[section_title title=”Overclocking”]Overclocking
Having experienced the overclocking ability on the MSI Z87 MPOWER MAX, I knew that the G43 Gaming and the aforementioned board were going to be of slightly different design. The G43 Gaming is obviously geared towards gamers and the MAX being geared towards those sub-zero cooling nuts that aimlessly push their boards to achieve the maximum potential from their chips.
With that being said, I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of options on the G43 Gaming and with it being one of their budget boards, it certainly didn’t feel or look like one. Having a 4+2 power phase was obviously going to limit the maximum overclock it could achieve one way or another but I managed to hit 4.9GHz 100% stable without any issues. I had tried for 5GHz but for some reason, it just didn’t like it. My particular i7 4770k is capable of 5GHz so I can only really attribute this to the board itself.
4.9GHz is still very impressive and given the heat problems of most Haswell CPU’s, I would recommend nothing short of the best cooling for those wanting to try and go beyond the 4.5GHz mark.
Here is a screenshot of CPU-Z to show the final overclocked achieved; please note that for remainder of the review, our Play3r testing overclock of 4.5GHz was applied.
