NZXT N5 Z690 Motherboard Review

Gaming Performance

We use a few different gaming benchmarks to test real-world performance of the components we are testing; We keep all of the hardware the same for each test, only swapping out the component we are testing for a fair test. For motherboard testing, we use the high presets for our games, set to 1080p.

Unigine Superposition

The N5 ended up giving us the best scorer in Unigine Superposition by a few points, obviously making this test a win for the N5.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be.

Available now on Steam.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider had a clear preference for DDR5 given the placement of the boards in the chart, but the scores were still very close to one another and the N5 even ended up being the best of our DDR4 boards.

Metro Exodus

Metro Exodus is a first-person shooter video game developed by 4A Games and published by Deep Silver. It is the third instalment in the Metro video game trilogy based on Dmitry Glukhovsky’s novels, following the events of Metro 2033 and Metro: Last Light. It was released in 2019 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Stadia and in 2020 for Amazon Luna. A Linux and macOS conversion was released in 2021. An enhanced version of the game was released for Microsoft Windows on May 6, 2021, and was later released for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on June 18, 2021.

Available now on the Epic Game Store and Steam

Metro Exodus doesn’t have the same preference for faster memory as Tomb Raider, and the boards ended up with a much closer performance to each other. The N5 is nearer the bottom end of the performance but still where we want to see it amongst the others for us to consider it a pass in this test.

World Of Tanks

World of Tanks enCore RT is the demo of the updated Core graphics engine. It will let you know how well your PC will perform in World of Tanks with the updated Core engine.

Available now here.

The scores in this test were all very close to one another. The N5 didn’t perform the best, but like the majority of the other tests, the performance is still where we would want to see it.

When we turned Ray Tracing on in World of Tanks, we actually ended up seeing a bit of a relative improvement for the N5, but again, the scores are all so close to each other that all we are looking for is a pass or fail in relative performance, and here we see a pass.