Asrock Z87M OC Formula Micro-ATX Intel Z87 Motherboard Review

The first thing that caught my attention was the color of the board, the bright orange (or dark yellow) with black combo looks great!

Asrock Z87M OC Formula Motherboard Review

The board is so packed with features, you’re better off reading them at the official product page. If I were to be elaborating on them, Asrock might as well make me their product manager and goldfries.com their official product page and user guide.

😛 I will highlight what interests me.

Starting off with the area surrounding the processor socket, I think Asrock did a good job having good enough space clearance even for large heatsinks. I’m just disappointed that the Z87M OC Formula on the heatsink is loose.

Asrock Z87M OC Formula Motherboard Review

There’s a piece of transparent sticker over it and I have a habit of removing any form of plastic found on heatsinks. When I peel that sticker off, parts of the words came off with it.

I think it could’ve been better, like how other brands had their name placed on their heatsinks without it ever coming loose. There’s too many example to show, for example like how MSI did it on the Z77A-GD45 as seen below.

MSI board

OK now let’s back track to the Asrock board.

My favorite feature on the board is the Post Status Checker, strangely Asrock highlighted so many things in the official product page but the Post Status Checker was only mentioned in the specifications table.

Asrock Z87M OC Formula Motherboard Review

As a person who changes components quite frequently, I’m always delighted to see such LED indicators. Above all, I love it that Asrock placed it just next to the DIMM slot. Some board makers place the LED in between the expansion slots and SATA drive, around the Southbridge area, which I find it dead ridiculous as a long graphic card easily obstructs the view.

On the other corner, we have the forward facing SATA ports. I like it that way, and I also like that they placed a POWER and RESET button there. And not only are they large and nice to press, they’re also lit in red. Just lovely.

Asrock Z87M OC Formula Motherboard Review

The placement of PCI-E slot is good, you know that the use of connectors right at the bottom does not obstruct the installation of a PCI-E graphic card as long as the card does not occupy 3x PCI-E slot.

Asrock Z87M OC Formula Motherboard Review

The gap between the PCI-E slow also means it will be quite hot to run power-hungry cards on multiple card configuration.

The list of I/O ports at the back is amazing too.

Asrock Z87M OC Formula Motherboard Review

It’s not common to see PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port on boards these days, and besides HDMI and DisplayPort the board also comes with a HDMI-in port. With this board you are able to output your device to a display via the computer.

There’s a total of 6x USB 3.0 board and also a clear CMOS button.

One of the key feature of the board is that it comes with Nick Shih‘s OC Profile. It’s basically the Pro Overclocker’s preset for overclocking your processor.

I managed to get my Intel Core i5-4670K processor to run 4.3Ghz but due to chip limitation, I can’t push it further but that’s enough to know that the board has overclocking potential. The UEFI has tonnes of features to fine-tune overclocking, many of which are beyond my comprehension.

The Verdict

The product retails at around 180 USD (approx MYR 550 – 580 range). Overall this is good stuff, the build is solid and the features are great if you’re someone like me who likes to overclock.

goldfries recommended

It’s also the same board used in the Cooler Master N200 mini-Tower Casing Review.

Cooler Master N200 Mini Tower PC Casing Review

More details of the Cooler Master N200 component setup at casemod.my – my new project, dedicated to Case Modding industry of Malaysia!

2 thoughts on “Asrock Z87M OC Formula Micro-ATX Intel Z87 Motherboard Review

  1. Aerodynamic, potent, and agile, this vehicle is stated to be the Bugatti Veyron’s toughest competition.

    Indeed, this helped Ferrari broaden the market for this
    machine, with its new found GT credentials helping more people justify it.
    The question of who really owns the Nurburgring lap record is up
    in the air.

Comments are closed.