NZXT N7 Z590 Review

1. Introducing the NZXT N7 Z5902. Digging deeper with NZXT N7 Z5903. CPU Testing and Performance4. Intel Adaptive Boost, AVX and VRMs5. Gaming Testing and Performance6. Closing Thoughts7. View All Pages

Intel Adaptive Boost, AVX and VRMs

In Blender we see results that are entirely unexpected. Enabling Intel Adaptive Boost should increase clock speeds significantly, however in practice we see the opposite. This is clearly problematic, but the fact this lower performance is accompanied by raised Vcore and CPU power draw that goes up by 50 percent is little short of extraordinary.

Clearly it was possible there was some underlying hardware problem but we laid that theory to rest by monitoring the VRM temperatures and were satisfied the VRM coolers do a decent job.

Intel Adaptive Boost, AVX and VRMs Overview

It seems to us the BIOS imposes a significant AVX offset  when Intel Adaptive Boost is enabled, and the result is performance that is truly horrible in these specific workloads. Changing the AVX in the BIOS pretty much fixes the problem and brings the power draw and clock speed back into line, so this must surely be something that ASRock and NZXT can easily fix. In the meantime we have to hope that customers who buy an NZXT Z590 motherboard are willing and able to make changes in the BIOS.

Become a Patron!