NZXT N7 Z490 Motherboard Review

How Much Does it Cost?

NZXT did seem to sell their Z370 and Z390 motherboards at a high premium. The cost of the motherboard, plus all their fancy armour didn’t come cheap and that did put off a lot of potential customers. However, despite the quality going up, the price has come down! It’s now around £219.99/$229.99, which is much more competitive with the likes of the AORUS Elite, ASRock Phantom Gaming Velocita, and MSI Gaming Carbon. In short, NZXT has a real contender here.

Overview

It’s taken them three generations of motherboards to become something I think enthusiasts will take seriously, but NZXT has finally done it. The board isn’t perfect, but honestly, few products really are, and that can all be very subjective too. I think it could do with a few more USB ports on the back and Gen4 PCI, albeit it may end up costing more, so there has to be some give and take.

Build Quality & Design

I like that they’ve stuck to that design, it does look broadly similar to previous models. However, there are noticable changes, such as the chipset cover is now all one piece. The main body of it is screwed down not just clipped on too, which is more robust and strenghens the motherboard as a result. Then you have the VRM heatsinks, which are now part of the armour design, rather than some armour stuck on top of the heatsink.

ASRock knows how to make a good and reliable board too. So Nichicon 12K black capacitors, robust heatsinks, on-board power controls and more give this motherboard the premium look and feel it deserves.

Performance

The performance was pretty average on the last two models, not bad, but a little lacking compared to their main rivals (which is everyone). However, this board managed to keep pace with the best of the best on the Z490 chipset and allowed our beastly i9-10900K to really stretch its legs. In some benchmarks like WPRime, it actually set the platform speed record. In other tests it was about average, but overall, it seems NZXT and to a stronger extent, ASRock, really made a great board here.

Added Value

Armour, and plenty of it. There’s not really anything else on the market that looks like this motherboard and that alone is why NZXT got away (to some extent) with charging a premium for it in the past. However, now that they’ve got the performance up and the price down, the armour and aesthetics are just a really awesome bonus. No RGB, but that’s perfect, this is just a cool looking board and let’s be honest, there aren’t many white motherboards… ever!

I think in future, NZXT could give us more USB ports on the back, but again, that’s just me and my million peripherals talking.

Should I Buy One?

A great addition to any monochrome PC build, or for those who want their own RGB to do the talking, as white hardware is more easily decorated by external lighting. Clean, stylish, and cool, the NZXT N7 Z490 ticks all the right boxes and has performance good enough to compete with anyone else.