Operating and overclocking standards
Like having become a normal thing in our
practice, we did not have any problems at all about the stages of assembling
our test configuration around our test mainboard but we had to warn you that
two fans connectors in the center of the ASUS P8Z77-V LK can be difficult to
access. They can be blocked by the cooling of CPU on one side and by the
separated graphics card on the other side. Well, we did not use the CPU fan
connector of the mainboard at all since it was unable to adjust the three-pin
fans. We had to use a Zalman ZM-MC1 adapter to manually set the CPU fans at
full speed in the overclocked mode and slow them down at the default settings.
When booting up, the mainboard shows you a
welcoming image without any reminders about what hot keys are available.
Booting
up the mainboard
The startup image is likely to be disabled
in the BIOS or by pressing Tab, but you will not find any hotkey that reminds
about this. Furthermore, the mainboards are unable to correctly report the
really CPU clock speed, which tells you the default frequency instead, although
the information about the memory frequency and amount are accurate.
Booting
up BIOS
Today’s mainboards boot up so quickly that
you may encounter problems when you want to enter their BIOS - you do not
virtually have enough time to press the necessary key. The P8Z77-V LK does not
have a button to automatically load the BIOS. You can allow a startup delay
instead but it only works for first-time imposition – the mainboard restarts
almost immediately, although this inconvenience is due to our fault. We just
ignored the ASUS Boot Setting utility which provides a single button to
automatically download the BIOS. The utility is not a part of the ASUS AI Suite
II software, but can be downloaded separately. By pressing the Advanced Setup
below the button, you are likely to open the additional settings.
It is pretty easy to do without the
utilities. While you are setting up your computer and often need to download
the BIOS, you are able to just switch off the fast-boot option in the Boot
section of the BIOS interface.
Booting
up the BIOS interface
The ASUS P8Z77-V LK turned out to be the
only mainboard we've tested recently to run the CPU in its real standard mode
at the default settings. The option for ASUS Multicore Enhancement in the
mainboard’s BIOS can be activated to increase the CPU frequency multiplier to
the top value, which is normally allowed by the Intel Turbo Boost technology.
Although there is the Enabled setting, this option does not do anything until
you can manually set up the mainboard. We guess it would be better if placed at
the Disabled setting by default to avoid confusion.
You are able to manually change the value
of each power-saving option from Auto to Enabled. In our case, this has helped
us to reduce the idle power consumption of the computer from 47-48 to 44-45
watts. This means that not all of the power-saving features are on by default.
Like the remaining mainboard samples of
ASUS, the P8Z77-V LK has an OC Tuner choice in the BIOS that helps overclock
the CPU automatically. Yet, of course, you are able to get better results by
manually overclocking. We were unable to achieve our CPU’s maximum clock speed
of 4.6 GHz with the P8Z77-V LK, but the motherboard made the CPU stable at 4.5
GHz. We also accelerated the memory clock speed to 1,866 MHz and fixed the
memory timings.
AIDA64
CPUID
We would like to remind you that we want to
"maintain" the overclocking process, which means that the overclocked
system can be used constantly. We do not disable any features or controllers.
We continue to use the power-saving technology from Intel and run it to reduce
the CPU’s frequency multiplier and voltage, disable minor details that CPU does
not use and converts the CPU into power-saving modes at low loads.
AIDA64
CPUID
