NZXT N7 Z690 Motherboard Review

Intel had been at the top for a very long time, riding the high and taking it easy, but AMD then started making a comeback, in a big way, and competition flipped on its head, putting AMD on top. Intel were then struggling to keep up for a while, but that all changed with the launch of Z690. This new launch from Intel brought true competition back into the CPU market in a very big way. For those unaware, Z690 is the newest chipset from Intel. It was introduced alongside their newest generation Alder Lake CPUs, which so far has been great for Intel with performance on these chips being fantastic and alongside this, it also introduced us to DDR5, and the fastest memory kits we've ever seen. Even though this launch is the latest from intel, that doesn't mean it's still new, as it's been a few months since that launch and we've now had an opportunity to become accustomed to it and see what companies have to offer, but now we have another new board to enter the ranks. NZXT N7 Z690 The N7 Z690 is the newest in the selection of boards on offer from NZXT. It follows the same design language as the previous boards that we've seen from them, with the board being almost entirely covered by metal shielding, providing a uniformed and clean look. NZXT has aspired to create something that makes building as easy as possible, and if you've ever built in an NZXT case before, then you know that they tend to do a good job of making things easy, even with their small H1 case, where building is pretty easy and straight forward. With all products, ease of use is second to worth, and if the board can't take advantage of all of the new and exciting additions to Intel's 12th gen processors, then can I really recommend this board to you? That is what I'm here for; to test the board and find out if it is worth the money. Features Designed with Intel® Z690 ChipsetCompatible with Intel® 12th Generation Core™ i9, Core™ i7, Core™ i5 processorsPCIe Gen 5.0 supportIntel® Wi-Fi 6E wireless connectivity and Bluetooth V5.2Three M.2 connectors for storage devicesSupports DDR4 memory overclocking speeds of up to 5000MHz and XMP8-channel high-definition audioIntegrated NZXT CAM Support For in-depth specifications, please visit the official Motherboard product page. Video Packaging & Unboxing The front of the box is unmistakeably NZXT, simple and with a front on picture of the product. On the back of the box, we see a whole load of information on the board,. If anything, it's an information overload of text that provides all the details you could need to know before buying a motherboard. The inner box is an entirely plain brown box with no distinct marks or features. On the inside of that box is the motherboard itself, sitting in some protective packing foam. I must admit that the packaging could be nicer here as it doesn't look particularly secure, even though I'm sure it is. Under the motherboard, we find the included accessories. The included accessories consist of three M.2 screws and a stand-off as well as four SATA cables, wireless antennas and the manual. A Closer Look NZXT have created a very distinct look for their motherboards. The flat metal plates that cover the majority of the PCB creates a clean aesthetic that would look right at home in an all white professional looking system. At the back of the board we see no backplate, but this makes little difference to a motherboard as it is mostly used for looks anyway, only with a few exceptions. Around the socket of the board is where some of the most important parts reside, and we'll go into more detail as we reach each of them. The first thing of note near the CPU socket is the memory slots. Despite this board being Z690 which has compatibility for DDR5, this board features DDR4 memory slots. I don't know the reason that NZXT chose to go this route with the board, but it does provide better compatibility and pricing with already existing memory kits, even if we are losing out on DDR5, which would only get more affordable and performant with time. Above the socket is where you can find the CPU power connectors, of which this board features an 8+4 pin design for power delivery. Moving along from the CPU power is where we find the CPU fan header and AIO pump header, along with two extra system fans and two NZXT LED headers that allow you to connect your NZXT RGB devices directly to the motherboard and control them in the NZXT CAM software. Moving down the board, we see the 24-pin ATX power connector and the USB type-C internal header sitting within a cut-out on the PCB shroud, keeping the look clean and minimal. Going down a little more is where we can find a USB 3.2 internal header sitting at a right angle next to the only four SATA connectors on the board. Once we reach the bottom of the board we can see the bulk of the headers; here we see the front panel connectors, the clear CMOS pin and an additional three fan headers. Across to the left of the fan headers we see two USB 2.0 internal headers, a 12v RGB header, and a 5v ARGB header. The front panel audio header is all the way off the left, and to the right of that is a UART header for connecting compatible devices. Around the PCIe, we see the bulk of the covers on the board which attach magnetically and are easy to take off. Underneath these covers is where we find the three M.2 slots, of which two are immediately accessible by removing the covers and the top most one has a heatsink over it that needs unscrewing. As well as the M.2 slots, we can find a Wi-Fi card pre attached with cables running to the rear I/O. Once I remove everything off of the board, we can see it in its true form. Seeing the board with nothing on it like this really does make you appreciate the way that motherboards these days like to cover things up for the cleanest looking build possible. The chipset cooler is fairly small and is hidden underneath a larger plate on the motherboard. It also uses a thermal pad for heat transfer as opposed to thermal paste that some other boards use. Finishing up the closer look with the rear I/O. We have a large collection of USB ports, two of which are only USB 2.0 but one of them is used for BIOS flashing, which is always a nice inclusion. We also have a USB Type-C port to top it all off. Also back here we find the connectors for the Wi-Fi antennas, a collection of audio ports and an Ethernet port. VRM Overview The N7 uses 12 phases for the Vcore and an additional phase for the iGPU. These will use either Vishay 50 amp MOSFETs or ON 55 amp MOSFETs of which it's a luck of the draw type of situation, due to the way motherboard manufacturing works and how there are component shortages, there is no guarantee that you will get one set over the other. There is also a single additional MOSFET used for the VCCSA which is controlled by a single phase controller from ON. We also see yet another single additional phase, this time being used for high-speed IO (In/Out) communication. Finally, we can see in the image that the capacitors are made by Nichicon and are high quality polymer black capacitors. No matter what MOSFETS you get, they will be controlled by an ON PWM controller that we have previously seen on Gigabyte boards, so they are clearly tried and true. The VRM cooler is completely passive and features no heatpipes and is simply two solid pieces of metal that dissipate the heat from the VRMs being transferred to them through the thermal pads. 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 control 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, you don't get any more options than on or off and in the fan of fan control you can only change if it's a fan or pump, opening the settings for the fans from within the EZ Mode will open the Hardware Monitor tab that we look at in greater detail a little later in the BIOS overview. The EZ mode of the BIOS has a decent collection of options, you can set XMP profiles here as well as change boot priority, but instead of fan profiles, there is a simple option to cycle through cooler types. Advanced Mode The main page of the advanced mode is very basic, all you get from this is some system hardware information that I'd hope you already knew if you built the system. This page could easily be useful though, if memory is causing a problem, and you can easily check here if it's being detected or not. The advanced page has multiple sub-pages that contain the relevant options and settings to tweak for settings such as above 4G decoding and Re-sizable bar. The tools page is pretty baren but does contain the incredibly useful option for flashing the BIOS, which can improve the compatibility and stability of the board. The security tab is what you would expect it to be, with options for Secure boot or setting a password for the BIOS. The boot menu allows us to change boot priority and enable fast boot, among other things including booting from LAN. The final page of the BIOS is the exit page, who would have guessed. From here we can choose to either save or discard changes and load default settings. Overclocking The overclocking page features four sub-pages that contain the options to adjust frequencies and voltages on specific components. This is where you would want to go if you wanted to adjust the frequency of your CPU or memory. When we scroll down the overclocking page we will find a total of ten profiles that you can set and apply easily. PC Monitoring The top part of the PC monitoring page gives you information on temperatures and fan speeds as well as a live look at power usage. When we scroll down a little bit we can find the bulk of this page; this gives us the option to change fan curves and profiles on an individual basis based on the header. Software Overview The only software options that we get for the N7 is the ability to adjust fan profiles. There isn't much you can do here but the ability to change these settings from within software means that you can find the right balance of noise to cooling for you without having to go back to the BIOS all the time. How We Test Here at eTeknix, we endeavour to disclose vital information regarding the benchmarking process so that readers can quantify the results and attempt to replicate them using their hardware. When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of motherboard, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Therefore, your experience may vary. Testing Your Own System We typically focus on commonly available benchmarks so that you too can run the same benchmarks on your own system. We hope this makes it easy for our readers to gauge the performance improvement available to them when they upgrade their own systems. Gaming Tests All games are run at their specified resolutions using the "high" settings or equivalent. We avoid using the Ultra settings as these often offer diminishing returns for performance vs visuals. Test Bench ProcessorIntel 12th Gen Alder Lake Core i9-12900KMotherboardChanges Per ReviewMemoryCorsair Dominator RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 3600MHzGraphicsGigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OCStorageSeagate FireCuda 530 2TBPower SupplyCorsair RM1000x 1000WSoftwareWindows 10 Pro 21H1DriversNVIDIA GeForce Build 19043.1320 CPU Performance To test the CPU performance in our motherboard reviews, we use a variety of software that can test both single-core and multi-core performance in different ways. While these tests are aimed at the processor more than the motherboard, it does give us a chance to analyse the power delivery that's being fed directly to the socket and the components that are needed on the motherboard for the CPU to perform at the highest level possible. Tests that are run include CPU specific tests, along with render based benchmarks and calculation tests that give us the very best idea of how a specific board compares with the competition when using the same hardware Cinebench R23 In our single-threaded Cinebench test the N7 got very good results, landing right towards the top of the chart. The multi-threaded score was low, too low, in fact. We ran this test multiple times to see if the really low score was an anomaly but found that the board got around the same score each time with very little variation. Geekbench 5 Geekbench saw the N7 at the bottom of the chart, being outperformed by it's cheaper counterpart, the N5. The multi-threaded test in Geekbench separated the DDR4 boards from the DDR5 boards in a significant way. Amongst the DDR4 boards we see that the N7 got some of the best scores, meaning that the N7 reaches our expectations for performance on a board of this type. Compression & Decompression Compared to the other DDR4 boards, the N7 is the best performer here. When we are comparing performance in this test it is unfair to consider the DDR5 options to the DDR4 options so for fairness I am only considering the boards that can take the same hardware. Decompression had a far less dramatic difference for the DDR4 boards and as result, the scores were all pretty similar. The N7 wasn't on the high end of scores here but managed to get better scores than two of the other DDR4 boards and even a DDR5 board. Rendering The N7 wasn't the very worst performer in Corona but was still one of the worst, though the differences here are so small that the result we saw is still perfectly acceptable. Calculation Performance The N7 got close to the middle of the road performance in this test and fell near the average. This time around the N7 ended up being one of the better boards we tested. Super Pi ended up with results very similar to the 32M test in WPrime for the N7, fitting nicely above the average. Futuremark Performance FireStrike ended up being a bit harder on the N7, though we still consider the score a pass despite the lower comparative score. The score has fallen even more in Time Spy, as this test is more demanding and took advantage of the higher speeds of DDR5. All of the DDR4 boards we tested ended up with the worst scores, however the N7 got the best score of the DDR4 boards we tested. Both of our NZXT boards were at the bottom of this test; though the N7 was spared the same fate as the N5 and ended up still getting a passable score. 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 All of our boards got a clear pass in this test, but when we look more closely we see that the N7 had performance at the higher end of the spectrum. 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. DDR4 was once again a deciding factor here but it didn't end up affecting the scores that much. The N7 wasn't at the top of the DDR4 boards but was only a single frame per second slower. 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 The FPS in Metro is still in the place we would expect it to be, but the N7 did end up on the lower end of the scores once again. 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. World of tanks is another title that sees very small improvements from a change of motherboard. The scores are all very similar but the N7 does end up low down in the chart. The N7 is the worst scorer once we turn Ray Tracing on, not by much it has to be said. Memory Performance Our read performance was very dependent on memory speed, and with the N7 being a DDR4 board we see a very low score. For a DDR4 board, this is still a good score but for DDR5 we are lacking. The write and copy scores are both where we want to see them for a DDR4 Z690 board. DDR4 still has a benefit over DDR5, and that benefit is latency and as a result, we ended up seeing the N7 as one of the best boards in this test. Web Browser Performance The performance of the N7 in Google Octane was the best we saw of all the other boards, it's a full thousand points ahead of the next best board. In Mozilla Kraken the N7 was once again the best performer, where it ended up with a pretty big jump over the next best board we tested. I couldn't tell you why but in WebXPRT the N7 was the worst performer of the bunch. This is a weird change to see, though the performance is still good but the drop in performance is certainly weird. VRM Temperatures The idle temperatures of the VRMs on the board were right where we wanted to see them, they weren't too warm and were only 10 degrees above the ambient temperature of the room. The VRM cooler gets to flex a little bit here. At full CPU load the VRMs managed to stay at a reasonable temperature, settling out at less than 50 degrees in our test room which measured 23 degrees ambient. Power Consumption The N7 was on the more power-hungry side of boards when we look at the idle usage, though it didn't reach the top of the chart but was higher than the average power draw. We had previously found that our results for the N7 and N5 boards were way off where would expect them to be, and after a BIOS flash we have started seeing scores that are more in line with what we would expect. Now that we are getting the proper results, we are seeing that the N7 is very low powered when compared to the other boards we tested, this is a nice change of pace from our previous scores where these boards performed the worst by a large margin. How Much Does it Cost? Priced at $299.99/£269.99, the N7 comes in around the same price as the MSI Tomahawk Z690 DDR4 board and slightly more expensive when comparing to the ASUS TUF Gaming Plus D4, while still offering a reasonable argument for price when looking at features and performance Added Value Other than what's in the box, which I feel is the bare minimum, there's nothing really of significant added value. Yes, you get all of the SATA cables to fully populate the board, but at the end of the day, that's only 4. If I had to argue about it, you could say that the armour that's unique to the N7 range definitely gives added value over the competition, but I get that it's more of a personal preference than anything else. Build Quality & Design This goes without saying, and we've seen this on previous generation NZXT boards, that the build quality is up there with the big boys and that mainly comes down to the armour giving that extra strength and rigidity. It's not a cheap board in the grand scheme of things and is at the higher-end of the Z690 DDR4 mantel, but you get a decent amount of features for that money that can rival the likes of ASUS and MSI. Yes, I wish there were a few more USB ports and a bit more glitz and glam, but it's not exactly a deal breaker and is reflected in that price. The one thing the N7 has going for it comes down to that design. It was made in such a way that it can tie in with the rest of your NZXT build and match up perfectly in terms of style and colour and that's something that no other brand on the market has, and if you don't like it and can suffer losing some small features, then NZXT now also have the N5 which strips things back and comes in slightly cheaper too. Performance As a whole, the N7 passed, but a few things let it down, including the performance we saw in gaming; these results are nothing too surprising when we consider that this board is using DDR4. The use of DDR4 also let the board down in more professional workloads like rendering and calculation, we saw result on the lower end of the spectrum there. Overview The N7 is, put simply, a continuance of something we've seen before. NZXT are a brand who have an almost cult-like following, and I say that in a good way. They have customers who buy anything and everything of theirs, mainly because of the simplicity and the eco-centric styling that matches, and if that type of customer wants the latest motherboard with the latest features on the latest chipset, then it's a no brainer, this is the board for them. Yes, it's a little rough around the edges like I mentioned, but those are simple fixes and I think it's fair to say that with each iteration of their motherboards, we see something bigger, bolder and better than what came before it. NZXT are learning and I'm keen to see what's next. Should I Buy One? If you want something that just works, then the N7 is for you. If you want something that looks stupidly unique, then the N7 is for you. If you want the latest features and don't want to break the bank, then the N7 is for you. With everything that the average gamer or novice user needs from a motherboard, the N7 has you covered and is able to compete with the likes of ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, not only on price but on build quality, style and features are pretty impressive too. NZXT N7 Z690