ECS Z97-Machine Review

Overclocking

The EFI had its moments, and wasn't particularly intuitive. For instance, you have to input the CPU voltage in millivolts (1.2V being 1,200mv), but in general things weren't particularly clear. Even the F10 to save and exit command doesn't work, but there are profiles and a handy array of settings.

Once we'd got our heads around the inner workings of the EFI, hitting 4.8GHz was fairly simple, using a multiplier of x48 and CPU voltage of 1,250mv, giving an EFI vcore reading of 1.27V. That said, stray outside the board's limits and we found recovery wasn't great and usually required resetting the CMOS via the on-board jumper.

EFI

The ECS Z97-Machine's EFI looks a little bit like the main menu of some 1980's computer game. It's not particularly appealing and some functions, most notably F10 to save and exit, don't work, which just hampers things. This is especially true if you're a seasoned overclocker and know most of these types of shortcuts.

There are overclocking profiles, and as we've already mentioned, most of the settings you need are here - it's just not as polished as you'd expect, even at this price, as even ASRock's somewhat basic Z97 Pro 3 is much better. Still, 4.8GHz is not to be snitched at.

We ran our overclocked settings in our benchmarks, then headed back into the EFI only to notice that the version number was actually different to the lone BIOS available on EFI's website. There was no built-in flashing tool, so we attempted to do this manually. However, while it seemed simple enough, after flashing, half the EFI was missing and the board no longer booted passed the initial POST screen allowing access to the EFI. As such, we've only been able to gather a select few screenshots - the board doesn't have a screen capture feature either, and we weren't able to re-test using the newer EFI.




Head over the page to see the performance analysis and conclusion