NZXT N7 B550 Review - Testing NZXT's FIRST AMD Ryzen Motherboard
NZXT N7 B550 Review - Hello guys you may know about NZKT and they make pretty good cases and coolers, but in recent years they have also dabbled in GPU, coolers, PSUs, RGB accessories, and even, some packing pucks, sorry, but did you know. They also have a motherboard lineup well. Yes, they do and it started with the N7Z370 and. It was followed by the Z390 and the Z490 series of intel boards, but, as you may have, noticed they did not have an AMD board till now.
Because it changes today with the launch of N7B550 which is a standard-sized ATX board that features the AMD's mid-range B550 chipset. It will be priced at around $ 329 or approximately Rs.25-26 000 in India. With this price, they are surely competing with the big boys. So is it any good? Let'S find out NZXY always had a clear focus. Anaesthetics just look at the case H510, the H700i everything looks clean and pristine and The motherboards are no different.
7B550 is a standard size board with the whole PCB covered with this white metal armour, you can call it a shroud, which I think, will be the main selling point of this board. Usually, this design is found in high-end boards, but here you are getting this design at a comparatively cheaper price. Just like the design of the board.
The packaging is very basic and minimal you only get two M.2 screws: 2 SATA cables, and a very basic manual. Let'S talk about the metal piece a little more, it's a metal shroud and its held onto the board by little tabs on the sides it's easy to remove and you can still remove it while it's inside the case but, it's something I will not recommend you to do to get access to the Ssds you can remove these two covers, which are unfortunately made of plastic at least the inner part of it.
Unlike most of the boards in this price category, this board does not feature any kind of SSD heatsinks during testing was using a PCI, Gen 4 SSD and it overheated during my benchmarking test. Honestly, it's kind of disappointing at this price point to not see them included at first. I was surprised why I was getting lower scores than expected. Then I realized it may have to do something with the temperatures and I was right.
Most higher-end SSDs do come with heatsinks, but there are always exceptions. If you are considering this board, then please do keep these covers out. If you have a PCIGen, 4 SSD or just an SSD which turns hotter after removing the white shroud or cover you get a black shroud, unlike the white shroud, this is not made of metal and you will have to use a screwdriver to remove this black cover.
Fortunately, it's not cover any essential connectors, so it's good to stay on the socket area is very clean and you will have no problem installing large air coolers her history lesson for you guys do you know next also had air coolers? Well, they did and. It looks something like this not very minimalistic like the modern one's right, there's a large and'chonky' aluminium heatsink here that matches the board's overall theme it's, not here just for the show, as it weighs over250 grams and has proper large fins to maximize the surface area.
It'S a better implementation of, a heatsink than some mainstream motherboard manufacturers out there push some air over this thick boy and the VRM should cool without issue. I will tell you more about the VRM soon in terms of layout. It has all the standard connectors located around the edges of the PCB there are4 PCIe slots, 2 full-size ones and two X1 slots these are spaced out decently and the bottom full-size slot only supports X4 mode, which should be fine for plenty of users.
There. There are two M.2storage slots and the bottom one supports onlyX2. Gen 3 speeds. I really think this should be upgraded to the X4 specification because of the competing motherboards at this price. Range offer full X4 speeds the top M2 and PCI slot supports Gen 4 speeds because the B550 chipset comes with seven fan, headers four located at the top and three at the bottom of the board.
All of them support PWM features and they put up to 24 watts of power individually, but I think the layout can be improved a bit because the single connector in, the middle of the board for the rear case fan will, be a great addition. There are technically four RGB headers, but only two are of the standard type because the other two are propriety and NZXT headers.
So if you have NZKT hue accessories, then you can connect them to the motherboard directly for, easier access, it's a great feature and it makes sense, as a person who will buy this board will, obviously or somehow have another NZXT product. But I also believe there are people who will buy this motherboard standalone, just for the looks and would like to pair RGB accessories from other manufacturers.
So the addition of one more ARGB port will make for a great feature the internal USB port header selection, is pretty good. There are three USB 2.0 headers two USB 3.2 gen1 headers, which are side-mounted on, the PCB and one 3.2 Gen 2 type-c header, it's, good setup and is a very capable one to help in, faster setup and diagnostic.
There are four debug LEDs at the bottom edge, which I hope you don't have to use much, and you also get a set of power buttons and reset buttons onboard these are always welcomed once and good job NZXT but. Why not throw a postcode display to complete the set? I use this motherboard with my 3700x and also tested the audio during the setup and the audio is surprisingly good on this motherboard itis uses the ALC 1220 codec and is supported by the NE5532 OP/AMP on board, and this amplifier is usually used on dedicated DACs and amplifiers. So it should be fine for most gamers out there.
The sound is wide and has good clarity and power. To the audio for both games and music. The I/O on the next N7 B550 is pretty stacked. Starting from the top. You get a clear CMOS and BIOS flashback. Button flashback options always come in handy when you are trying to upgrade to the newer CPU or the latest BIOS. Next to it is a single HDMI port and a pair of wi-fi antenna, connectors it supports.
The latest wi-fi six protocol and is handled by the Intel AX210 chip below these are ample USB options, including two USB 2.0 ports three, USB 32 Gen 2 ports, one USB 3.0, gen, 2 type-C port and 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports. You also get an a2.5 gigabit LAN option and it's from RealtekIntel would be better, but Realtek is fine. And at last, the full set of audio ports, overall the onboard and rear panel connectivity on this board is on par with the price range and completely apt for most users.
Now, let's talk about the VRM setup on this board and actually using a very capable VRM configuration here. The main PWM controller is the eight-phase RENESASRAA 229004, which handles the 12 2 phase VR configuration the 50-ampere VishaySIC654 power stages are used for the main CPU and SOC MOSFETS'12' for the CPU and two for the SOCthe. Soc phases are direct, but the main CPU phases are doubled by the RENESAS ISL6617 Adoubler weirdly.
The reviewer's guide that I got with this motherboard stated: that it was using the Vishay SIC 632 power stages but it's. Not maybe they forgot to double-check. Because what they mentioned was old news because it was used on the N7 Z490 boards and not the AMD they - are also using some high quality 12000 hours rated Nichicon black capacitors here and overall this setup is very capable and has been used. In many high-quality boards from other manufacturers.
Well, it should be capable of handling even the 5950x decent loads, especially when paired with, a big heatsink and some direct airflow the UEFI bios on this board comes with a very clean and, simple design. It'S laid out with proper tabs and easy to use UI. You have your main overclocking screen, where all the CPU and DRAM voltage settings are present, and you also get proper LLC options and. Some additional voltage settings to finely tune your overclocks for CPU and ram overclocks you will have no problems at all in the advanced app.
You get access to the precision, overdrive, and other AMD, specific settings and you also get proper fan control, which is a little too basic in my opinion, but there's a reason for it: NZXT wants you to use the dedicated NZXT, cam software which controls both fans and also monitors your settings. So the basic one will be fine for most users, but you can always go back to the NZXT came. Some of you with keen eyes may have noticed that.
This BIOS layout looks very familiar, to the ASrock one, and you are right because NZXT has actually partnered with ASrock for this bios design and some of the components on board so the overall layout and configuration are very similar. Those ones - and it seems NZXT - is actually taking good care of the bios because there was already a bios update for the board.
Even before I was ready to test it and in the reviewers, guide they have mentioned some problems with the USB connection issues, but they have also promised an update is Coming soon once AMD releases it but it has all the functions that you will need to use on a daily basis. I also tried some basic overclocking with the board.
I have not so pleasant experience to share with you guys, so I was using my 3700x which. I know for sure. Does 4.15 ghz at 125 volts core loads. I put up my settings in the BIOSand. The BIOS did not send in the right voltages, to the CPU, even after selecting the right LLC setting usually when you set a specific Vcore on your BIOSthe actual voltage.
Supply to the CPU is lower than the one in the BIOS because of something known as Vdroop or voltage drop. But here it was not the case as the actual voltage supply to the CPU was. Almost 40 millivolts higher than required and this is with the strictest LLC setting of level 1it's an easy bio fix and, I hope NZXT looks into it.
I tried some RAM overclocking on this board. Andi used my T-Force Delta R, 3200mhz 16GB kit and I was able to boot into windows and do a proper testrun with 3600 MHz and decent timings of 16-21-19-36 at 1.37 volts.
This kit could be tuned. Further unfortunately time was limited for our testing but. The overall process was very smooth, without any hiccups. All of this helped me get a scoreof 4845 on Cinebench R20, which is in line with some other b550 and x570 boards. I have tested I am not doing any thermal testing of the VRMs as my configuration is nowhere near the limits to push this VRM setup.
So sorry for it. But from the other implementations of this configuration I have seen can safely say it will even be fine for the16 core monsters out there.
Next has always been very proud of the NZXT cam software. It did have issues or some controversies from the past. But it has improved a lot. It's a lot lighter now, and also very fast to load and operate. It'S proper monitoring software. So you get all the details. The hardware that you have installed on the board can also use it for overclocking, but the overclocking is only limited to the GPU sectionright. Now, there's also an audio section: which was, not working on a better version, but thefuture updates may have it figured out.
There'S a very easy to use, fan controller configurator here you can use the pre-configured profiles or you can create your own custom profile. Separately for each fan connector the lightning options. Are also plenty, you can create custom effects or usepre-built ones, and you can customize every effect as desired.
You can also address each separately and I think up to 40 LEDs are supported on all the headers, while the effects are not the best that I have seen, but the customizability and the flexibility is better than most of the brand's software.
Overall, the NZXT cam software is not as bad. As I thought it would be, it has all the features that you would require from motherboard software and the effects are also decent. The main complaint people always had with NZXT cam is the privacy, intrusion or the data collection requires you to send your data. It collects your data which may or may not affect you depending on your thoughts about online privacy but You can always turn it off because it's an optional feature and I would highly suggest you look at this option in the settings menu so conclusion time.
What about the NZXT N7 B550 should? You buy it, should you consider it. Well the answer is a little bit tricky because this motherboard cost Rs.25000-26, 000 rupees and at this price. This is one expensive, B550 motherboard the main attraction of this board is the visual design and the aesthetics which I think stands out above the rest of its competition apart from.
The basic design changes to the SSD covers and, tighter voltage regulation in the BIOS there's, not much wrong with the board, but I still think the software package on this board is not at the level that some other manufacturers provide the price is high. There'S no denying it. And this needs a price cut, that's the biggest con, but I do understand it's a niche product and. Maybe some will call it a fanboy product. but let's say it's: a decent offering with aesthetics that will satisfy the target audience really well and you are not getting bad performance either.