Overclocking With Gigabyte Z77X Motherboards

by Seth Colaner — Thursday, April 11, 2013, 01:00 PM EDT

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Performance Summary and Conclusion

Performance Summary: What is most apparent in the benchmark and overclock numbers with these three Gigabyte boards is that they’re nearly perfectly matched in terms of performance. All other factors being equal, they delivered virtually identical scores and overclocks.

Although the fact that the Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H, UP5 TH, and UP7 motherboards offer up such similar performance may be unexciting to users who are likely to spend a bit more on a component to get an edge on performance, what this tells us is that Gigabyte has strong consistency in manufacturing. Gigabyte boards are typically solid, and these overclocking tests solidify that point somewhat.

The Three Musketeers - Gigabyte's Z77X-UD4H, UP5 TH, and UP7

It’s worth mentioning, then, that when you drop more cash on one of Gigabyte’s mainboards, you’re mostly paying for features as opposed to performance: The UD4H only costs around $165, while the UP5 TH is about $250, and the UP7--which, to be fair, has an impressive list of features and a far more extensive accessory bundle--will run you in the neighborhood of $400.

In any case, hitting 4.6GHz with mainstream cooling and modest voltages is a solid mark. We definitely could have pushed the system higher and likely could have maintained stability for a while, but we found that at 4.7GHz and even 4.8GHz, CPU core temps quickly climbed upwards of 100 degrees C with the Corsair H55 we were using, and a CPU has no business running that hot for any length of time.

So, dear reader, when you read that a team of overclockers has hit a staggering overclock, remember two things: They almost always have a better cooling system than you do by a longshot, and that overclock is not typical for a given CPU using off the shelf cooler.

For regular folks who just want to overclock their systems to gain a performance edge for gaming or other heavy-duty workloads, we can confirm that you can push that Intel Socket 1155 CPU way past stock speeds with some simple tweaking and a solid liquid cooler strapped to a well-appointed but relatively midrange motherboard.

All three of these Gigabyte mainboards are solid and stable, whether you’re overclocking or not. We approve.