Z790 APEX Availability Overclocking and Playtime Thread : )

[iBruceypoo]

Newegg listing November 2nd and 3rd:



Newegg listing November 4th, today:



Did Newegg sell out their known incoming quantity of boards as Pre-Orders in 48hours? OR did they simply change the purchasing status?

Who knows right?

Did anyone grab a pre-order?

[JohnAb]

lol I guess you're right kvarq. I think Brucey might have learnt a lesson 🙂 Still, I am sympathetic. I would want that lovely motherboard RIGHT NOW.

[JohnAb]

I feel your pain, but it will all work out. Just look forward to having the best ASUS motherboard that money can buy. You'll be a happy teddy soon enough. Past 1am here, so I had better get to bed. Working tomorrow 😞 Gn

[itzjonjon69]

Can you guys check your boards to see if your's are bending? Looks like 3 people on overclock.net have bent Z790 Apex's. I didn't get to check mine, since i installed it right when i got it last week.

[iBruceypoo]

itzjonjon69 wrote:
Can you guys check your boards to see if your's are bending? Looks like 3 people on overclock.net have bent Z790 Apex's. I didn't get to check mine, since i installed it right when i got it last week.

Thank you for the input, I counted 5 bent Z790 Apex boards over at OCN so far. 😞

Also a few at OCN are not updating the latest MEI drivers > latest ME Firmware > latest bios before applying mem kit OC's.

A few are attempting to OC their mem kits using the "shipping bios" and getting poor results, then complaining of returning the Z790 Apex.

------

They need to apply these updates "in the order below" BEFORE attempting ddr5 overclocking:

1) Update your Intel MEI Drivers to the latest

2) Update your Intel ME Firmware to the latest

3) Update your BIOS to the latest Release Candidate

THEN attempt XMP 7200 and 7600 and further overclocks. Even XMP is an overclock, so these 3steps above BEFORE any mem kit overclocking.

[itzjonjon69]

iBruceypoo wrote:
Thank you for the input, I counted 5 bent Z790 Apex boards over at OCN so far. 😞

Also a few at OCN are not updating the latest MEI drivers > latest ME Firmware > latest bios before applying mem kit OC's.

A few are attempting to OC their mem kits using the "shipping bios" and getting poor results, then complaining of returning the Z790 Apex.

------

They need to apply these updates "in the order below" BEFORE attempting ddr5 overclocking:

1) Update your Intel MEI Drivers to the latest

2) Update your Intel ME Firmware to the latest

3) Update your BIOS to the latest Release Candidate

THEN attempt XMP 7200 and 7600 and further overclocks. Even XMP is an overclock, so these 3steps above BEFORE any mem kit overclocking.

That's not the Apex people, those are the Hero and Extreme people. I came from a z790 extreme and it couldn't hit 7600 xmp no matter what I did. Only to find out 95% of majority of z790 extreme owner's can't run xmp 7600.

[iBruceypoo]

itzjonjon69 wrote:
That's not the Apex people, those are the Hero and Extreme people. I came from a z790 extreme and it couldn't hit 7600 xmp no matter what I did. Only to find out 95% of majority of z790 extreme owner's can't run xmp 7600.

Yep, I know it's not the brilliant XOC guys, they know what they're doing and have Shamino to help them, but there were a small number who were overclocking ddr5 before updating right out of the box using 0502.

So the Z790 Extreme boards have mem issues not fixable with bios? Oh no, that's not good news. 😞

[kvarq]

iBruceypoo wrote:


1) Update your Intel MEI Drivers to the latest

2) Update your Intel ME Firmware to the latest

3) Update your BIOS to the latest Release Candidate

THEN attempt XMP 7200 and 7600 and further overclocks. Even XMP is an overclock, so these 3steps above BEFORE any mem kit overclocking.

so let's say that you don't have windows yet, obviously you're updating bios (the flash way etc) before installing windows
it's also possible possible updating firmware w/o windows
for instance, for GSAT (for ram testing) you don't even need windows...

then what: installing windows and putting the MEI drivers, then reinstall FW and bios again?

[JohnAb]

kvarq wrote:
so let's say that you don't have windows yet, obviously you're updating bios (the flash way etc) before installing windows
it's also possible possible updating firmware w/o windows
for instance, for GSAT (for ram testing) you don't even need windows...

then what: installing windows and putting the MEI drivers, then reinstall FW and bios again?

I don't know how to update the firmware without Windows, but I agree it should be possible. You only need to install the firmware once as it is flashed to the motherboard until updated again (you only need to install the BIOS once as well). I would do the ME updates in Windows myself, then you can install the Windows drivers first, which is the best way to do it.

So in your case, I would do this:

1) Install Windows 2) ME WIndows drivers 3) ME Firmware and finally 4) Update BIOS

After that, if you want to reinstall Windows again, you will only have to install the Windows ME drivers (until updates are available of course)

Note: If you flash the BIOS first, then without the Windows drivers and ME firmware, NVME slot M.2_1 might not be recognised until ME is updated. So put your OS drive in a different slot to do the setup. After that, you can move it back to M.2_1 if you want to. It might work anyway, but some people have experienced that on the 690 boards.

Does that make sense?

[JohnAb]

Unless people are reporting faults, then I'd put money on that fact that some board distortion isn't anything to be overly concerned about. The level of distortion needed to cause failures would, I think, be quite severe. I say this without looking into it, but I do understand why people are mentioning it if it's visible.

[iBruceypoo]

JohnAb wrote:
Unless people are reporting faults, then I'd put money on that fact that some board distortion isn't anything to be overly concerned about. The level of distortion needed to cause failures would, I think, be quite severe. I say this without looking into it, but I do understand why people are mentioning it if it's visible.

There may be a few users that "do not" update their drivers and bios and blame not reaching XMP on the slight bending of the PCB.

Too early to tell if the bending is significant.

If I had a Z790 Apex I could tell you the answer, but alas mine is stuck in Ontario, CA at the Newegg Fulfillment Center, not moving.