ASRock Z690 Extreme WiFi 6E, Tested & Overclocked

Motherboards, Reviews

Installation, Evaluation & Conclusion

Contents

The first item we received for our LGA 1700 evaluations was a DDR5 kit. While we had plenty of DDR4 that would have fit ASRock’s Z690 Extreme WiFi 6E, keeping those upcoming comparisons fair required us to track down something more specific: Single-rank DDR4 16GB modules. What we ended up with was Mushkin’s Redline DDR4-4000.

Our Core i9-12900KF was only rated for DDR4-3200, and while we knew we could squeeze its memory controller to DDR4-3600 in a performance-enhancing Gear 1 mode, we did not yet have DDR4-3600. Since we needed baseline performance anyway, we chose to start at DDR4-3200, using both JEDEC-approved CAS 22 and enthusiast-approved CAS 16 timings.

The remaining components are primarily designed to keep the system cool, with the CPU water block, 60mm-thick radiator, and enormous water pump all coming from Alphacool.

 Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings
PCMark 10Essentials, Productivity, Digital Content Creation
3DMark Professional EditionTimespy, Firestrike Extreme Default Presets
SiSoftware SandraVersion Version 2021.11.31.53
Memory Bandwidth, Memory Latency
Cinebench R23.2Build RBENCHMARK330542
CPU Multi Core Benchmark
AIDA64Version 6.50.5800, BenchDLL v4.5.859.8-x64
 Application Tests and Settings
LAME MP3Version 3.98.3
Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 –nores (160 Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 0.10.5-x86_64
Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19 GB 4k mkv to x265 mp4
BlenderVersion 2.93.5
BMW 27 CPU Render Benchmark, BMW 27 GPU Render Benchmark
7-ZipVersion 21.04 Beta integrated benchmark + custom workload bench:
7.6 GB mixed files to .7z, CL switches “a -t7z -r -m0=LZMA2 -mx=9”

Note that even though we didn’t have another motherboard to compare yet, we primarily used standard tests that users can replicate without requiring any custom files. Without a comparable platform, our general observations are that Intel’s Core i9-12900KF processor uses much more power under Prime95 Small FFTs than we’ve seen in previous consumer models. The Z690 Extreme WiFi 6E has no problems producing the current this processor needs, but our upcoming overclocking feature will give it a chance to truly prove its mettle.

Get it at Amazon


(click for availability)

Please follow and like us:

Leave a Reply