ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 APEX Encore Listed by Norwegian Retailer

[T0@st]

Norway's Proshop listed an ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 APEX Encore motherboard by mistake, with an eye watering price of 9790 NOK including VAT (~$890). Elite and record-breaking overclocker enthusiasts with deep pockets need only apply—this "Encore" 14th Gen Core-ready refresh of the existing (and recently discontinued) APEX board is expected to coincide with this month's launch of six "Raptor Lake Refresh" CPUs. The Norwegian listing did not an include any photos of ASUS ROG's ultra-premium board, but Benchlife and a bunch of social media leakers have released imagery into the wild.

On first inspection of leaked specification details, the only major upgrade appears to be WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity. Gigabyte and MSI are reported to be refreshing their own "next-gen" Z790 boards with these newer standards. We get the usual designation of two DIMM slots for maximum memory performance in this league—really fast DDR5-10000 memory configurations are on the expected support list (Proshop mentioned DDR5-5600). The current APEX has logged speeds of DDR5-11000 MT/s, so the successor and accompaniment of "next-gen" processors could push things further.




Multiple news outlets have managed to preserve spec information prior to Proshop removing its listing.

Wccftech: "Here are some of the specs:"

• ATX Form Factor
• Intel LGA1700 socket
• Intel Z790 chipset
• 2x PCI-Express 5.0 x16
• Dual DDR5-5600 2x DIMM slots (Intel XMP support)
• 4x SATA-600
• 4x M.2 NVMe PCI-Express 4.0
• 1x M.2 NVMe PCI-Express 5.0 (M.2 size: 2242 / 2260 / 2280)
• USB 3.2 Gen 2 type A & C
• Intel I225-V 2.5 Gigabit (LAN)
• Intel WiFi 7 & Bluetooth 5.4
• Realtek ALC4080 HD Audio
• ASUS AURA Sync software

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[Ferrum Master]

I225-V 2.5 Gigabit (LAN) for 900€

 

[BArms]

And only a single M.2 PCIE 5.0 slot? MB prices are completely bat**** crazy.

 

[Broken Processor]

Yeah no I'd get the Gigabyte Tachyon instead of this over priced bollox.

 

[P4-630]

Ah! Finally found a board for my G6900 Celeron!!

 

[Carlyle2020hs]

Worrisome how they backtracked from the trashy intel 226 NIC on the OG z790 apex to the less buggy 225 on the encore
Beware of both of those NICs and to your research!

No backplate for this price

No "true voltitian" included but the price has gone up

 

[Sabishii Hito]

And only a single M.2 PCIE 5.0 slot? MB prices are completely bat**** crazy.

How many boards have dual Gen5 slots? Switches for those things aren't cheap.

 

[Cheeseball]

No backplate for this price

What? There is an embedded backplate on the 1st screenshot in the post:

EDIT: Ah, did you mean for the CPU HSF? Intel motherboards don't come with that as the non-Z CPUs come with a HSF that uses push-pins. The CPU socket has a smaller backplate for the retention lock.

 

[P4-630]

What? There is an embedded backplate

My Aorus Master has a proper backplate:

 

[Cheeseball]

My Aorus Master has a proper backplate:

Ahh for the entire back of the motherboard. Didn't know that was a thing for higher priced SKUs.

 

[Chaitanya]

Ahh for the entire back of the motherboard. Didn't know that was a thing for higher priced SKUs.

It has been a thing for quite sometime with some board makers adding thermal pads(for VRM and Chipset) between the plate to add additional surface area to move heat.

 

[ir_cow]

And only a single M.2 PCIE 5.0 slot? MB prices are completely bat**** crazy.

I guess your new to Intel platforms

My Aorus Master has a proper backplate:

Yes and it has pads on the back. Reason why XOC MBs don't is because it has to be removed anyways for LN2.

 

[bogami]

ROG without real ROG support. The purpose and meaning does not match with anything here, as we can achieve good clocks and everything else is middle even lower class more TUF gaming class than ROG. What will I do with 7 M.2 options only one has 5 generation and even this, as shown shared on the PCI-E 5 Slot, is not capable of GTR 3090 LINK or SLI. The minimum Thunderbolt is missing, not to mention the digital port for data transfer, etc., everything becomes useless. A severe disappointment, the ROG formula Z790 offers everything that is missing here!

 

[Simkin]

I225-V 2.5 Gigabit (LAN) for 900€

Its a typo. Its gonna be the I226-V like the rest of the Z790 lineup with Intel NIC.

 

[uplink777]

I225-V 2.5 Gigabit (LAN) for 900€

You do realize that each 226 from Q2 22 on Z790 is innately faulty and there's no other newer 2.5G counterpart from Intel currently available

They'd have to use 10G Aquantia and further increase the production price, or use inferior RealTek

Thus the only option is is 225 from Q4 19

 

[Simkin]

ROG without real ROG support. The purpose and meaning does not match with anything here, as we can achieve good clocks and everything else is middle even lower class more TUF gaming class than ROG. What will I do with 7 M.2 options only one has 5 generation and even this, as shown shared on the PCI-E 5 Slot, is not capable of GTR 3090 LINK or SLI. The minimum Thunderbolt is missing, not to mention the digital port for data transfer, etc., everything becomes useless. A severe disappointment, the ROG formula Z790 offers everything that is missing here!

And yet, the Z790 Apex has been hard to get since launch because its been sold out as soon as new boards hit the shelfs, atleast in US.

Seems like you are not the target or dont understand the purpose of this board, this board is for OC, and maybe more importantly; Memory OC.

And not forget the BIOS support for Apex, with new Test/Beta bios coming out frequently.

If you want more/other features and dont care about high DDR5 speeds, go buy TUF, Strix/Formula, Hero etc.

You do realize that each 226 from Q2 22 on Z790 is innately faulty and there's no other newer 2.5G counterpart from Intel currently available

They'd have to use 10G Aquantia and further increase the production price, or use inferior RealTek

Thus the only option is is 225 from Q4 19

Have not had a single issue with the I226-V on my Z790 Apex, had it running for 10 months now. Heavy downloading, gaming etc on a 1000/1000Mbps connection

Did not have any issue with I225-V on my previous Z690 Apex either.

 

[uplink777]

And yet, the Z790 Apex has been hard to get since launch because its been sold out as soon as new boards hit the shelfs, atleast in US.

Seems like you are not the target or dont understand the purpose of this board, this board is for OC, and maybe more importantly; Memory OC.

And not forget the BIOS support for Apex, with new Test/Beta bios coming out frequently.

If you want more/other features and dont care about high DDR5 speeds, go buy TUF, Strix/Formula, Hero etc.



Have not had a single issue with the I226-V on my Z790 Apex, had it running for 10 months now. Heavy downloading, gaming etc on a 1000/1000Mbps connection

Did not have any issue with I225-V on my previous Z690 Apex either.

Yeah, about notorious Z790 and l226-V disconnect issue, which was not fixed by all the updates, only mitigated. I'm running 1000/500 Mbps connection and I have tons of disconnects per day. Also, I have it on my secondary PC with Z790 I Gaming WiFi and all dozens of clients computers whether prebuilt, or built by me, so that's that. I fixed the issue by using type-c/standard usb LAN adapters.

 

[Simkin]

Yeah, about notorious Z790 and l226-V disconnect issue, which was not fixed by all the updates, only mitigated. I'm running 1000/500 Mbps connection and I have tons of disconnects per day. Also, I have it on my secondary PC with Z790 I Gaming WiFi and all dozens of clients computers whether prebuilt, or built by me, so that's that. I fixed the issue by using type-c/standard usb LAN adapters.
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Would you be damned, i have alot of these also in Event Viewer, but i have never experienced any disconnects that i have noticed, and i usually game a few hours in the evening when i have time and in the weekends.

Found out disabling "Energy Efficient Ethernet" would stop it, so i did that.

 

[Carlyle2020hs]

Does not work in all scenarios. 225 AND 226 are inherently faulty.
But you don´t experience the issue if you are not looking for it.
Any Network monitoring software hates them.

 

[Simkin]

Does not work in all scenarios. 225 AND 226 are inherently faulty.
But you don´t experience the issue if you are not looking for it.
Any Network monitoring software hates them.

But looking for it in my case would be to open Even Viewer.

Never have i seen the disconnected icon on taskbar or been disconnected from a game, not once.

Also no issues to connect when booting into Windows.

After a little more googling, i found a thread over at ROG forum with the same "issue"

Seems like many, like myself, is not experiencing any problems, even with the disconnects found in event viewer and are not even aware of them.
This either happens so fast it does not affect anything or it happens when the computer is not used (Idle or going into sleep etc)

As for now, this is a non-issue for me, and probably for most other people. Not saying some people have real issues with the 226-V adapter.

I have also had the 3rd revision 225-V without experience any issues.

 

[uplink777]

Would you be damned, i have alot of these also in Event Viewer, but i have never experienced any disconnects that i have noticed, and i usually game a few hours in the evening when i have time and in the weekends.

Found out disabling "Energy Efficient Ethernet" would stop it, so i did that.

I tried that and much more. Most of the time, it can be seen in Facebook Messenger, or FB, where it leaves "connection lost" flash message. But sometimes it physically disconnects me while gaming MOBA game, or even in Diablo iV and I have a massive lag till WiFi kicks in. Sometimes a day passes and nothing. Anyway, my point was, when You look at product list of Intel LAN consumer solutions, they have only two viable 2.5G options. One is super-faulty l226-V, and second one is somewhat better l225-V. And that's why Asus used it for it's refreshed motherboards, so they can avoid this annoying issue

It's super annoying, yesterday I've had only one, today I can't work with internet:

They're not that many, but they're still quite many:

The e2fexpress with are disconnects.

Simply said, I can't wait for the Z790 Apex Encore, or Z790 I Gaming WiFi refresh...with old but somewhat reliabnle l255-V.

 

[Simkin]

But Proshop.no also listed I225-V for the Z790 Apex, and other Z790 motherboards from Asus like the Hero, and they have in fact the I226-V. Thats why i guess all sites now says I225-V because proshop is so far the only retailer showing the specs for the Encore

The fact is still, like i wrote in my last post, this is a non-issue for me, but i see it is an issue for you.

 

[uplink777]

But Proshop.no also listed I225-V for the Z790 Apex, and other Z790 motherboards from Asus like the Hero, and they have in fact the I226-V. Thats why i guess all sites now says I225-V because proshop is so far the only retailer showing the specs for the Encore

The fact is still, like i wrote in my last post, this is a non-issue for me, but i see it is an issue for you.

A massive one mate. I mean there's no issue using dongle with rj-45, I have tons of them, but it's ugly and it's a dirty solution. We're being sold incomplete and faulty things for the past decade and a half and it's a status quo thing.

In the past, when You had Extreme, Apex, or other high-end motherboard, this was unthinkable, and if something like this happened, client was compensated, at least by sending that dumb type-c or type-a to LAN adapter from the company.

Today everyone simply plays a dead bug.

Do You remember the fu*k up of the previous generation Apex? I've had over a dozen of those motherboards under my thumb and they were all faulty, started being good since its 3rd silent revision.

 

[Frozoken]

And only a single M.2 PCIE 5.0 slot? MB prices are completely bat**** crazy.

Intel 12th gen and onwards only supports x8 pcie bifurcation on the cpu's lanes meaning u can't split ur lanes lower than that without literally just losing the rest (ie using that gen 5 m.2 slot means u lose the other 4 lanes). Seeing there's only always 16 pcie gen 5 lanes the much better option would be to have no native gen 5 m.2 slots and then buy a card housing 2 gen 5 nvme ssds in one gen 5 x 8 slot. Or u can be smart and not split up ur graphic's card's lanes for a volcanic side grade to a gen 5 nvme SSD when they still have ~10% worse random read latency and low queue depth iops than the 990 pro which is what actually matters for real-world performance.

The second minor pcie slot was also bumped from a x1 to a x4 which is nice. Bluetooth 5.4 could also genuinely be helpful unlike wifi 7 where 90% of semi-recent routers don't even support 6E still. Ik at least the one year old Galaxy Buds Pro 2 launched with Bluetooth 5.3 only months after the standard was actually released so 5.4 will probably come to popular products very soon too. How much u actually use Bluetooth devices on a desktop is questionable tho tbf b ut at least u'll probably actually be able to use products with it unlike wifi 7 is my point