z170m OC formula review at tweaktown. Seemingly a very good mATX board for enthusiasts who are ok with 2 DIMMs limitation. Memory overclocks is excellent,cpu overclock seems nice as well.
I wasn't surprised when the Z170M OC Formula hit 5GHz; it's an overclocking motherboard, so 5GHz is to be expected.
Stability testing worked well, but it's obvious that the LLC is very aggressive as the VCore is slightly higher than what I chose in the UEFI and it almost throttled on a few cores
The Corsair Vengeance 4GHz kit is the fastest kit I have on hand, and most Z170 motherboards fail to boot with this kit at XMP. However, the Z170M OC Formula handled this kit like a champ; training was extremely minimal. I expect this kit to work well, as many memory vendors have told me their 4.33GHz kits and faster kits work flawlessly with this motherboard.
With its two DIMMs, the Z170M OC Formula blows away most other motherboards when it comes to ease of memory overclocking. Every kit I threw at it, including the Corsair 4000MHz Vengeance, booted the first time with only XMP. It is very rare that a motherboard handles memory so easily, and the Z170M OC Formula is perfect for high-speed memory excursions. We have also been told by more than one memory vendor, that this motherboard is pretty much a staple for reaching speeds over 4.33GHz when using XMP
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/77...mula-intel-z170-motherboard-review/index.htmlMost motherboards can pull off close to 4GHz without trouble, but going above 4GHz is where things get tough with XMP and even manual tuning, and it is where the Z170M OC Formula shines. In an era where most motherboards push the CPU and cache clocks to the same degree, memory is what sets overclocking motherboards apart, and the Z170M OC Formula does exceedingly well in that regard