphics capable overclocking Z77 motherboard and it deserves ABT’s Editor’s Choice Award.  It is highly recommended by this editor!

We are looking forward to our follow up evaluation which will feature Kingston’s HyperX SSDs right after we publish our Thermaltake Water 2.0 evaluation – High-end Aircooling versus water – this week.  You can also expect a Sapphire HD 7750 Low Profile evaluation this week along with ABT news and our regular features.

Make sure you follow us on our ABT forum. You will get the very latest tech news and participate in some of the best tech discussions found anywhere.  You can also help us on the forum and make suggestions for future evaluations and we are planning our expansion including an End of Summer contest with great prizes.

Happy Gaming!

Mark Poppin

ABT Senior Editor

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