Review Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore Review: Premium Overclocking Option

[Admin]

With a price of around $650, the Apex Encore is a premium motherboard focused on overclocking and pushing your hardware to its limits. It also looks good, performed well in our tests, and is a solid, albeit expensive, daily driver even if you don’t overclock.

Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex Encore Review: Premium Overclocking Option : Read more

 

[Order 66]

1. $650 is insane for a motherboard. 2. Overclocking isn't nearly as beneficial as it used to be. 3. There is very little point to this motherboard for ~99% of people.

 

[CmdrShepard]

1. $650 is insane for a motherboard. 2. Overclocking isn't nearly as beneficial as it used to be. 3. There is very little point to this motherboard for ~99% of people.

It's hard to disagree with your 3rd point, however point 2 is up for debate because "overclocking" also means the ability to tweak your system to optimal power / performance ratio (you can't do that with non-O/C boards).

As for the price it's on the higher end, but admittedly the board has 26-phase power delivery and ticks "new standards" boxes such as Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4 and PCI-E 5.0 M.2.

I use a HEDT / workstation board (unlocked Xeon on W790 board with O/C capability) which nowadays start at $750 and IMO are much better value for money than this consumer stuff but that's not for everyone either and considering those prices this one is still relatively "cheap".

 

[thestryker]

1. $650 is insane for a motherboard. 2. Overclocking isn't nearly as beneficial as it used to be. 3. There is very little point to this motherboard for ~99% of people.

Unlike most $500+ motherboards you're actually getting a lot for your money here from a useful perspective. So yes it's expensive, but you're also not throwing your money away for it to look cool and have a lot of connectivity. The only boards which can touch this memory wise are the Z790 Tachyon and Tachyon X which have poor availability and cost more.

It's a shame that more manufacturers haven't put out more 2 DIMM variants because as you say most people don't need the majority of features at play here, but could benefit from some.

 

[Amdlova]

Looking at power numbers the ryzen 7950x power draw is my entire machine with sound and monitor when gaming...
The 14900k is two times...
The h670 I have cost only 105 bucks... that 650 don't justified the price

Insanely high price for a dead platform

 

[GettnBetter]

My experience with the Encore was good but, I was unable to find or get Sonic Studio to work. There's no drivers available that support any audio enhancements for this board, the equalizer is completely missing as an available analog audio option. It's not part of Armory Crate or MoKiChU's updated drivers and going backwards with the legacy USB Audio drivers didn't work either. How did you determine this board supports Sonic Studio?