Gigabyte Z97X Gaming G1 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 4.7Ghz @ 47x multiplier and 100 BLCK.  This is a very easy overclock to attain with the Core i7 4790K however, given the 4.4Ghz boost clock that is only 300Mhz over stock.

When overclocking it is important to find a "sweet spot" where the performance curve tops out and still remains stable with a reasonable amount of heat production.  We have discovered that the 4790K runs cooler than the 4770K thanks to an improved interface between the CPU and heatspreader but air overclocking isn’t much better.  The processor still runs hotter than it should and most of that heat can be attributed to the smaller CPU die and onboard voltage regulator. 

Overclocking the Gigabyte Z97X Gaming G1 was pretty straight forward and can be done in a variety of ways.  For those familiar with the Gigabyte UEFI you can manually set frequencies and voltage or you can select any number of "auto up" options that will automagically overclock your system 

The important thing to note with any Haswell based overclocking is to "know your processor" and take baby steps with frequency and voltage until you find a stable overclock that matches your cooling method.  As you can see from our results an extra 300Mhz isn’t all that impressive when it comes to performance with most of the gains being from simply setting XMP.