OC on mATX

I saw this M/B the other day and it got me thinking....

http://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z97MPLUS/

 

-Are there any problems with overclocking on micro ATX?

-Are there any unique challenges?

-Do you have to pay $200 for MAXIMUS series board to overclock or would this do OK?

Absolutely Not.

The Difference between Prices on these Motherboards are Feature-Sets.

  • ROG - Common sense the Focus is Gamers, and these Motherboards come with All the Features ASUS believes a Gamer should Have
  • TUF Series - are For Durability. They come with High Quality Components made to Last. No matter what you do to the motherboard it will Work
  • M-series or Mainstream Are for the general Consumer who probably builds a PC who just does it and doesn't really care much about Upgrading often they just build a PC to have it and Go.
  • WS - is for the Poweruser who Makes money or Uses their PC to Develop Content for a Living. It has A Mixture of Durable Features and Alot of Control Features.

Overall though They All Overclock exactly the same. What you should be looking for on the Intel Platform is Which Features you feel you need The most. it doesn't matter if the Board is mATX, ATX or ITX. Those are just motherboard sizes.

Thanks for the info Kat.  I actually own an Asus Z97-A that I have done some overclocking on.  Recently I have been looking at my giant tower wishing it was smaller.  I just didn't want to move to mATX if I had to go back to stock speeds.  

Consider this if you wish to build a small PC take into consideration how small you want it. ITX is the Obvious Small Choice, But choosing mATX would make the most sense if you are planning to Go SLI or Crossfire (which if you don't know what that is it's using 2 Or More Graphics Cards for added Graphical Performance. [SLI being from NVIDIA and Crossfire being by AMD]) However each Motherboard Size comes with its Pros and Cons. If you wish to build small don't bother with ATX. If you want Small but Powerful, Consider mATX, if you want Power and as Small as Possible Choose ITX.

www.asrock.com/mb/intel/Z97M%20OC%20Formula/index.asp?cat= OC on Matx z97 I'd go for this in the sub $150 zone. Mainly because the Asus is only a 4 phase vrm and this is an 8. 

well i would not recommend to overclock to high on the Asus Z97M-plus.

only 4 powerphases digi vrm. its not that bad, however dont expect 4.7Ghz oc´s stable and reliable

but offcourse you can overclock a littlebit. Basicly if you buy a decent m-atx board, with decent Vreg design, then you can overclock the same as on a normal similar ATX board.

Yeah I noticed the vrm was a lot smaller then my Z97-A (4 Phase vs 8 Phase).  Its sort of what promoted my question.  So more phases equals more stability at higher overclocks?  I just recently got into overclocking so it seems like every day I am learning something new.  

Just light os's right now.  I'm still on air so 4.4Ghz is the fastest I've run my 4770K.  

board is more than fine op, you'll hit the cpu's thermal thresholds before maxing out any z97 board.

Its not only dependant on your phases. Yes I personally would not overclock on less than 6 phases, but a decent power supply goes an exceptionally long way. The figures become especially more evident if you are dealing with liquid nitrogen, not that you would be, but for the sake of seeing what difference it does make, look up builds on HWBot and see.

You are going to want to be spending upwards of $180 AUD for a decent mATX board for this (I don't know what US dollar conversion is but around the price of the Z97 Gryphon). The only motherboards I can recommend and be able to sleep at night are the asus Z97 gryphon, the maximus vii gene, and my personal favourite (for value for money reasons), the MSI z97m gaming. Although this board is much harder to find (well in australia it is).

Also note that any marketing jazz that they drop, for example: ferrite chokes - every single motherboard choke is going to be a ferrite. The quality it only depends on where the factory sources them. Black caps - this is ambiguous, they are all going to be the same (I've seen 'dark/black caps used for more than just one component so i can't go into specifics because they may be used in a different component). And the list goes on with other marketing stuff. You have to look up the specs of the board. Specifically what model VRM's are they using, what the buck IC is, etc... It becomes more and more complex when you start to get into the nitty gritty of it all, but at the same time it becomes more clear which boards are bad and which aren't. 

But with the modern CPU's it matters more upon the silicon lottery than your actual motherboard, although having decent headroom will make it a lot easier to reach higher clocks and remain stable (small voltage fluctuations make your clock more unstable). The reason why more phases are implemented is because as they heat up, their ability to conduct current and work as well as they can is reduced and they begin to falter. So if you add more, the load is spread and they stay cooler. 

I feel like I'm rambling on so I'm just going to shut up now but there are many different things that can make a board better or worse. Also my sources are my father who is an electrician, so I've grown up in a home with all these little bits only bigger, and myself as I'm currently at university for electronics engineering so it be pretty bad if I was studying this stuff and didn't know what I was talking about a little bit. Sorry for the non flowing paragraphs. 

Yes I know OP would have already bought the board but its more for other people. 

Also Kat, the TUF series (specifically a sabertooth model, I forget which), used a doubler for their power phase system, somewhat replicating more phases but not actually implementing them. The effectiveness of this was something around 35-50% of using actual phases. This is dodgy and should not have even left the factory, but that is what happens sometimes. I don't believe that they have it in any of their current models but thats why you have to do your research. 

You can't let companies take your money for more phases if they don't actually install them (which is really the reason why motherboards are as expensive as they can be IMO, more features are really just glam)