I used to work for a electronics manufacturer of audio equipment. We did this sort of nonsense all the time. It can’t get better so…..use better components, because BETTER ! you have to justify the extra cost somehow. The idea of, if ain’t broke don’t fix it, doesn’t apply with high end items like this and high end audio. Can we use a more expensive component, yes we can, will that result in a higher BOM, yes it will, do we need a higher priced item, yes we do…. Enter the Apex.
Glad you took the "I'm not an engineer and this ain't a review" disclaimer approach. Your enthusiasm in these deep drives makes the content an interesting and I always look forward to your Mobo and GPU overviews. Though I would llove to see a Buildzoid approved stamp lol. "Approved, if you want to waste money for overkill" award.
I refuse to buy another "gamer" oriented mobo. It should be illegal to give so few PCIe lanes to such high end hardware. It is a crime against humanity. Unfortunately, I can't really afford these new "HEDT" offerings until they are on the used market for a year or more. We did this to ourselves. I wish people would stop treating PC's like mere game consoles.
Studying engineering requires a very different mindset than just developing a general understanding... I dropped out of an applied physics degree for the same reason
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclockingI feared the same result, did a 2-year program at a tech college, became an engineering technologist. I now do much of what an engineer can, but with more focus on hands-on application rather than theory. Oh, and I escaped without burning out and losing passion for my field. That was a huge plus.
Love this board. Totally agree it’s ridiculous, but sometimes it’s fun to make something by for the cool factor as an engineer I know I struggled with NOT proposing overwintered solutions for long time in my career, but I enjoy thinking them out and still suggesting em when I can lol
These breakdowns are so insightful and appreciated, Buildzoid. Thanks so much!! This one specifically puts the old Z690 APEX in completely new light...
We missed your pcb videos and your voice man :))) Meanwhile any plans on pcb break down on sapphire rapids or new threadripper boards? (and by any chance rdimm overclocks?)
I don't care about japanese audio caps or onboard audio PCB isolation. I'm going wireless headset over USB, or digital audio over HDMI. Haven't used analog audio in years, and if I did, I'd have enough self-respect to get even a cheap external audio interface. I'd trade that whole board region for that PCIe x1 to be the x4 it always dreamed of being.
So, about the 7-segment post code display. I’m actually installing a new Z690 Apex in my system right now 🤤…and comparing the post code displays, it doesn’t look THAT much bigger on the Z690 Apex. I would even say if it’s smaller on the Z790 Apex, it’s only marginally so. ✌️🖖
I doubt it has SLI support. I was looking into some of the high end modern boards and it used to be that you could easily find the boards that support 8x/8x by filtering for SLI (the only good thing that license gave anyone for anything) and even though there are literally consumer socket motherboards that cost three times as much as my good X99 HEDT board did at launch ($330 - Asrock Taichi) - they can't be bothered to pay the pennies in comparison for SLI licenses. Nvidia should do enthusiasts the favor and just give up on the license requirement at this point.
@@delta-v4x Your comment is entirely irrelevant. You don't understand hardware overclocking enthusiasm. You don't understand that sometimes it's fun to grab a pair of 1080 Tis, strap on some pots and chase a 3dmark record because you no longer need multiple thousands of dollars to burn or the support of a manufacturer to do. SLI and Crossfire has always been foolish for gaming and MGPU is vendor agnostic. It also was not Nvidia or AMD that killed it. It was the introduction of low level APIs that result in putting multi GPU into the hands of the developers to implement. Crossfire is also supported on many modern boards because it doesn't require a stupid firmware license. (40 of 160 B650 thru X670E and Z790 boards ATX and EATX size - I don't feel like trying to figure out how many of the 120 boards that do not support it still have a 4 lane slot that could potentially support it and chose not to - for all we know, all 120 boards could be just a single 16 lane slot and a couple single lane slots) Since SLI required two PCIE slots of a minimum of 8 lanes, if you wanted to have two 8-lane slots on a board, you could filter SLI support on in PCPartpicker and find all the boards. The best feature that license gave hardware enthusiasts.
@@delta-v4x Yes, of course marketing hyped up multi GPU configurations - but when tested, it was always worth selling what you have and buying a higher tier of card. The only multi GPU config that really ever made a lick of sense was the top card in a generation and at that point it made no sense unless you could set the money on fire and not miss it. Ultimately, multi GPU has always suffered from inconsistent delivery and resulted in a lot of work from the end user in figuring out what games were worth enabling it and what games needed to have it disabled. I have never had nor have I ever recommended multiple GPUs for gaming. I would benchmark it for entertainment I would use multiple GPUs for multiple tasks or for compute workloads that properly utilize multiple GPUs. And to get to why should vendors care? If they have to pay for the license to do it, they shouldn't. If it's free, why not do it? That's why there are so many crossfire supported boards. It's not expensive to do. I mean you could apply your thought to a lot of things - for example... Why have WIFI? It's a desktop board, it's not moving around all the time. Just run a wire, it's better anyway. And if they really must have WIFI, that's what add-in-cards and USB dongles are for. Or why have more than 3 USB ports? Most people will only need KB, Mouse and Windows installer. Or - why put a PCIE slot on A620? That chipset only exists for Dell and HP to sell office computers anyway.
@@delta-v4x Actually, software raid is the thing to do now (ZFS and the like). Hardware raid is old fashion. Regarding SLI support - if Nvidia dropped the license fee - it wouldn't cost much if anything to add to the boards that already had the required hardware (two 8x PCIE slots or better). It also wouldn't work for anything that would cut into Nvidias profits as SLI does not pool VRAM. The only thing it would do is let people chase new extreme overclock records on modern CPUs with old GPUs. And I have already said that it would probably be foolish to pay for the license - unless you made a board specifically for extreme overclocking then it would make sense to sell as a feature, particularly when no one else has it.
As amazing as Apex boards are, I think it's just a shame Asus cuts igpu functionality every time. Even if most overclockers don't use it for any igpu record overclocks, it's so useful to have for troubleshooting or when your primary gpu craps out or whatever other reason you can think of to have a backup to hookup a monitor
Does the encore overclock better than z690 dark? Or even the white apex better than z690 dark? Going 14900k, but need to know what board would be better for overclocking
Be cool if you could do an easy ddr5 ram overclock with this motherboard. I have 8000 ram it would be cool to get a little more performance like better timings
You gotta watch the videos where he comments on people’s ram timings and take a screenshot when buildzoid is impressed. You’d be surprised, a lot of people have an apex with 8000 a die
Uma vez fui a SP pra um evento e tinja chegado bem cedo, coisa de 6h da manhã. Passei pela 25 de Março e tentei me passar como local e me misturar ao povo que tava chegando pra trabalhar. Tbm tentei ficar atento a tudo e todos.
nice, watching now excited to see the comparison to apex encore (if there is) thanks for posting ! im assuming the encore isn't built as well as it is mass produced
Quality Control on Asus Apex Encore Z790 is horrible. I am reading rave reviews about white Apex Z790, but I am returning 3rd Apex Encore Z790 motherboard. First board was doing weird stuff such as I couldn't boot into Windows 11 by adding PCIEx4 card into the top slot of Encore. Returned it. 2nd board was not turning off GPU or Memory LED, Memory LED would finally turn off, but GPU error LED stayed on forever. 3rd motherboard that I type from now has crash to desktop with no errors. 3rd motherboard also has the strangest issue of having no restart function. Namely it shutdowns when you press restart and shutdowns when you press shutdown. BUT, in most cases it won't power up when you press shutdown button, but does when you press restart, and everything on my end is wired correctly and it wasn't doing it with 2nd motherboard. I don't know who wired this board, but it has no restart function, and restart works as shutdown, but shutdown works as shutdown, just not turn on. Both 2nd and 3rd motherboard hard crash when trying to run LatencyMon, doesn't matter if it's stock or not. Apex Encore can boot on 8000mhz XMP II with Team Group 8000 (16x2), but...somewhere in QC I can see a poor middle aged woman stamping "Passed inspection" on each motherboard, I can't even be mad, I can't even be too disappointed either, just realistic that it's the 3rd motherboard with some type of an issue. Patriot Viper 8000mhz did not boot properly at 8000mhz, and struggled to boot at 7800mhz (until I cmos reset) with this board. Inferior sticks of ram clearly, but this board was quick to see that. Couldn't really get it stable on 7800mhz, but could get easily stable 7800mhz with Team Group using XMP II, just not XMP Tweaked. Board is of excellent design, but QC allowed a ton of issues. I can't even blame ASUS, clearly people are underpaid overseas.
Aye. Literal biggest reason I switched back to Intel this gen was cause of this boards looks :P Wanted to do a white build and didn’t like any of the AMD options at the time
@@aj0413_ I totally understand. I’m pretty happy with the Gigabyte Aorus Master B650E. Iv also noticed that Intel boards seem to be cheaper as well as look better.
and that's why it was (and still is one of) the best motherboard for 8000+mhz ddr5 and almost guarantee 7000 xmp's off the bat, prior to all the refresh boards promising the same kind of things but as 4-dimmers.
On the pcie input filter capacitor topic could it be for ln2 runs where the user might use some old gpu just to get video signal? I really don’t know much about any of this so if that a dumb question I’m sorry lol
The reason I think there building the board this way is it can be built on a pick and place machine because its faster to do it this way I have 3 years of experience running Pick and Place machine!
Hey, i really wished i can talk to u. I guess u can reply me today. What should i choose? 50Amp 8+2+1 or..... 60Amp 6+2+1? The motherboard name is asrock b650m pro rs and gigabyte b650m ds3h.
Get the pro rs In my experience it runs about as cool as the ds3h. Although the ds3h has better m.2 cooling than the pro rs but the pro rs had 1 more m.2 slot The pro rs wifi is also about the same price, but with wifi and with a slightly better overall connectivity / features.
@rajmangalpandey3910 Not personally, I have a friend with the pro RS and another person in a server with it + a person in a server with the ds3h. You can also find info on hardware unboxed for vrm tests and features "Cheapest amd b650 boards tested" the ds3h board there runs 20c hotter than the pro rs in that video though, since then gigabyte has made another rev of the board which runs cooler (as to what the guy in the server had since he bought the board about a month ago) the pro rs outside of m.2 spots still seems to run cooler but it is not a 20c difference anymore and both are in acceptable ranges for long term use. if my memory is correct the ds3h guy had a 7700, my friend has 7600x and the other pro rs user has 7600 7600x pro rs user found they have run around 4-5c cooler than the 7700 ds3h user but that temperature grew to around 8-9c with the 7600. This is also with ambient temperatures already reducing / upping temp differences and their cooling solutions are all different and their motherboards were all running under 60c anyways under 20 minute cinebench load
The RU-vid algorithm is burying my actual subs. Ya I forgot about the channel cause my adhd, but I thought RU-vid supports their channels but I was wrong.
G'day Buildzoid, 🤔So your conclusion is Good Rear I/O, All SPCaps unnecesary & many should be THC, there should be a ASUS ROG Crosshair X670 APEX I love your PCB Breakdowns to hear your thoughts on what has been produced by the Partners, not only because they are educational & I find your voice calming, but they really help making purchasing decisions of quality products for the pupose we are aiming for even years after when I can finally afford them buying used. Your throat sounded a bit 🐸croaky so hope you feel better soon.
@@ActuallyHardcoreOverclocking Fair enough. I suppose, relatively speaking, it is not more overkill than the AM5 boards' VRMs. Still though, 36 freaking 105A SPS? Insanity...
Ah, so this purely for overclocking. Not for the normies like me. They should market it as Overclocking motherboard only. Not for the general/high end gamer pc user, atleast I think it should be clearer.
