NZXT N7 B650E Motherboard Review

How Much Does It Cost?

The NZXT N7 B650E comes in at £319.99 which puts it firmly in the mid-to-high-end price range for the current crop of AMD motherboards. I mean, if budget is your only goal, something like the Gigabyte B650 Gaming X AX is currently £185 and all you need for a cheaper gaming PC or work system. While the NZXT N7 B650E is another £135 more expensive, you do get a more robust VRM configuration, larger heatsinks, and all that gorgeous armour on the board too, which all helped it reach the performance we saw today. This additional power hardware will be even more relevant with the more flagship 7000 series processors too, and will help maintain those boost clocks and overclocking performance more reliably when doing heavy-processing tasks such as video rendering.

Overview

NZXT has nailed the design here, with the N7 still being one of the best-looking motherboard series on the market today. Sure, style is subjective, but when it comes to a clean aesthetic, it’s very much on point. The design also closely matches the designs NZXT use on their current range of coolers, cases, monitors and other peripherals, so NZXT fans can get a unified design throughout their entire range of products.

The performance was pretty excellent too, and while the memory performance has room for improvement, this didn’t seem to impact the overall CPU performance at all, with some of the fastest rendering times and synthetic benchmarks we’ve had yet, and while gaming performance wasn’t the fastest, it was competitive with similarly priced solutions, and it makes this a great motherboard for gamers and content creators alike, while also holding up well for daily system tasks.

Connectivity is very good too, with both WiFi 6E and 2.5 GbE LAN giving you all the performance you need for gigabit or greater fibre connections, and fast home networking options too. There are three M.2 storage slots, including the latest PCIe Gen 5 for ultra-fast storage solutions. There are plenty of USB ports too, with up to six USB 2.0 ports, 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 posts, and Gen 2×2 Type-C front panel support. There are five audio jacks, optical out, and even a handy BIOS flashback button.

Should I Buy One?

There’s a lot to love about this motherboard, as I think it hits a competitive price point, and while there are some strong competing solutions from rival brands, NZXT has excellent overall performance, low power consumption, and a unique design that both stands out from the crowd aesthetically while providing more rigidity to the board, protection for major components, and additional cooling performance to improve system stability.