Gadgetory

hey guys build Zoid from actually hardcore overclocking here today we're taking a look at a new entry into the motherboard market the NZXT and 7z 370 so ya NZXT now apparently designs motherboards because obviously they don't actually have a motherboard manufacturing plant but they can certainly design a motherboard so this thing is mostly targeted at having like RGB controls and fan headers and aesthetics which are all things I honestly don't care about or know very much about and quite frankly they're mostly subjective so it's like we're not going to address those what we're here to check up is what I'm here for is to check that the VRMs are up to scratch and that NZXT hasn't just sacrificed all of the all of the you know vrm quality to the aesthetics gods so let's get right into that before that this video is brought to you by EVGA and their GTX 10 ATT is c2 video card with icx technology the 1080 is c2 has a nine thermal sensor spread across the board which allows you to easily check the cooling performance of the vram the vrm power components and the GPU this makes for better noise to performance tuning in software and you can learn more about the sc2 at the link in the description below basically all of the VR M's and it on this board are look while all the big ones there's obviously minor voltage you know there's various other voltage regulators scattered around the board for like the chipset and while VPP which is somewhere here quite possibly that thing there's you know some various minor rails scattered around the board but the main ones the important ones are all located right around the CPU socket in this great big l-shaped block and this is actually four different VRMs so this portion right here that is the eye GPU so I'm just gonna call that V GPU next to that we find the V Corps and the V Corps ends right around here because under that we find the VCC essay and the VCC i/o so that's your system agent power and your memory controller power so that's all the VRMs they're controlled by this chip and that chip this chip up here is a ir35 2:01 this chip down here is a 3 5 2 0 4 actually I can put that right on the board against there's space down here ir 3 5 2 0 for this thing supports up to 4 phase output at 2 megahertz switching frequency not that that's actually a useful switching frequency because most MOSFETs even after like a doubling scheme that this is gonna be like 1 megahertz which is way too high for most MOSFETs especially if you want any amount of vrm efficiency admittedly this board is actually using this like pretty modern power mod like dual and fats that are well vela actually these are really modern because there's no public data sheet for some of these at right now so these are actually optimized for 500 kilohertz so there is progress in the power of power you know power transistor industry we're going steadily higher and higher switching frequencies on these things as they get more and more optimized similar to CPUs and more gigahertz over time but anyway so 3 5 2 0 4 down here for phases two megahertz not that that is useful yet and this is a eight phase also 2 megahertz maximum switching frequency so let's get into the details of the biggest well the core and V V GPU shared the ir35 to 0 for 2 0 1 here so I can't address with one without addressing the other so in terms of set up the V chord vrm looks like a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 phase but that is an 8 phase voltage controller and it's also doing the GPU so this is using a doubling scheme so that is a 4 x 2 on that part and indeed that's exactly what we see because we have four of these chips behind the behind the actual MOSFETs and those are International rectifier ir35 98 sidenote International rectifier is now owned by Infineon who actually makes the MOSFETs that this board well some of the MOSFETs that this board uses so the ir35 98 now these cause a bit of a problem with the vgpu because I'm not sure if that's a tube that if that's two phases getting doubled or if that's for phase is true because these are doublers and or dual drivers which basically means that they can either double or they can well they always act as a driver right but you have kind of multiple options of how you can achieve the driver outputs so basically you can feed two PWM signals into one of these and then you've got two driver outputs without any doubling or you can feed one PWM signal into it and then you get a doubled up and then it basically acts as a doubler that also does a driver duty for two phases which means the IGP portion could be a plus four or it could be a plus two times two I'm really not sure which it is because of these being what they are and the board also being located on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and I'm only having pictures either way the IGP uvr like if you're buying this motherboard which costs uh I think right now it's supposed to be two hundred and fifty dollars MSRP if you're using the IGP if you're using an eye GPU with this motherboard you've done something really wrong in like your build planning phase I'm like sorry but no like that's ridiculous so you know I'm alternately not that concerned about the eye GPU VR I'm here because it's not all that useful for most people anyway the vcore vrm is a doubled up for phase which is obviously significantly better than just having a straight four phase it's not as good as if you had an eight you could argue it's around while depending on how its configured you can actually get it to almost the same performance as an Faye's but uh generally speaking it's better to have a true eight phase ultimately four times two is really really popular on a lot of motherboards I don't really have any like huge complaints about this especially for a motherboard that doesn't even target overclocking like this thing is really supposed to look good first and then be a motherboard second so you know that that's fine in my book the actual MOSFETs used for this thing are really nice so as I said before they're made by Infineon and these are BS g 0 8 1 2 ND power blocks dual n fats basically they integrate the high side and the low side MOSFET into one convenient package their rates it for a maximum current output of 50 amps assuming you can call them and you can't exceed that because the packaging for the MOSFETs would actually well it would fail basically the connections between the silicon that is actually used to make the MOSFETs and the motherboard and the the actual ceramic top and the pins on the the packaging those connections aren't built to survive more than 50 amps so basically these are limited to that 50 amps current output like that that's a hard limit you can't exceed that well if you throw enough cooling it just about anything you can exceed the max rating but generally speaking if you go over 50 amps on these they're gonna have serious problems with it in terms of actual specs I can't give you hard data because I don't actually have data sheets for this specific MOSFET however there are public data sheets for the zero eight one one and the zero eight one three and talking to a contact that does have access to the price you know the non-public datasheet for these I know for a fact that it's right in between a zero eight one one and a zero eight one three in terms of specs so yeah if you're interested in reading the data sheets just read these two and then you know scale everything down to halfway in between that's the deal with with the BSG zero eight one two nonetheless these are you know that these are high in power blocks like 50 amps is a very high current out but most of the time you well unlike Z to 70 40 amp was standard and even like x3 70 40 amp power blocks are pretty standard so 50 amps is a it's a pretty good upgrade over like the last generation of motherboards we've seen and the end result is that even on coffee like which is a pretty power hungry platform for a 5.1 gigahertz overclock right 5.1 gigahertz which is achievable for daily if you have a good enough chip and at one point for 2 volts which produces about 200 watts of power consumption which also means you're going to be pushing about 140 amps out of the v corps vrm the vrm will actually only produce about 12 watts of heat on the MOSFETs which really isn't that much as long as NZXT has a halfway decent heatsink on top of this but I'm not you know I have a photo Steve's gonna test if the if the cooling system on this motherboard is actually a adequate so you can look forward to that you should subscribe to see that and yeah so and obviously that 12 well that 12 watts of heat dissipation that's at 500 kilohertz switching frequency and 5 volts gate drive so you know pretty standard parameters for a VR on it might actually be running a higher drive voltage because the 3598 and even these power blocks they support much higher drive voltages like 10 volts or even 12 volts but uh since I'm not sure what NZXT is actually using I'm just gonna use the lowest one because that one will give you the worst efficiency and that way I can't overshoe if the VR like the VR M could be better but it certainly shouldn't be any worse than what I've just written down now for a much more reasonable overclock probably the kind of overclock that somebody with this motherboard would end up at 4.8 gigahertz and about 1.3 volts you'll be looking at about 120 amps output and about a hundred and 60 wait nope 155 watts of power consumption and for that the vrm will actually produce only about 7.5 watts of heat so that's that's really kind of nothing very very little heat output at that point and the arm should have no problem handling that so you know if you're just doing some moderate overclocking this motherboard really shouldn't let you down and even if you really want to push it it should be fine unless the unless the you know the aesthetics focus got in the way of the cooling capabilities of the vrm heatsink which again like the you need test data for that I can't tell you but in terms of actual MOSFET selection there I have no complaints for the V core of the RM now moving onto the GPU vrm that's oh and incidentally all of these power figures those are for an 8700 K because that's the power hungriest CPU you can get for coffee like at this point in time now for the eye GPU you get a some kind of for phase it might be doubled it might not be doubled I'm not entirely sure Intel specs that the a GPU vrm has to provide up to 45 amps of current they do not specify a voltage so I just took an educated guess at at one point one volts and at that kind of current and you know voltage output same switching frequency and drive voltage the four phase for the IGP you will produce about three watts of heat so on the off chance that you don't have a GPU but do have a 250 dollar motherboard your eye GPU is gonna have you know the v arm for the AI GPU is plenty overkill don't have to worry about that finally moving on to the VCCS a and the VCC i/o which are the really like these these are really minor V RMS they do barely any work VCC essay by Intel spec is 1.0 5 volts and 11 amps and if you're overclocking that will probably like if you're really hammering the memory overclock so you know the board doesn't officially support DDR 4000 or any speed above 30 866 so you won't you shouldn't need a high V CCSA but there is a small chance that even for lower speeds just because the motherboard has a work like is performing worse in memory overclocking in general you might need more vc CSA to stabilize lower speeds nonetheless the maximum voltage you would ever really want to go to for VC CSA is maybe 1.3 5 volts at one point 4 volts all could also be fine but really if you want your memory controller working in a year or two you want to stay away from one point 4 volts so at one point three five volts you'd be looking at maybe 15 amps current output for the VCCS a rail and that's maximum not like constant just maxed out and for that for well for 11 amps you're gonna be looking at about 1 watt of heat output for 15 amps about 1.5 watts of heat output oh oops read my notes wrong 1.5 Watts for 11 and 2.3 Watts ish for 15 amps so again you know nothing there's really no concern here really the biggest concern is gonna be if like you're really pushing the CPU core clock the vcore vrm might get all if the heatsink is inadequate the VCC IO rale it's a single-phase and well that's normally expect at 0.95 volts from Intel and about 6 amps output which is nothing and the well if you're overclocking it you might end up at you know 1.3 5 volts again same same restrictions apply as on VC CSA you don't want to go anywhere like 1 point 4 volts won't kill the chip instantly but going to 1 point 4 or over 1.4 for extended periods of time is a pretty bad idea so at one point 3 5 you might be looking at about 9 amps of current through the VCC i/o rail and you know four six amps one water heat output and nine amps you're gonna be looking at about 1.5 watts of heat output and I've just remembered that I forgot to mention who makes the MOSFETs for these these three while the MOSFETs for VCC sa and vc cio and the actual memory vrm are all the same they're dual n fats they're from C no power and these are s m7 340s they don't have a maximum current spec but they're they're actually like in terms of like on resistance these are actually really good very low RDS on but they're pretty slow they switch rather slowly they have pretty high input capacitances especially the low side fat on one of these is absolutely snail speed so the end result is that well that's why the it's used for minor rails it's not a like it's not really a great mosfet for for anything major but then again that's why it's used for VCC sa and vc cio because using these power blocks using the Infineon power blocks would be just massively overkill I mean even these are massively overkill this is barely any eat so yeah no complaints for me for you know NZXT Zeus of MOSFETs there and the memory ddr4 very power efficient you know four sticks you might be a little while four sticks one point three five volts you might be looking at about eight watts of heat output which is nothing and that also at one point three five volts that's about six amps and yeah at that kind of current draw that vrm will only produce about one watt of heat kind of similar to the VCC i/o situation right there so yeah I have I have really no complaints in terms of MOSFET selection and voltage controller selection though I don't know what the controller for memory power for memory is but like again ddr4 is just so easy to power like there memory power has never ever been a like major issue on a ddr4 motherboard in terms of memory overclocking the main issues come in the memory trace layout which basically you need testing you need to test if the bond the board is good at memory overclocking or not because unless NZXT sends you there you know motherboard schematics you're not going to be able to tell if the the trace layout they have is good and also the BIOS you know a bad BIOS can absolutely ruin memory overclocking very very quickly and n ZX ety does only expect this board for ddr4 you know 238 66 megahertz so yeah I wouldn't expect great things in terms of memory overclocking out of this board but again it's targeting being a fan hub and an RGB controller and some aesthetics things not you know breaking World Records so I don't really have issues with with like I don't obviously as an overclocker I'd like to see it like like to see better memory overclocking support but as far as the V arms are concerned NZXT hasn't like done any like they they've not done any huge mistakes like there's nothing like the vcore v RM is solid I GP use overkill ECC sa and vc cio are overkill the memory power is overkill there's like no complaints from me in terms of uh V RMS the BIOS might need work maybe the trace layout for memory might need work but uh physically the board is sound and the last thing to address because people have been recently kind of interested in this all of the capacitors on the board while all of the Aleut well all of the aluminum polymers on the motherboard so all of these cam types I'm not sure what the audio section capacitors are but all of the cam types the black ones those are they're not Nicci cons which is an easy mistake to make because I know a lot of motherboard manufacturers you know they have black colored mid-cheek on FPC use capacitors but the coloring of a capacitor is something you can literally just like ask the company to do for you all the capacitors here are a pack and that's uh that's a Taiwanese capped manufacturer they're extremely popular on motherboards under the $200 mark so especially like if you buy low on motherboards you probably have these and yeah these are rated the ones on this board are rated for 5000 hours 105 degrees centigrade and they're aluminum polymers so you know bog-standard mid-range capacitor basically no complaints from me there either so yeah that's that there's not really much to this board because it doesn't target overclocking that hard but it is a solid entry you know it's the the BIOS I I don't know I've not seen the BIOS but as far as the the hardware is concerned NZXT hasn't done anything horrific ly wrong so that's it for the video thank you for watching like share subscribe leave a comment down below if you'd like to support what we do here at gamers Nexus there's going to be a patreon link in the description or on the video or in the comments or somewhere I don't actually do the publishing and if you'd like to see more content with me I have a channel called actually hardcore overclocking you could go check that out thanks for watching and see you next time