Asus OC Station ROG Controller
Product Test
The software used to in Windows is pretty small and pops up in a windows approximately the size of a CPU-Z window. However the information displayed is not nearly as impressive. The front end allows each of the four fan controllers to be renamed as you can see from the picture below. So for example you can easily identify which fan is which by renaming them to CPU, intake, exhaust and memory or anything else of your choosing.
Your current OC station profiles can be saved and then reloaded at a later time should wish by the push of a few buttons which will no doubt come in handy if say you need additional cooling during those heat intensive moments endured while fragging.
A slide show presenting all of your favourite photos can be programmed here too by showing the OC station where to look for those favourite shots. Once the slideshow is started you can also configure the OC station to scroll through them at different intervals.
The last feature, and perhaps the most important of all is the firmware update button which allows, you guessed it, the firmware to be updated to a file stored on your PC.
After installing the driver software in windows I was greeted with the ROG emblem flashing up on screen after which a menu appeared displaying Voltage, Frequency, Fan Speed, Temperature, Performance and Setting. Selecting Voltage brought up another menu with all of the main voltage options found in the BIOS present.
Selecting CPU brought up yet another menu, allowing the value to be adjusted in the same increments as the BIOS upto a maximum 1.6v. Another neat feature of the OC Station is that you can set alarms to go off should voltage drop or indeed rise by more than a pre-set percentage. Ideal for those who suspect Vdroop to be an issue with there overclocks.
The frequency section of the main menu shows the CPU Ratio, FSB, DRAM and PCIe. Sadly only the ratio and FSB frequency could be adjusted so it would be wise to set the DRAM frequency to your desired level before increasing the FSB. This is one of my main gripes of the OC station as it does not allow DRAM multipliers to be adjusted on the fly nor does it allow the memory timings to be adjusted which is a great shame and an opportunity missed. Hopefully this will be rectified in future firmware releases. The FSB can however be adjust in 0.1 or 1MHz increments so it is possible to fine tune your CPU clockspeed. Just remember that your DRAM speed will be linked to this.
Fan speeds can, as you would expect, be adjusted and monitored using the OC station with each action instantaneous after you press the OK button to accept the changes made. Once again, an alarm can be set should the fan drop below a certain rpm. System temperatures are also monitored but the temperatures are drawn from the on-board sensors so you may wish to add a few degrees, for example, to the CPU temperature as Core Temp showed the CPU temp to be a few degrees hotter than what the OC station displayed.
As previously suggested, the OC station can store upto 8 profiles should you want easy, preset profiles to be loaded for a given scenario. You can also set the OC station to display your system configuration and as you can see below, the OC station is compatible with Windows 7 64bit using the provided driver. Windows XP and Vista both 32 and 64bit operating systems are also catered for. No info was available for Linux based operating systems though I’m afraid.
Should be a tree hugging type then the OC station can also be used to set the power consumption of your PC using the Asus EPU-6 engine. However, from past experience I have found that power saving devices such as this can affect overclocking and as such the software was not loaded for this review.
The 3″ TFT LCD screen is very vibrant and capable of displaying crystal clear pictures as you can see below right. I took a picture of my cars engine bay to see how much detail the screen could pic out and I was impressed by the results. These photos can also be set to scroll though as a slideshow/screensaver.
In testing the unit, I found it to be very useful. CPU-Z confirmed every change I made and best of all, these were done on-the-fly not needing a reboot. More importantly, those settings that were inputted via the easy to navigate menu based operating system, were stored by the BIOS so they did not need to be reloaded after every reboot.
In short, the OC station does exactly what it says on the tin, it overclocks and controls ROG motherboards.
Let’s head over to the conclusion…
