ASUS ROG Maximus X Apex review

Mainboards 327 Page 29 of 29 Published by

teaser

Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

The new Z370 / Coffee lake ready Maximus X APEX is a beauty alright. And quite honestly that is probably a big selling item these days. To appreciate the motherboard you do need to see it powered on, as that is a gorgeous LED lighting with the X shaped PCB and subtle black/grey design elements. Granted though, three compromises have been made. First and foremost, you only have 2 DIMM slots and thus your maximum amount of memory will be 32GB. While that should be sufficient for pretty much anyone, some might frown upon that. There are only four SATA3 ports though, that will be a bit of a thing for some. Then there is the lack of AC WIFI. But hey now, they did implement a 2nd 5Gbit Aquatica Ethernet jack (which is an expensive chip), and that makes this board more future proof. The DIMM.2 solution for M2 SSDs is a little weird but weird in a likable way perhaps? I have no problem with that solution and granted and as shown, it is offering blazingly fast M2 performance. The rest is all icing on top of the cake, good BIOS, good tweaking, awesome looks and good overall performance. The board sits in a € 349,- and USD price category. I do hope it drops a little more as the board itself really is quite standard features wise. But it's such a nice board though as all main features are there as well as the performance and, sure enough, it tweaks as well as the others also. Really all Z370 boards perform roughly within the same 2% margin of error with an exception here and there. That goes for overclocking and tweaking as well, of course, the denominator here is the processor and not so much the motherboard. Overclocking wise we can reach 5.0 easy and 5.2 GHz on all six cores 100% stable on our sample, but we've also seen others CPU samples hardly reach 4.8 GHz. But it is around this range with the 8600k/8700k processors. The platform (Z370/Coffee Lake) also manages heat and power consumption at very acceptable levels. 



36530_img_9058

Performance & tweaking

Once tweaked we noticed that the six cores like a bit of extra voltage, we expect all-core tweaks in the 5.1~5.2 GHz marker to need ~1.40 Volts on the processor. While that does increase power consumption, it wasn't something that scared me away. Some platforms and procs will also be able to manage a lower voltage. We tried this board with the CPU at 1.425 volts / 5.2 GHz frequency ranges and it reached a scary 90 Degrees C for that 5.2 GHz (all cores though), and that is tricky. We did use an ES sample, perhaps the final retail product can do with a little less juice. If you plan a tweak at that 5 GHz marker then remember my remarks on cooling, you will need LCS, that or a very good heat pipe cooler. Again, we have been using an ES sample so I cannot say anything conclusive on the final retail products (these might run a tiny bit cooler). The infrastructure that Z370 offers is easy to use, you increase the CPU voltage and multiplier and you are good to go. Another plus for the Intel platform is that over the years they have been able to refine their memory controllers, pop in anything XMP 2.0 and you have a 90% chance it'll work straight out of the box with very fast memories. Keep in mind that all our tests are performed at 3200 MHz DDR4, similar to Ryzen and Threadripper to remain objective and for fair play on both sides.

Power consumption

Z370 with a six core, twelve thread proc equates to a 95 Watt TDP processor. With the system at idle with a GeForce GTX 1080 installed / 16 GB memory / SSD and the Z370 motherboard, typically you will hover at roughly 50 Watts in IDLE. The board is within the baseline of the rest of the tested Z370 motherboards. When we stressed the processor 100% we reach roughly 150 Watts with the 6-core 8700K part overall. When we game we hover at ~250 Watts with the GeForce GTX 1080, but obviously that factor is dependent on the type of graphics card you use of course and sure, most games certainly do not utilize the six CPU cores. Overall I have no worries here.


36531_img_9079


DDR4 Memory

For Coffee Lake (8th Gen Intel procs) DDR4 may be clocked a notch faster at 2400/2667 MHz as per Intel reference. We always say, volume matters more than frequency. A 3200 MHz kit, for example, is far more expensive and does offer better bandwidth but the performance increases in real-world usage will be hard to find. Unless you transcode videos over the processor a lot. As always, my advice would be to go with lower clocked DDR4 memory with decent timings, but get more of it. Don't go for 8 GB, get four DIMMs and, in total, a minimum of 16 GB. The reason we test at 3200 MHz is simple, we do the same for AMD Ryzen and want to create a fair and equal playing ground for both

 

Guru3d-recommended

Final words

The Maximus X APEX has got to be one of the best looking Z370 motherboards. It is versatile and agile and with the DIMM.2 slot trick, it offers fast and easy access towards two M2. SSDs as well, both at full Gen3 x4 like speeds. The board kicks in with an exquisitely perfect amount of RGB LEDs, and once activated it's just a completely different board to look at. The LEDs give the product really nice looks. All RGB configurable of course as well you get to add more LED strips to the mobo connector and sync it all up with ASUS SYNC software. Lacking is WiFi is nice, but the 5G LAN Jack I feel makes up for that. In the years to come, we will slowly transition to faster Ethernet as 1 Gbps is getting out of fashion. With this board, you are prepared for the future. Connectivity wise in terms of your PCIe slots for your graphics subsystem you are looking at a full x16 Gen 3 lanes for one graphics cards. The second and third PCIe slot shares its lanes with the first one, ergo you'd end up at a configuration like x8/x8. The fourth x16 slot, in fact, is an x4 slot which draws its lanes from the chipset and is shared with an M.2 slot. We expect Coffee lake to be able to manage the 5 GHz domain on all cores with exceptions running up towards 5.2 GHz (all-core). I base this metric on high-perf air coolers and liquid cooling. From there onwards you are looking at proc ASIC quality and cooling being the more important denominator. Concluding, the APEX could be an excellent partner in crime for your Coffee Lake processor. If you are in need of that upgrade towards a new platform with all the new technologies, hey this one comes recommended by Guru3D.com 

Now, normally I would have granted the APEX a Best hardware or Top Pick award, as really it is a marvel of technology and aesthetics. However, I am afraid that the limited number of DIMM slots and SATA3 ports might be bothersome for a number of people. So I will grant it a recommended award, but really it is on that threshold of a top pick award okay? We like what we fooled around with. If you dig the new styling, heck, it's a beauty. Totally recommended by Guru3D.com.

Handy related downloads: 

Share this content
Twitter Facebook Reddit WhatsApp Email Print