The last word:
That’s it, we’re done with this ROG Maximus Z790 APEX combined with the Rocket Lake i9-13900K processor. By the way, if you want to know the complete performance of these processors against the competition, our article dedicated to it is here.
Our impressions of this ROG Maximus Z790 APEX are excellent and it lived up to all its promises. We were eager to test it and see how it would perform after the first Z690 APEX’s flop. Fortunately, this Z790 APEX is based on the 2022 versions of the Z790 APEX so they should all perform well.
We find all the codes of the previous generations of APEX models with the numerous tools present on the PCB as well as the regular update of BIOS for overclockers . The presence of profiles is a real plus proposed by Asus. While we had already tested our i9-13900K on the Z690 APEX version under LN2, we are planning a second run but this time with the Z790.
The card is starting to be listed on with a price of $799 or 839 euros and even 799.90 euros on Amazon (not available yet on the US website). The price is high, even higher than the Z690 APEX. If you want to take full advantage of DDR5 overclocking or if you plan to switch to LN2, then this is the card you need and not another one!
We’ll also be bringing you a review of the ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming Wifi D4 very soon.
Feedback from our Discord community
As you know, our Discord is very active and especially on overclocking. Several of our members have rushed to buy this ROG Maximus Z790 APEX and their opinion is more mixed than ours. Some of the retail cards seem to have a “bend”. The PCB is slightly bent at the base and this seems to come from the VRM radiator. Once the VRM heatsink is properly replaced, it becomes almost invisible. Another point, and rightly so, is the fact that the legs of the components on the back of the motherboard are not cut. When the card is often handled, especially to isolate it, it is the fingertips that get hurt and on a card intended for overclocking, this is a real shame.
Some people have stability problems like our colleague from the Igorlabs site regarding memory overclocking. Let’s hope that these problems come from a bad series but we will remain attentive for the future. As we said, our copy seems to be a retail version and does not suffer from the “bent” nor from stability concerns. We can’t imagine Asus offering different cards to the press and for sale, which would be totally counterproductive for the brand. However, there seems to be an A01 and A02 version.
ROG Maximus Z790 APEX
We liked:
- A high-performance power stage
- The ability to use high capacity and high frequency memory
- LN2 mode for liquid nitrogen testing
- The presence of two BIOS
- A BIOS that continues to evolve with the addition of new functions (IMC memory)
- DDR5 profiles within the bios to clock the memory
- The “tools” inserted on the PCB to facilitate extreme overclocking
- The pleasant surprise of an automatic intelligent overclocking (AI Overclocking)
- The reactivity of Asus to offer new BIOS for overclockers
- The presence of two PS/2 slots for clockers under XP
- The presence of LGA-115x mounting holes !
- The Q-Release button to release your graphics card
- The nice bundle
We would have liked:
- Uncut components on the back of the PCB
- The price to be at least the same as the Z690 since the card is almost identical except for the color of the PCB
As we told you above, “If you want to take full advantage of DDR5 overclocking or if you’re planning to switch to LN2, then this is the card you need and not another one!”. This ROG Maximus Z790 APEX is finally fully matured in terms of its PCB but also and especially thanks to the great team behind the design and the BIOS patching doing a crazy job.
In short, it will certainly be one of the best if not the last favorite of this year 2022. A special thanks to ASUS who offers us since several years the opportunity to test this APEX series in preview!
