Want to replace my ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 but keep my 17-3770k...

[Rhezuss]

I will format and install Windows 10 soon and doing so I want to grab the chance to replace my ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 that I bought in 2012.

Is there still great LGA1155 boards available out there that could serve me well for another 3-4 years?

 

[BonzaiDuck]

I will format and install Windows 10 soon and doing so I want to grab the chance to replace my ASRock Z77 Extreme 4 that I bought in 2012.

Is there still great LGA1155 boards available out there that could serve me well for another 3-4 years?

First, what's wrong with the AsRock?

 

[Rhezuss]

First, what's wrong with the AsRock?

Well for now nothing really...just an upgrade itch again

I checked a bit on newegg, ncix, etc but there's nothing better than the one I have so i'll stick to it. I thought there was a bit more Z77 still available.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Well for now nothing really...just an upgrade itch again

I checked a bit on newegg, ncix, etc but there's nothing better than the one I have so i'll stick to it. I thought there was a bit more Z77 still available.

This question has come up several times over the last six months, although I wouldn't really expect you to dig down among the thread piles to find them.

Only that Asrock Z77 board may still be available at Newegg. I was trying to check again myself, but the Egg site seems to be temporarily unavailable today -- at this moment.

You won't easily find any brand-new ASUS boards from resellers, although you could check Rakuten. Of course, you could look for a new Maximus V (top end) board -- I may have seen one at Rakuten -- but for more than the original retail price.

There are used Z77 boards available through EBay and Amazon, and of course, you'd "take your chances."

Another option includes outfits like AscendTech, who acquire corporate IT surplus assets, submit them to extensive testing and refurbishing, and then offer them at their store-front:

www.ascendtech.com

Stuff "comes and goes." I bought two Z68-Gen3 boards from them last October for $85 a pop -- good P8Z68-V Pro/Gen3 boards. There are always Z77 offerings, but not at the time of my own purchase.

Unless you really want to upgrade to a Maximus or Sabertooth Z77, the Asrock board should be as good as it gets, given these supply factors I've described. Socket-1155 is "has-been," but nobody I know with either a Sandy or Ivy processor is in any hurry to toss their systems in favor of Z87, Z97 -- whatever. These processors and their 1155 boards are likely to have an extended lifespan for those who use them.

Also, the upgrade to such top-end boards as I mentioned is hardly worth it for you -- me -- or anyone rocking Sandy or Ivy. Not unless you can find a used one in tip-top shape for less than $200. And even that possibility really doesn't make sense, given what you have.

 

[john3850]

First, what's wrong with the AsRock Extreme 4.
There cheap mb made for low end overclocking.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

First, what's wrong with the AsRock Extreme 4.
There cheap mb made for low end overclocking.

That's an adequate assessment, although "cheap" might imply "unreliable." In the realm of motherboards, I'd think that a lot of cheaper boards without extra features are no less reliable.

To tell the truth about what seems to be the only Z77 board available at the Egg, I bought one last fall. For some reason, I exercised more scrutiny than I'd ever mustered before to examine the board with a magnifier before attempting to use it. Somehow, it looked as though the machine which inserts CPU socket pin-springs made some mistake: there were some four pins that weren't where they should be -- not "bent" pins but pins inserted in the wrong place. I sent the board back for refund.

I had examined reviews about this board before the unfortunate purchase. It seems to hold up pretty well. The sort of thing I found may occur with a greater frequency in manufacture of AsRock boards of that year, but it most likely is a common QC flaw of other board-makers: somebody just failed to do an adequate inspection before it was boxed and cello-wrapped for shipment.

The board has an 8+4 phase-power design, which should assist in more stable and higher overclock settings. That being said, I've seen ASUS promote a high-end board with the statement "power phases aren't important; quality design is important." But as a rule, for OC'ing, I'd prefer 12-phase over 10-phase, and 10-phase over 8-phase.

If he's got it working fine, and all the features work reliably, I don't see the need to replace it with something better, unless he can get "better" for less than $100 -- new, used or refurbed.

I see some folks thought the PCB was "thin." A lot of lower-priced boards are "thin." Since they require 9 screws to secure the boards to the motherboard pan, that shouldn't much matter. I suppose we'd all like our motherboards to be as solid as the ASUS Sabertooth model.

Now -- suppose there's some feature that isn't working properly? If it can be replaced by a $15 PCI or PCI-E card, then just disable it in the BIOS, get the $15 functional replacement, and move forward.

So -- Rhezuss -- is there anything about the board that doesn't work to your satisfaction? I don't think you noted anything so far.

As much as folks here have contempt for customer-reviews (at Egg, for instance), I read through those things to get a sort of statistical profile.

Motherboards seldom show 80 to 100% satisfaction or 5-egg + 4-egg reviews. The AsRock board shows just shy of 70% total in the 5 and 4-egg category.

You can often see the reason for lower percentages on motherboards: a lot of newbies and chuckleheads who don't know what they're doing from the start tend to vent their frustrations. Mobos have a lot of features; it's difficult to navigate the BIOS; you can't just put the whole enchilada together and expect it to configure itself.

I've seen 50% favorable (5+4 egg) ratings for high-end boards over the last 8 years. I'm still using a 2007 board that had a 50% 5+4 Egg statistic.

Be happy.

 

[john3850]

z77 Extreme 4 has very poor load line calibration to reduce vdroop it must be set to the highest to go above x45.
Z68 pro3 starts acting up when the cpu temp gets around 74c.
1366 extreme ran games at 201x21 for years.
If you run any prime related stress test that MB instantly shuts down if the vcore is at or higher then 1.31v.

All three asrock mb had a D5 Variable Speed Pump with a 360 radiators and decent 750 amp ps.
All 3 mb seem to limited poor cheap vrm parts.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Look on Flee bay, its full of ASsRocks. Nough said!

 

[Ketchup]

The 1155 socket is dead. Buying a new 1155 board is not an upgrade. If you want to upgrade, save up for Skylake.

http://www.techspot.com/news/61590-intel-skylake-core-i7-6700k-performance-reportedly-revealed.html

 

[BonzaiDuck]

z77 Extreme 4 has very poor load line calibration to reduce vdroop it must be set to the highest to go above x45.
Z68 pro3 starts acting up when the cpu temp gets around 74c.
1366 extreme ran games at 201x21 for years.
If you run any prime related stress test that MB instantly shuts down if the vcore is at or higher then 1.31v.

All three asrock mb had a D5 Variable Speed Pump with a 360 radiators and decent 750 amp ps.
All 3 mb seem to limited poor cheap vrm parts.

Firsthand experience with three AsRock models trumps anything I know!

Whatever the LLC shortcomings, is it possible to tune it so that it leaves 30 to 40mV of droop? [The Z77 model, I mean.]

If the VRM components are cheap -- and I think I saw some observation implying so without using that word in one of the reviews I read -- then "12-phase" may mean less.

Supposedly the Haswell boards are better. Personally, for OC'ing, I wouldn't have invested in that board. The price-line on a board isn't something I look at to make final judgments, except that it DOES matter in a "get-what-you-pay-for" perspective.

Budget boards have their place, if OC'ing isn't the project priority. I've built some reliable PCs with $90 mATX boards -- one still running 24/7 after 7 years of 24/7.

But you either build a machine with a defined priority for OC'ing, or you build it as an upgrade system with "maybe a thought of casual OC'ing later."

So when the latter affects your initial choices, you may be stuck with limitations later in the life-cycle.

 

[futurefields]

my ASRock Z77 Pro-4 has been running my 2500k @ 4.2ghz for 3+ years now no issues.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

my ASRock Z77 Pro-4 has been running my 2500k @ 4.2ghz for 3+ years now no issues.

That's great, and nobody would think you'd have issues.

It's only that John3850 has made a valid point about the over-clock-a-bility of various boards produced for any CPU generation.

4.2 is a fairly modest OC for any Sandy -- even limp by some standards. I've rarely seen any case where the processor was such a loser in the silicon lottery that it wasn't good for 4.4 to 4.5.

But you only get so much mileage with a board like that. Hold on a minute . . . lemme see if I can find that review I mentioned . . .

. . .Yeah . . . this is it . . . HardOCP:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013...e4_lga_1155_motherboard_review/6#.Vb5Gf_3bKUk

John3850 has been aroun' for a while, you know. We crossed paths on Sandy OC'ing back in 2011 -- very productive exchanges among maybe 5 posters.

I usually try to examine more than one review for any component, and I look for reasons to take any with a grain of salt.

So if you read through those review pages, you can see how I might have clicked the "Checkout" button for attempting to buy that board toward giving another fam-damn-ily member an OC'able upgrade.

But I also notice that the reviewers had to set their PLL Voltage to 1.9V. Default is 1.8V. A lot of us with other boards had explored and found stability-success with settings as low as 1.55, and an acknowledged "sweet-spot closer to 1.7V.

If the reviewers mention a possibility of pushing the VCORE to 1.4V for a 3570K or 3770K chip, that wouldn't be an option for me. For a 22nm processor, I don't think I'd much go beyond 1.33V. Even so, if you can achieve 4.6 with 1.28V as the reviewer asserts, that would be pretty darn good. YMMV, though, for both the board and the processor.

My post is going a bit prolix here, but consider that we come to these forums for falling into an enthusiast category. A lot of mainstreamers today may buy an i3 processor for a desktop; a majority of mainstreamers wouldn't touch BIOS settings with a 10-foot pole.

And as I said, you can build a great rig just for mainstreamer use and even gaming with modestly-priced, feature-limited motherboards. Once you do that, you accept any limitations, or you just have to live with them.

I'm sure there are OC guides still active on the web for the IB-K/SB-K and the AsRock Z77 Extreme4. You could garner some more wisdom for looking at guides for either processor and other Z77 brands. And you can go through the patient, tedious effort of finding a high, stable 24/7 overclock.

If you can't find it, well -- you can't find it. Luck of the draw, maybe . . .

 

[futurefields]

naw it runs 4.4-4.5 too on this board I just didn't see any difference in games, and the TDP ramps up sharply over 4ghz so I decided to set it at 4.2 for a good balance

 

[john3850]

If you dont do any thing stressful asrock mb are not bad.

My Z68 Pro3 has had a heat or current problems related to vrms and the cpu which will error or down clock at only 74c in prime or IbT.
When I did use IBT I would only do 10 passes.
I never liked the Z68 Pro3 and used my 1366 till I got extreme4 3770k.
My Z68 Pro3 is a spare pc and used less then hour a every two week or so.
My Z68 Pro3 came with no heatsinks on the vrm parts.
I believe the cpu voltage vrms are only 4 phase also.
On my extreme 4 I get whea errors at x47 or above no matter what the vcore is at.
On very mb I have had I add a fan on vrms and use fair wc setup.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

naw it runs 4.4-4.5 too on this board I just didn't see any difference in games, and the TDP ramps up sharply over 4ghz so I decided to set it at 4.2 for a good balance

CPUID HWMonitor "Package power" for my i7-2700K system reports ~ 135W @ 4.7 under the severe stress-test situations. It's a 95W processor for its TDP spec.

But that sort of increase is fairly normal for a lot of CPU generations. Expectations for a 140W-TDP Haswell-E overclocked incline toward 200+W.

However, there are a lot of benchmarks. I have to clock either my 2600K or 2700K to at least 4.6 or 4.7 to match an i7-4770K @ 4.4 in Cinebench. More accurately, the extra 100Mhz between 4.6 and 4.7 on the 2600K makes a difference between "2nd place by a little bit" and "neck-and-neck."

But I won't discount what John3850 is saying. If the mobo components don't stand up too well, as in his experience, you'd seek a more comfortable overclock with that board for the processor -- probably in the 4.4 to 4.5 range you cited.

Of course, published comparisons I'd read conclude that the 3770K is not quite the overclocker as 2700K. And with the IB cores you have that thermal issue because of putty TIM.

But even now with the Haswell 4790K, people had told me that could clock it at 4.6 or 4.7, but based on the bench comparisons, it wasn't much of a difference from 4.4 "on all cores."

 

[Rhezuss]

Nothing wrong with the motherboard and everything is silky smooth since I got it (and I let my PC idle 24/7 most of the time).

The only thing that started to occur is sometimes, randomly, when I watch youtube, browse on game my PC will hang for a quick second and a buzzing sound coming from the speakers will be heard, like the sound it was playing when the PC hang...

IIRC it started a bit over a month after I got my 970...but really not sure on this one...

I read many things on the net about this issue and every single forums comes up with a different solution that seem to work for some and not for others. Nothing worked for me yet but it's not that annoying so I can pass on it. Many forums pointed out to a bad mobo though but without giving any insight on why and what.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Nothing wrong with the motherboard and everything is silky smooth since I got it (and I let my PC idle 24/7 most of the time).

The only thing that started to occur is sometimes, randomly, when I watch youtube, browse on game my PC will hang for a quick second and a buzzing sound coming from the speakers will be heard, like the sound it was playing when the PC hang...

IIRC it started a bit over a month after I got my 970...but really not sure on this one...

I read many things on the net about this issue and every single forums comes up with a different solution that seem to work for some and not for others. Nothing worked for me yet but it's not that annoying so I can pass on it. Many forums pointed out to a bad mobo though but without giving any insight on why and what.

You say it "hangs" but doesn't crash? What happens later? You're saying it doesn't BSOD? Does it seem to happen at generally idle speed when surfing the web or using office apps?

What sort of GTX 970? I may not have an answer for this, but thought I'd ask. If it BSOD's, what's the stop code? Have you tried testing/using the GTX 970 in another system?

First thing I'd do -- with the 970 still in the box -- go into your BIOS and disable every feature/controller that isn't being used. Also, turn off C3/C6 Report power-saving features -- definitely don't need those.

 

[Rhezuss]

No crash, no BSOD...just a quick 1-2 second hang where everything freeze and the sound is stuck in a buzzing sound before resuming normally...really weird.

It happens anytime too, while browsing or gaming, idle or full load...

Since I recall the problem starting a little while after installing my 970 (EVGA 970 SSC ACX 2.0 bought in september, factory OCed) I thought it might be that...but really not sure it is.

I tried many things like stopping and restarting some stuff in Windows, driver updates, scanning for anything (viruses and malware)...like since last friday it happened only once and it was while playing Diablo 3...

And when i'm idling on the desktop with nothing running, some rare moments I can see my mouse cursor stuck for that 1-2 second, but no buzzing since there's no sound playing...

It's really really weird...but I will find the causeof this lol

 

[birthdaymonkey]

That's too bad about your weird freezes. You should do some process-of-elimination trouble shooting before you get a motherboard though. It could be video card or storage as well, or software.

I originally bought an Extreme 4 a couple years ago to replace a P67 board I was using with my 2500K. I hated it from the start - coil whine and unstable offset OC, and it just felt cheap. I did one RMA but the second Extreme 4 had all the same problem, so I switched back to Asus (P8Z77-V Pro), which has been an excellent board. Considering how long I'll probably keep this machine, with the 3770K showing few signs of aging, I'm glad I got rid of the ASRock when the getting was good.

 

[john3850]

When you go back a forth between game and and window mode your video card clocks speed change which led to a delay at times.
On my extreme4 I have more problems if the ati video memory is oc.
Your pci-e link speed and width changes to a lower windows speed to reduce power.
Keeping your flash and viedo card drivers updated may help.