NZXT N5 Z690 Motherboard Review

Brandon Dodman / 3 years ago

BIOS Overview

The Basic Input/Output System, or “BIOS” has many features and options that can be user-defined and altered to suit what you want to use the PC for. This includes basic settings like fan controls and more advanced settings like overclocking. The majority of features in a BIOS will be the same from one board to another but how they work and how to use them can differ, so we’ll be looking at the bios to see specifics for this board so you know better how to use the BIOS if you find yourself with your hands on this board.

EZ Mode

EZ Mode is as its name describes, easy. It compresses everything into basic and easy to understand information with all of the controls being one or the other style options. Here, there isn’t any options for customizability but instead focusses on getting your system up and running.

The EZ Mode featured in this board has everything you could need to set up your PC, giving you a few options for fan profiles and even letting you select multiple XMP profiles if your memory has more than just one.

Advanced Mode

The main page in the advanced mode has nothing changable and is purely system information.

The advanced tab of the advanced menu is where we find all of the different pages for configuring specific aspects of this board. From here you can find settings that would allow you to do things like enabling above 4G decoding and Resizable bar.

The tools page is about as bare as it normally is in a BIOS, but that doesn’t stop it from being useful. This is where we can see the option to flash the BIOS, which is incredibly useful to upgrade the feature set of the board and improve stability.

The security page is also fairly simple. It features the secure boot option and the ability to set passwords, which may not be useful to you but in an environment like a school, being able to lock settings is vital, not that I expect you to use a board like this in a school.

The boot menu is where you have the ability to change boot priority and enable fast boot. This page is one of the most important pages when setting up a PC as making sure you boot from the correct device is vital for installing windows.

The last page in the BIOS is obviously the exit page, which is pretty self-explanatory. You have a few options for how you want to exit the BIOS, and to discard or save changes.

Overclocking

On the overclocking page, you have a few sub-pages where you can go into to adjust frequencies and voltages on certain components. This is also where you would go to apply XMP profiles and tweak them.