EVGA Z87 Classified 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 4.63GHz @ 45x multiplier and 103 BLCK.  The results are show below.

Overclocking the the Z87 Classified is about what you would imagine, and then add a extra layer of mystery on top of that.  The overclock in this review was the result of simply raising the multiplier and adding a few MHz to the BCLK.  Then throw in a little vCore and XMP timings and you are set.  The mystery comes from the other (n)00+ selections you can make in the UEFI.  For instance there is an entire page dedicated to memory training algorithms and another for memory debugging.  The casual overclocker should never need to touch either of these but they are nice to have.

Of course the purpose of the options is so an experienced overclocker can tweak and tune their system for the most performance and best efficiency.  Will doing that help your system run Battlefield 4?  Not likely but, it could be the deciding factor between an overclocking world record and second place.

We didn't spend too much time tuning the Z87 Classified but did test some of the auto overclock features like an instant 115Mhz BCLK.  We determined that our processor could boot at those speeds however, our SSD had different thoughts.  We also messed with the memory settings and tried to figure out what we could do to get better performance.  As it would turn out PC3-2666 modules run quite well on the EVGA Z87 Classified however, the looser timings actually hurt synthetic performance so we decided to keep the 2133Mhz scores.

In terms of overall performance we are happy with the gains and saw using the watercooled overclock.  For those looking for a good 24/7 overclock keep in mind that Haswell is heat bound so good cooling is a must both on the processor and inside your chassis.