ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Apex Preview
Introduction
Introduction
With the Intel Ultra 200S processors on the horizon, naturally it’s time to look at a load of new motherboards. If you were hot on the case you’ll have caught our preview of the ASUS ROG Maximus Hero. If, however, you prefer your systems white, maybe the Maximus Apex is the one for you.
There are three primary Maximus motherboards in the Z890 range. We’ve already shown you the flagship model, the Hero. We’ve got the Extreme coming up more likely than not. Today we’re bringing you the middle child. The Maximus Apex has a huge suite of new features as you would expect from a new motherboard. One thing that does make us chuckle is how many of them are AI based. As tons of things were once “Turbo”, or TVs were HD ready, and in PC terms we had a whole period where everything was “gaming”, now it seems we’ll have to endure AI being the catch-all-term. Knowing that ChatGPT is as accurate as Fox News or The Daily Mail, we’re cautious.
For the Maximus Apex those technologies are – ASUS AI Advisor, AI Overclocking, AI Cooling II, and AI Networking II. Looking through the feature descriptions it seems that the advisor is just ChatGPT, AI Overclocking is “smarter”, AI Cooling is the noise-based profile we’ve seen for a few generations, and AI Networking II is another name for the many packet scheduling softwares we’ve seen. Admittedly that sounds less exciting than it probably is, but nothing in the initial bumf implies we’re getting anything actually new.
One area that actually will be both new and useful is the NPU Boost, a one click 20% boost to your NPU speeds. Perfect if you can’t get enough Stable Diffusion in your life. But enough of wondering what we might or might not get. Let’s take a look at the Maximus Apex in the flesh.
Technical Specifications
We haven’t got a simple specification yet, but thankfully the back of the box gives us all the information the majority of us require.