EVGA Z68 FTW Motherboard Review

As with all of our reviews, we pit the default speed system against the overclocked one in a head-to-head byte match.  The effective overclock for these tests is 4.8GHz @ 47x multiplier and 104 BLCK.  The results are show below.

Overclocking the Sandy Bridge architecture is a little different from what we are accustomed to, in fact the process reminds us of the old days when the only option was to hack the system to adjust the multiplier or hotwire the system clock to raise the frequency.  In doing so there was also a good chance your attached devices would stop working.

We were able to run our 2600K at 5.0Ghz without issue however this particular CPU likes to it run best, and with less voltage, at 4.8Ghz.  The speed is still plenty fast for our benchmark suite and represents what most users might get from aircooling 24/7. 

Overall we had no issues overclocking but did find the BIOS to be rather difficult to use, especially when trying to set voltage.  Each of the voltage options allowed you to directly key in your voltage values but required them to be mV numbers instead of standard decimal volts.  While the conversion is easy the fact you have to convert your numbers can be a little disconcerting.