Best motherboard for pushbutton overclocking

[garndawg]

So I've done a couple of searches and haven't been successful in data-mining this specific question. If I've missed a thread, please redirect me:

I'm building a PC that will be dual-duty as an HTPC and light gaming machine in the living room. On my last gigabyte board, there was a simple pushbutton-like overclocking feature that was really nice, but you couldn't switch back and forth without rebooting.

So my question:
Is there a good brand board (Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI ,etc) that has 'on-the-fly' overclocking, where I could switch it on and off when I'd like to game, without having to shut it down to cold iron?

My desirements are the following:
ATX form factor (need the ATX for all the extra cards I'm using, case supports it)
Intel LGA1150 (as I'm planning an i5-4690k cpu)
Decent onboard video/audio (mostly streaming in 1080p, w/ light gaming so no video card yet)

Thoughts?

Thanks much!

 

[LoveMachine]

Granted this is an older Z77 board, but my Asus has a nice Windows utility that allows quick OCing but simply dialing up a target Mhz speed and a voltage slider, then hit Apply. For power/heat savings, dial both settings back, hit Apply again. You do need to do a bit of experimenting ahead of time with stability testing to know what speed you can safely get with what voltage, but once you know those 2 variables it's quite easy.

Also you listed "decent onboard video/audio" as a "desirement" (I like that word). The video is handled by the iGPU on the CPU, so the motherboard would matter much (again, the iGPU speed can be OC'ed with the Asus utility). If you run audio to an AVR for your HTPC duties, use HDMI, and again the motherboard doesn't matter.

 

[i7Baby]

Her's some from a while back - http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/automatic-overclock-motherboard-cpu,3048.html


It's not just the manufacturer; its the individual board and the software that's supplied that you need to look at.


These guys have done a round up of best OCing z97 MBs - http://wccftech.com/roundup-toptier-overclocking-z97-motherboards-pushes-oc-limits/

 

[SystemVipers]

Granted this is an older Z77 board, but my Asus has a nice Windows utility that allows quick OCing but simply dialing up a target Mhz speed and a voltage slider, then hit Apply. For power/heat savings, dial both settings back, hit Apply again. You do need to do a bit of experimenting ahead of time with stability testing to know what speed you can safely get with what voltage, but once you know those 2 variables it's quite easy.

Also you listed "decent onboard video/audio" as a "desirement" (I like that word). The video is handled by the iGPU on the CPU, so the motherboard would matter much (again, the iGPU speed can be OC'ed with the Asus utility). If you run audio to an AVR for your HTPC duties, use HDMI, and again the motherboard doesn't matter.

I also have an asus x79 board and the Windows utility is great to get you close , but mine kept my ram at 1333 so i just went into bios and changed the ram settings to 1866 and i got a great overclock and just had to tune it a little.

I think push button tuners are great for ballparking your system, but you need to get into the bios and play a little to get the best from any board.
Like even going a little lower on the voltage and running some stress programs and see if it's still stable, then you can get the max from your board, but Asus is a good choice!

 

[LoveMachine]

I also have an asus x79 board and the Windows utility is great to get you close , but mine kept my ram at 1333 so i just went into bios and changed the ram settings to 1866 and i got a great overclock and just had to tune it a little.

I think push button tuners are great for ballparking your system, but you need to get into the bios and play a little to get the best from any board.
Like even going a little lower on the voltage and running some stress programs and see if it's still stable, then you can get the max from your board, but Asus is a good choice!

I should note, I don't use the "pushbutton" overclocking, just the voltage/multiplier settings. For the OP, generally, the auto-overclocking features of most boards aren't great (often raising voltage too high for a given speed). The nice thing about modern Intel Cpus is that you can do that simple multiplier change with a small voltage bump and get an easy speed increase. There really isn't much need to fiddle with other BIOS settings unless you are trying to push the chip to its limits. But as SystemVipers said, running some stability testing is a good way to find out where those "easy" limits are.

 

[garndawg]

Yeah, I'm not really interested in 'tweaking' the system to the max. This'll be a general family use HTPC that I'll occasionally sit down to game a little on.

It'd be nice to just have a way to 'dial it up' for the game, then back down again for the 80% general usage that it's intended for.

I'm planning to not buy a video card at the outset, using the onboard graphics from the haswell. If the onboard, however, isn't cutting it, I'll add the GPU later.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

why not just build something that works without it? You don't seem to know much about overclocking. That's not a bad thing really. It's just that motherboard "push button" overclocking typically requires a re-boot. The other option, as mentioned above, are utilities.

As far as OC'ing the integrated GPU on a 4690k..... just don't bother. It's way easier to spend your budget on a cheaper i5 and get a dedicated GPU especially since you are going ATX on the form factor.