GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-OC (rev. 1.0) Pro Reviews

GIGABYTE offers a very impressive package in the Z87X-OC, one that users moving into the more budget oriented overclocking scene should jump on. There is very little that competes in terms of price/package in the overclocking scene. For this I would like to give the GIGABYTE Z87X-OC our Editors’ Choice Silver Award.

Gigabyte has really changed things coming from the Z77 OC board to the Z87. When I looked at the Z77 I was not too impressed as the VRM was massive and I just didn’t see a need but from what I see on the Z87 series they refined their approach and threw out the book on design and started over fresh. To me this is the best thing they ever could have done as these boards are not just impressive but they simply perform and even have some awesome features and innovations which make them a great buy even for a gamer who may want the orange look in his new windowed rig. The overclocking features from the OC Brace to the massive amount of onboard controls and even the unique slot trace layouts all add up to a board that allows so much potential and overclock capability but at a price that makes you feel like you’re dreaming. The sheer fact that the Gigabyte board can pull off a sub 200 price tag and have pro level OC features is raising the bar for future board releases as Gigabyte now offers two high end OC models to fit even more extreme enthusiasts needs, and I can only see this meaning good things for the future of ASUS board offerings if decisions like this can continue.

Good board with lots of onboard overclocking buttons and switches, but it’s a niche product

Gauging the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC is pretty simple because the product-line itself, color scheme included, is something that Gigabyte has now produced over several product generations. However, those past products were very much high-end "halo" products that were more showcases of engineering than anything else. Users could often only lust over the feature set of Gigabyte's past "OC"-branded boards. With users complaining about the price, Gigabyte listened and has, as seems to be a common theme with all brands of Intel Z87-based products, catered to user requests with this product whose design- and care considerations were put into the hands of their resident overclocker extraordinaire, Hicookie. What he came up with is definitely not your everyday motherboard, and while the lineage to past OC boards is very clear, what is offered is still very much an evolution, taking everything past Gigabyte OC boards taught and improving on each critical point. Users get great clocking abilities and freedom of customization while performance is relatively average as that has been left to the end user to tweak for themselves. I like it that way because it serves its purpose, but I know that most users simply get their parts, plug them in, and work with what they get directly "out-of-the-box". This board simply does not cater to all users, and it does seem weird to have a board with so many fully sized PCIe x16 slots and no Tri- or Quad-SLI support, leaving me with the nagging impression that it is only half as capable as it could be. That said, the Gigabyte GA-Z87X-OC board really did impress me as an entry-level OC board, although I find the buttons to be in a space too small for them all; far too close to the 24-pin to be really useful, especially if you are like me and focus on memory overclocking at normal temperatures.