ASRock X99 OC Formula/3.1 (Intel X99) Motherboard Review

Introduction

ASRock is a company focused on bringing performance motherboards to the market, and with the Intel X99 chipset, they have done just that. I previously reviewed many of ASRock's X99 offerings and today I take a look at one of their "second" generation X99 motherboards with some more refined features. Although this is one of two iterations of the X99 OC Formula, this one features the X Series OC Socket, and USB 3.1.

ASRock's OC Formula lineup has made huge strides in the past few years towards providing overclockers with the best performance and overclocking headroom. The original X99 OC Formula I tested a while ago performed really well, but it lacked the special socket with extra pins that enables higher cache and memory overclocking potential.

The X99 OC Formula/3.1 has the X Series OC socket which should help boost cache and memory overclocking potential. It has also been a long time since I used the original X99 OC Formula, and I am excited to see what ASRock has improved upon, so let's begin!

Specifications

These days overclocking motherboards are targeted towards two types of buyers; those who will really overclock/benchmark and those who want the potential in case they decide to take advantage of the board later down the road. For the former, extra connectivity isn't required, but the latter they might like some extra connectivity since this will probably be their 24/7 motherboard. For those guys, ASRock has provided dual GBit NICs, USB 3.1 on the IO Panel and on an extra A+A type card, two M.2 slots, mPCIe slot, Purity 2 Audio, and SATA Express.

Pricing

We found the ASRock X99 OC Formula/3.1 listed on Newegg at the time of writing for a reasonable $349.99 plus an extra $3.99 for shipping. This puts it $50 more expensive than the older ASRock X99 OC Formula model (also price sourced from Newegg at the time of writing), but as mentioned, you do get the X Series OC Socket and USB 3.1 and some other changes.