Review : Biostar Z690A Valkyrie

Today we review the Biostar Z690A Valkyrie, a DDR4 variant of the Z690 Valkyrie. This is certainly the last DDR4 Valkyrie of the brand because the Z790 version was only announced in DDR5. As for this Z690A Valkyrie, our community has high expectations for it, as it is the only DDR4 card on socket LGA1700 with a high-end design.

This card is available for $400 from Alternate. It will compete directly with the very robust Asus Z690 Strix-A or the newcomer Z790 Strix-A. We also take this opportunity to thank Biostar for the sample proposed for this test. [nextpage title=”The Biostar Z690A Valkyrie:”]

The bundle:

A little tour through the bundle of this Biostar Z690A Valkyrie to see if its bundle is well supplied. Without surprise, we find something quite standard, SATA cables, manual, CD and a smart connector. A rather minimalist bundle considering its price.

The architecture:

The Z690 chipset officially supports PCIe 5.0 offering higher storage performance than the previous generation. However, at the moment there are no components that support this standard. The other big change is the support of DDR5, although here we stay on DDR4.

The different radiators:

The dimensions of the board are 305 mm x 244 mm, which corresponds to the ATX format. The dominant colors on the PCB are black and gray. We will find some RGB lighting on the chipset and VRMs.

Let’s start the tour with the radiators, of which there are 5. First of all, we have the radiators located on the top of the motherboard and covering the power stages. These radiators have two fans each and are composed of fins.

The other heat sinks are for the M.2 SSD slots, the entire PCIe area is covered with them and they are divided into three parts. As far as rigidity is concerned, this Z690A Valkyrie does a great job thanks to the backplate and the SSD heat sinks that stiffen the whole thing.

Four m.2 SSD slots :

We start with the M.2 slot connected to the CPU in 4.0 which is placed above the first PCIe slot. The latter is cooled by a passive radiator. Then we have two M.2 slots in PCIe 4.0 between the PCIe slots and a last 4.0 at the bottom of the motherboard. Finally comes the M.2 slot for the WI-FI / Bluetooth card located in the extension of the first M.2 slot.

Technically, there are three PCIe 4.0 x4 slots and one PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA. You shouldn’t miss any storage slot. The SATA is well supplied with eight slots.

The socket and PCIe :

The space around the socket is quite crowded, especially on the upper part of the socket. This can cause incompatibilities with some cooling that could hit the capacitors. The VRM heat sinks are spaced far enough from the socket to allow for cooling systems to be put in place.

This Z690A Valkyrie supports dual channel DDR4 memory kits up to 5000 MHz+ (OC) and for a maximum amount of 128 GB. There are two PCIe 5.0 16x slots that will work in x16/x8. The last X16 slot is wired in X4 on the Z690 chipset.

To power all this little world, the card has a 24 pins connector and 8+8 pins next to the power stages. [nextpage title=”The PCB and connectors:”]

The tools for clocker:

Let’s start with the elements inserted on the PCB which can be interesting tools for overclockers. They are quite varied on this motherboard.

• The power button : allows the powering up of the motherboard.
• The reset button : allows the motherboard to be rebooted.
• LN2 Mode switch : allows to activate the LN2 profiles in the bios.
• The switch bios : allows to switch from bios 1 to bios 2
• The CLR CMOS button : is also present but in the form of a jumper.
• Status LED : which according to their color allows you to identify a problem or to know at what level the voltage of the component is (CPU – DRAM – VGA – BOOT).
• The Debug LED : allows you to identify the component responsible for the error during the boot, but also to display the temperature of the CPU as well as the voltages.

The PCB :

This Biostar Z690A Valkyrie is very similar to the PCB of the DDR5 version. Note the massive power supply stages but also the non-through DDR4 slots. Good points for overclocking, hoping that the bios will follow.

Let’s move on to the PCB, this one is built in 8 layers. This Z690A Valkyrie is based on an 18+1+1 phase power supply (VCORE + VCCAUX).

The controller used is a Renesas RAA229131 which directly drives the 19 phases dedicated to the CPU and IGP. The 18 CPU mosfets are all Renesas RAA220105 of 105A. The GT part is managed by 1 Renesas RAA220105 of 105A also. The AUX part is managed by an ISL99390 of 90A driven by a NCP81270C controller.

Connectors:

The rear panel has the following elements. First of all the four video outputs, two DisplayPort and two HDMI. Then the antenna mounts for the dual band Wi-Fi and the PS/2 port. The card has 7 USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 type C, 1 2.5 Gigabit LAN (I225-V) and the various audio outputs. Finally, the audio part is provided by a Realtek ALC1200 chip. It is important to note that there is no Wi-Fi on this motherboard out of the box. You will have to buy a separate Wi-Fi module and antennas! [nextpage title=”The BIOS”]

The BIOS:

The Biostar bios is not a novelty anymore, because after a Z590I Valkyrie and a B660GTN we are now on our third motherboard equipped with the same interface. Have there been any improvements? Well no, it’s still as messy as ever. Here is a small listing of the problems encountered on this bios:

• The setting of the non-functional LLC, 1 or nothing mode.
• The VRM fans controlled by the CPU temperature (a little surprised at the first Cinebench)
• The VCCSA renamed to uncore for some reason
• The excessive temperatures and voltages on the I9 12900KS at stock
• The impossibility to have more than 3600 Mhz on the cache with the active Ecore

On the overclocking side, the card does very well on the memory with some ease in gear 1 profiles up to 4200 Mt/s. But all this is tainted by the low performance due to the 3600 MHz cache.

Finally, don’t forget to activate the XMP of your memory kit! Of course you have the opportunity to modify the timings and subtimings manually. Don’t hesitate to ask for advice on our discord if you encounter any problems when setting up your bios.

We will come back to the overclocking section later in this article to show you the settings we used. [nextpage title=”The test configuration:”]

Here is the configuration that will be used for the test:

• Motherboard : Biostar Z690A Valkyrie (bios Z69CC912)
• Processor : INTEL CORE I9 12900KS
• Memory : 2×8 gb G.SKILL FlareX 3200C14
• Graphics Card : NVIDIA RTX 3080 Founder Edition
• Cooling system : Watercool Heatkiller IV basic + MO-RA3 420
• SSD : Samsung 840 Evo 120 gb
• Power supply : Be Quiet ! Dark Power Pro 12 1200W
• Operating system : Windows 11 64 bits (version 21H2)
• Screen : Millenium MD34 PRO-2

[nextpage title=”CPU overclocking:”] Our CPU overclocking part will focus on the performance of the i9-12900KS. It is important to underline that this Biostar Z690A Valkyrie is not intended for advanced overclocking. But we’ll see that it does quite well despite the fact that it is not in the best conditions for this exercise.

Protocol:

Before starting, it is necessary to have one or more reference scores with our i9-12900KS at stock frequencies , that is to say, without having made any modification except having activated the XMP profile in the case of an Intel processor. Concerning the test voltages, we decided to put the voltage in fixed mode.

It is also very important to have a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet at hand, which will allow you to note all the tests you are going to perform as well as the results or failures.

Load-Line Calibration:

Before starting, we need to set the LLC. In the case of this motherboard, we set it to level 1. Although this is an important point concerning stability, here only mode 1 was viable with an identical voltage in load and idle. The other modes showed excessively high Vdroop.

Benchmark Scores:

So let’s start by noting the results under Cinebench R15 and R20, taking care to note the voltage(vcore), the max temperature during the benchmark, the power consumption and of course, the score obtained. During the benchmark, the HWinfo window is open which has a slight negative impact on the score.

Overclocking under watercooling in stepsapes :

To start with, I leave the BIOS in auto by just setting the RAM to 3200C14. First, we read the vcore voltage and load frequency during the benchmarks on Cinebench R15 and R20 (5200 at 1.32v). I have chosen a starting frequency of 5200 MHz with a multiplier of 52, a BCLK of 100 and a voltage of 1.2 volt. The Ecore and the cache are placed at 4000 MHz. The idea is then, in the OS, to test the stability on several runs of Cinebench R15 and R20 multithread.

If it’s stable, I increase the frequency by 100 MHz while checking the stability again. If the benchmark crashes, I increase the voltage by 0.05 volt steps in order to find a stability allowing to run the benchmark. The objective is to get a “quick” idea of the maximum benchmarkable frequency.

Note : point to underline, the cache remained at 3600 MHz whatever the requested value when the Ecore were active.

Thus, my 12900KS managed to reach 5.4 GHz with a voltage of 1.3 volt, but with a very high temperature. As for the Vrm’s, they reached 45°C at their hottest. After that we mounted the cache and the Ecore which required more voltage. And finally we tested this overclocking without the Ecore.

And here are the results on R20. As you can see, 5400 MHz is close to the temperature limit. For a normal use, I would thus opt for a frequency of 5300 MHz.

So here are the two screenshots of our tests with Ecore with the i9-12900KS.

And, those without Ecore. [nextpage title=”Memory overclocking:”] We now move on to the most interesting part of this test, namely memory overclocking. We expect a lot from this motherboard, whose hardware could suggest good memory performances.

Let’s get to the heart of the matter, all the memory tests were carried out with a Pcore CPU frequency of 5200MHz, Ecore at 4100MHz and a cache at 3600Mhz.

Test on aida64 :

To start with, on aida 64 we managed to reach a frequency of 2100Mhz or 4200Mt/s in gear 1 and gear 2. Beyond 4200Mt/s in gear 2 it will be necessary to release the timings but this use is not very powerful and to put aside for this kit. As we can see, the increase in frequency and the decrease in timings are directly reflected in the throughput figures. Regarding latency, we see a gain, but Aida64 is not a reliable benchmark on this point.

We managed to reach 4200 Mt/s Cl16 in gear1 but it was not stable enough to pass the benchmarks. An optimization of the bios could allow to reach much better frequencies.

Test on Geekbench 3 :

At the same time, we performed benchmarks on Geekbench 3. Here we can see the gain in memory and CPU scores. And as for Aida, the switch to gear 2 for this kit does not bring anything. Here is the best Geekbench 3 score obtained with this motherboard with the Ecore active. Finally, we end this test on a wrong note. Because we expected much more from this Z690A Valkyrie. It is again a disappointment for a Biostar model which was only asking for a real performing bios. [nextpage title=”Conclusion:”] We are coming to the end of this test. Biostar could have done well if the software part had not been so sloppy. Indeed, the brand offers a motherboard that could eclipse the competition. But, with such a poor performance on the bios part, it is difficult to recommend this motherboard. It’s a waste considering the performance on the hardware side with the best PCB you can buy on a DDR4 Z690 motherboard.

This card is available for $400. A very high price that could have been justified on a motherboard free of defects. If Biostar could recruit an overclocker to adjust its motherboards, then we could have a very serious competitor to ASUS and MSI.

Biostar Z690A Valkyrie

We liked:

• The high-class PCB
• The connectivity
• The tools on the PCB to overclock
• The high-end design

We would have liked:

• A bios at the height
• Less bugs
• Integrated Wi-Fi card and bundled antennas

Biostar offers with this Z690A Valkyrie the ultimate DDR4 card for socket LGA1700. At least, that’s what we would say if the bios part and the various bugs of this motherboard didn’t pull it down. In fact, we have a card that can reach 4200 Mt/s in gear1 but could do much more. An effort Biostar, you can do better!