NZXT N7 B550 Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

The cover on the NZXT N7 boards covers a really good portion of the board and it is only really the area around the CPU socket, the top and the bottom that is not covered. As mentioned it comes in both black and white so you do have the option to chose which you prefer. We have also seen a blue and yellow Vault Boy cover that was available for one of the Intel boards, this could mean more custom designs if there was enough want for them. The cover is actually quite easy to take off and comes in two pieces. The white metal piece can be removed from the motherboard by just pulling it off. This leaves a black plastic frame behind which can be taken off by removing the screws on the backside of the motherboard.

NZXT has gone with 8-pin and 4-pin EPS power connectors. This will help deliver better power to our CPU, allowing for mild overclocks and better stability. You will also notice that the main CPU fan header is next to the EPS connectors.

As you will see, there are plenty of connectors for most anything you could need. On the top right, we have an AIO pump header, two NZXT RGB headers and two system fan headers. There are plenty more connectors and ports on the bottom of the motherboard and we will look at them in just a bit.

The 24-pin power connector has the motherboard cover around it, leaving just enough room to plug the cable from our power supply in.

The NZXT N7 B550 comes with six SATA 6Gb/s ports and two USB 3.2 front panel connectors that will both offer two USB 3.2 ports for the front panel on your case.

NZXT has gone with a 12+2 Power Phases design which is a step up from the N7 B550 predecessor, the N7 Z490. On the N7 Z490, we only saw an 8+2 Power Phase design, giving the B550 variant and extra 4 phases. In theory, the extra phases should allow for better power allocation to the CPU, especially when at higher loads. Take that into account and it should also offer better overall stability to the whole system.

On to the bottom half of the N7 B550 and as you may be able to notice, I have taken a couple of pieces of the NZXT cover off to reveal two M.2 drive slots. The pieces I took off are simply magnetic so no need for a screwdriver to remove them.

The top M.2 slot is going to be for our PCIe 4.0 drive so we can get the fastest SSD speeds currently available. Note that the drive will not allow for the cover to be put back on when in the slot if it has a heatsink. Normally we would just say to remove the heatsink and put the cover back, job done! However, in this case, if you are using one of the faster Gen 4 drives, you will likely want to keep your heatsink on and store the cover away somewhere safe like in the motherboard box.

The bottom M.2 slot is going to be our PCIe 3.0 and SATA based slot. While the speeds of these drives won’t be as fast, they are still a bit cheaper and don’t have the same issues with thermal throttling.

As mentioned all the cover can come off and we thought we would show it without, just a bare board. As you can see, it really does look like most other motherboards when stripped down. It features a 6 layer PCP which is black in colour so those parts not covered will still look much nicer than those old green PCB motherboard we used to get. The below image gives us a good look at what all is included in the motherboard as we can see most of the ports and connectors like this.

One of the main things we can access when removing the cover is the M.2 WiFi card and the CMOS battery. Remember, the covering can be pulled off the board with no need for additional tools so while these are hidden by it, they are still fairly easily accessible. The WiFi makes use of Intel’s WiFi 6E technology and is currently the best on the market!

Right, for the rear IO there is quite a bit going on! The BIOS flashback button is major and something NZXT listened to their fans about. Their previous N7 boards didn’t have this feature and as AMD are known to break things, when they update them, NZXT thought this to be a worthy addition. Basically, if you update your BIOS and something isn’t quite right, you can use the BIOS flashback button to roll your BIOS back to the previous version where everything was working! This one little button can literally be a lifesaver! The clear CMOS button is quite handy as well and means you don’t need to go looking for any pins on the board and can clear CMOS without having to take the side panel off your case! Alongside our clear CMOS and BIOS flashback buttons, we have the following: