No Z790 Apex Mainboard planned?

[martin-m]

Hello, I cannot find a Z790 Apex mainboard in the lineup.
Is it not planned for this generation?

[iBruceypoo]

I missed that entire Z690 Apex debacle, I'm still running a Rocket Lake Z590 ROG board with no issues, overclocks any B-die or Hynix DJR with ease, but I feel your pain ROG brother. Hoping that mess of last gen never repeats itself, plan on testing my Z790 Apex extensively within the 30day return window and will ship right back to Asus for refund if need be.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?126059-Simple-3-minute-5866Mhz-CL21-DDR4-Overclock!-)

Have owned M5E M8E R5E10 M10A M13A, no issues at all since 2012, maybe I just got lucky. 🙂

[orcinus]

iBruceypoo wrote:
I missed that entire Z690 Apex debacle, I'm still running a Rocket Lake Z590 ROG board with no issues, overclocks any B-die or Hynix DJR with ease, but I feel your pain ROG brother. Hoping that mess of last gen never repeats itself, plan on testing my Z790 Apex extensively within the 30day return window and will ship right back to Asus for refund if need be.

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?126059-Simple-3-minute-5866Mhz-CL21-DDR4-Overclock!-)

Have owned M5E M8E R5E10 M10A M13A, no issues at all since 2012, maybe I just got lucky. 🙂

I've ran through 7 Z690 late 2021 Apex boards before realizing we were all wrong. After the realization I've installed 5 of those 7 as machines for my peers (2 were returned as RMA). All of the 5 boards I've tried again work with the 6400 CL 32 G-Skills when you do a tweak that was causing instability with 12900K and 12900KS.

The trick is: default SA voltage is too high. For whatever reason, the board applies huge SA voltage for any XMP and more often than not that causes issues. Freeze-ups, non-posting, etc.
The moment you set SA voltage manually to 0.925 or 0.95, 6400, 6600 start working flawlessly.

[iBruceypoo]

orcinus wrote:
I've ran through 7 Z690 late 2021 Apex boards before realizing we were all wrong. After the realization I've installed 5 of those 7 as machines for my peers (2 were returned as RMA). All of the 5 boards I've tried again work with the 6400 CL 32 G-Skills when you do a tweak that was causing instability with 12900K and 12900KS.

The trick is: default SA voltage is too high. For whatever reason, the board applies huge SA voltage for any XMP and more often than not that causes issues. Freeze-ups, non-posting, etc.
The moment you set SA voltage manually to 0.925 or 0.95, 6400, 6600 start working flawlessly.

+1

Really, that's the fix/workaround for the Z690 Apex boards? Asus should get the word out or add the "SA voltage correction" to new bios so everyone can get their Z690 Apex boards working properly.

Thanks for posting. 🙂

[orcinus]

iBruceypoo wrote:
+1

Really, that's the fix/workaround for the Z690 Apex boards? Asus should get the word out or add the "SA voltage correction" to new bios so everyone can get their Z690 Apex boards working properly.

Thanks for posting. 🙂

I cannot be sure and can't guarantee it.
I've bought 5 boards for 5 machines, all being M0EAY0.
I've tried 5 different i9-12900K with the G.Skill 6400 kit of 2x16GB and a G.Skill 6000 kit of 2x32GB.
Every single board failed to POST at XMP1 or XMP2 setup with any of the UEFI versions flashed.
Back and forth none worked stable - if it could boot, it would freeze or outright crash on gaming load or our work load (Blender).
After RMA-ing 2 boards with Newegg, I've finally managed to boot one board with Corsair 6600, but after all that messing around I've realized I've for no reason whatsoever, tried 1V SA instead of the motherboard default 1.25V (or something like that).
The kit worked with the only other change being IMC voltage of 1.28125V.

Then I've assembled two more boards with respective kits and - all of them worked.
Both.

In the end - 5 machines work fully stable with either of the kits and CPUs, all being M0EAY0, none being the 2022 version.
3x 12900K, 2x 12900KS, 2x G.Skill 6400 CL32, 1x Corsair 6600 and 1x G.skill 6000 but 2x32GB.

All of the machines work with the RTX 3090Tis (MSI Suprim) and one is going to get upgraded to Asus Strix 4090 next week.

Zero issues and I was banging my head about it and cried in MicroCenter about why don't they get the model from 2022 that works allegedly by info from overclockers and such.

[TresNugget]

orcinus wrote:
I cannot be sure and can't guarantee it.
I've bought 5 boards for 5 machines, all being M0EAY0.
I've tried 5 different i9-12900K with the G.Skill 6400 kit of 2x16GB and a G.Skill 6000 kit of 2x32GB.
Every single board failed to POST at XMP1 or XMP2 setup with any of the UEFI versions flashed.
Back and forth none worked stable - if it could boot, it would freeze or outright crash on gaming load or our work load (Blender).
After RMA-ing 2 boards with Newegg, I've finally managed to boot one board with Corsair 6600, but after all that messing around I've realized I've for no reason whatsoever, tried 1V SA instead of the motherboard default 1.25V (or something like that).
The kit worked with the only other change being IMC voltage of 1.28125V.

Then I've assembled two more boards with respective kits and - all of them worked.
Both.

In the end - 5 machines work fully stable with either of the kits and CPUs, all being M0EAY0, none being the 2022 version.
3x 12900K, 2x 12900KS, 2x G.Skill 6400 CL32, 1x Corsair 6600 and 1x G.skill 6000 but 2x32GB.

All of the machines work with the RTX 3090Tis (MSI Suprim) and one is going to get upgraded to Asus Strix 4090 next week.

Zero issues and I was banging my head about it and cried in MicroCenter about why don't they get the model from 2022 that works allegedly by info from overclockers and such.

Didn't work for me. I tried low SA, every combination of IMC voltage between 1.25v and 1.35v and never could get stable past 6000 on my 6400 c32 kit. Ended up going Kingpin. My board was pretty borked though. Any override vcore you put in would be a full 100mv lower even in the bios and couldn't get any OC past 5 ghz on the p cores stable. Same chip and ram can do 5.4 ghz p core 4.3 ghz e core at 1.4v and 6800 c34 on the memory with a Z690 Kingpin.

[orcinus]

TresNugget wrote:
Didn't work for me. I tried low SA, every combination of IMC voltage between 1.25v and 1.35v and never could get stable past 6000 on my 6400 c32 kit. Ended up going Kingpin. My board was pretty borked though. Any override vcore you put in would be a full 100mv lower even in the bios and couldn't get any OC past 5 ghz on the p cores stable. Same chip and ram can do 5.4 ghz p core 4.3 ghz e core at 1.4v and 6800 c34 on the memory with a Z690 Kingpin.

I guess some are really borked. This board had its problems and now if it also when good has bios defaults problems, that's terrible.
What board model number you had? 1st, 2nd or 3rd?

[iBruceypoo]

Can someone translate the text in this photo of the new Z790 Apex?

People in this thread linked below are saying the heatsinks and PCB are white. Looks like gunmetal gray to me.

https://quasarzone.com/bbs/qn_hardware/views/1346031

"ASUS has posted a material promoting the new Intel Z790 platform-based motherboard through the Chinese community BiliBili. ASUS has released some pictures of the ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX model, a motherboard for overclocking that has not yet been revealed in its promotional material."

"But what really stands out about the ROG MAXIMUS Z790 APEX is the color. This is the white theme."

Someone translate this image PLEASE, and hurry I'm dying here. A WHITE Apex REALLY? What the Heck man? 😛

Translate Please! 🙂

[Braegnok]

That's interesting,.. they going with the Asus Moonlight White theme for the Z790 Apex,.. 😛

Like the Formula,.. rocking a Giant Moonlight White Hyper M.2 card,.. lol

[iBruceypoo]

Serious Braegnok bro?

Or you joking around? lol 😛

Looks gunmetal gray to me…

[iBruceypoo]

The Z790 Apex heatsinks appear to be natural (non-anodized) brushed aluminum, and the PCB is a matching gunmetal gray.

SAHWEET! 😛

Notice the very cool black text labels printed on the board.

Light gray PCB with black text, woohoo - I LOVE IT! 😮