Performance

Okay so for the most part performance between motherboards isn’t a big focus. Your CPU, Memory, and Video Card all really set the pace. But I do still do a few tests on all of the boards we review to check to make sure there aren’t any issues or glaring issues. As some of you might have seen with the recent Intel launch people have recently figured out that some boards like to run higher voltage or automatically overclock CPUs so these tests check for that. That said most of the time small variances are just in the margin of error for the tests. In the case of the Apex, it came in right in line with all of the board tested in 3DMark. The same in PCMark. In Passmark all three of the Asus boards came in a touch lower than the Gigabyte and EVGA boards but still all were close together.

Really the network test is where I see the biggest variations because some boards use different controllers and for the wireless, they all use different antennas. In this case, the Intel I219V is the same NIC that all of the boards use and the numbers are all about the same. As for the Realtek 8822BE wireless card, performance wasn’t too bad, even beating other X299 boards tested but it was a touch slower than what I have seen on AM4 and Z270 boards in the past.

The last thing to check out was lighting swag… Oops I mean lighting performance. In addition to the X shaped PCB the Apex also is decked out in the same individually controllable surface mounted LEDs as on Strix boards so by default it is lit up like a Christmas tree. They can be turned off if you don’t want lighting or you can change them to match your builds lighting. You also have the lighting headers on the board that you also control from the same software.