overclock3d Asus is releasing an ROG X870E Apex

[Fluxmaven]

First AMD Apex motherboard. Asus has been lacking a high end 2 DIMM board Since the X670E Gene was discontinued. 

 

https://overclock3d.net/news/cpu_mainboard/asus-rog-x870e-apex-motherboard-spotted-a-first-for-ryzen

[Sir Beregond]

Nice to see a 2-dimmer come back. Need more of those.

[pio]

Not a bad looking board.  I'm not a huge fan of the huge fan on it, but having a DDR5 system, I can certainly understand the need.  I wonder if they've fixed the SoC overvolt issues that Asus boards apparently were reportedly having?  I was reading some forums where Asus boards are ruining things with that, like 1.35-1.40v overvolts on SoC.

[Snakecharmed]

1 hour ago, pio said:

Not a bad looking board.  I'm not a huge fan of the huge fan on it, but having a DDR5 system, I can certainly understand the need.  I wonder if they've fixed the SoC overvolt issues that Asus boards apparently were reportedly having?  I was reading some forums where Asus boards are ruining things with that, like 1.35-1.40v overvolts on SoC.

They did fix it shortly after those issues were making the rounds since that was where the first Asus warranty-related firestorm came from because they used boilerplate warranty language for flashing a beta BIOS. I think the fix may have been rolled into AGESA so no board manufacturers should be allowing excessive SoC voltages anymore with their latest BIOSes.

 

Before all of this, my Auto SoC voltage was at something like 1.35. With the earliest BIOS updates containing the fix, Asus only got it down to 1.3 on the Auto setting with EXPO/XMP profiles enabled, which is still high but within AMD's spec. I manually tested it at different voltages between 1.15 to 1.23, and eventually settled on 1.19.

 

With the latest BIOS and my new 1.35V XMP 96 GB kit, I left it on Auto which resolves to 1.28.

Edited January 8 by Snakecharmed

[pio]

3 hours ago, Snakecharmed said:

They did fix it shortly after those issues were making the rounds since that was where the first Asus warranty-related firestorm came from because they used boilerplate warranty language for flashing a beta BIOS. I think the fix may have been rolled into AGESA so no board manufacturers should be allowing excessive SoC voltages anymore with their latest BIOSes.

 

Before all of this, my Auto SoC voltage was at something like 1.35. With the earliest BIOS updates containing the fix, Asus only got it down to 1.3 on the Auto setting with EXPO/XMP profiles enabled, which is still high but within AMD's spec. I manually tested it at different voltages between 1.15 to 1.23, and eventually settled on 1.19.

 

With the latest BIOS and my new 1.35V XMP 96 GB kit, I left it on Auto which resolves to 1.28.

I think I'm settling in around 1.15v SoC myself, and yeah that's exactly the issue I was thinking of.  Glad it was resolved.  Then yeah, this looks like a pretty nice board option.  I might look at trying to find one later on for the 9000 series build I do when the next gen comes out.    Just upgraded to a 7800x3d, so I'll probably be quite happy for a while.

[Fluxmaven]

With the issues Asus has had and they way they handled it, I probably wouldn't buy one of these. Still neat to have it as an option. Honestly I don't even push my Gene enough to justify owning it. Could have picked up an ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 back when those were $100 and called it a day. 

 

As for the fan, it does seem like an odd addition. For a more mainstream board, I actually like the option of something like that vs. the aftermarket clip on style RAM coolers. For a dedicated overclocking board, most people are going to be running custom cooling on the memory or at the very least, already have a more powerful fan on their test bench.

 

I've got a 120mm and 180mm fan on my bench that undoubtedly push a ton more air even at lower fan speeds.