Introduction
Today we have something a little different on our test bench, the MAXSUN Terminator Z790M D5 ICE. If you don’t recognize the name, don’t worry you are probably not alone. MAXSUN is a Chinese manufacturer that has been around since 2002, but has primarily been distributed in China, but recently it has started having more products distributed in the United States.
With this being the first MAXSUN motherboard we have had on our hands, we were definitely curious to see how it would perform. Outside of the standard features on the Z790 platform we have touched on in the past, this little mATX motherboard has a little bit of a trick up its sleeve with a total of five (5) M.2 NVME slots (We will touch on this more later), which is something we have not seen before on a motherboard this small.
Packaging and Contents
With the MAXSUN Terminator Z790M D5 ICE being a sub-$200 motherboard, we did not know what we would find included in the box. At this price range, we don’t typically expect too much outside of the motherboard, which is pretty much what we have. Inside the box, we were treated to two (2) SATA cables, Wi-Fi antenna for the onboard Wi-Fi, a couple of M.2 standoffs and screws, and a warranty card.
MAXSUN Terminator Z790M D5 ICE Features
The first thing you will notice about this motherboard is that the MAXSUN Terminator Z790M D5 ICE lives up to the ICE name. Outside of the white PCB, you will notice all of the heat sinks are a silver color that blends in with the motherboard, with the remainder of the motherboard consisting of black ports. Additionally, this motherboard features an LED Debug that comes in handy for any troubleshooting you might need.
Power Delivery
For those looking to have a display-worthy mATX desktop, the MAXSUN is not going to disappoint. From a power delivery standpoint, we see an 8+1+1 phase, 50Amp total VRM setup, with Dr.Mos SPS protection. While this is a little lacking from what we have seen in other Z790 motherboards, it is about what we would expect for a motherboard in this price range.
Memory and Storage
DRAM Memory on this motherboard is limited to a maximum of 192GB DDR5, non-ECC, un-buffered memory, giving a maximum per slot capacity of 48 GB. The BIOS made it very easy to overclock out memory with the support of Intel’s XMP 3.0 pre-sets, allowing for a listed maximum of 7600MHz speed.
When you first start looking at this motherboard, it is laid out in the typical layout, with the exception of MAXSUN cramming an M.2 NVME slot in any location they could, with a unique location being to the right of the memory slots. If you are planning on using a larger air cooler, this is definitely something you will need to be aware of and is possibly the only complaint we have with the layout of this motherboard. It should be noted that the uppermost M.2 slot has a cooler provided with it, but note that is not tool-less and will require a small screwdriver to remove.
Looking at the storage options, all five (5) of the M.2 slots are capable of PCIe 4.0 x4 speeds and are further capable of RAID configurations if you so desire. Additionally, you have the ability to add an additional four (4) SATA 6GB/s ports.
Expansion
With this being an mATX motherboard there are limited options for expansion, and as such we have only two (2) PCIe expansion slots. The upper slot is PCIe 5.0 x16 as we typically see with all Z790-based motherboards. Additionally, this slot has metal re-enforcement which is very nice to see, considering the size and weight of the current generation of video cards. Finally, there is a single PCIe 3.0 x4 slot located below the dual M.2 slots.
I/O
The rear I/O of this motherboard is about what we would expect on a sub-$200 motherboard. We have a total of four (4) USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, a single USB3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C port, the WIFI antenna connections, a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 port, a Clear CMOS button, a 2.5G LAN port, a SPDIF output, and a total of five (5) audio jacks.
Looking at the network options here, the 2.5G LAN port is provided by the Realtek RTL8125BG chip, which gave us no issues in testing. Interestingly the WIFI is provided by an Intel AX211 chip that is pre-installed in an M.2 Key-E slot that is hidden by the MOSFET heat spreaders.
Beyond the rear I/O connections, this motherboard has a few options for front panel expansion. It has the ability to provide a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type C (20G), a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5G), as well as an additional three (3) USB 2.0 ports to a front panel. Outside of the front panel connections you will find fan headers in locations you would expect with a dedicated 4-pin CPU fan, and an additional five (5) 4-pin system fan headers available for use.
Additionally for those of you who are RGB fans, this motherboard has two (2) 5V 3-Pin ARGB connectors, and a single 12V 4-Pin RGB connector, all of which can be controlled within Windows by software provided by MAXSUN. Finally, we have audio provided by a Realtek ALC897 Codec. This is something we see quite frequently, and is capable of supporting up to 7.1-Channel High Definition Audio via the standard Audio Jacks, or from the S/PDIF output.
BIOS
The MAXSUN Terminator Z790M D5 ICE features a standard BIOS, that will be easy to navigate for most users. This BIOS has only what many manufacturers call an “Advanced Mode”, and is similar to the BIOS layouts from past generations from Intel and AMD.
We were able to easily upgrade the BIOS using the “Ez Update” tool to version H6.0G, released on April 2nd, 2024 (Note: Since testing was performed this motherboard has had an H6.2G release for additional microcode updates). While H6.0G was the initial update available from MAXSUN we had no issues updating it and installing Windows. Similar to all of our reviews, we have provided a gallery at the bottom of this section to show various screens within the BIOS.
Since this BIOS has only an “Advanced Mode” option, you will easily be able to find any overclocking options you might want in the “Turbo” Menu, and the “Advanced” option has some additional settings.
Test Setup
We have the latest BIOS (At the time of testing) installed, H6.0G, released on April 02, 2024. All of our testing was performed at the default settings from the BIOS with the exception of the memory, here we set the DRAM to the XMP-1 profile for full speed on our memory, for the OS setup note that we are on the latest 23H2 Windows 11 update with all incremental Windows updates applied at the time of writing. As with other motherboards we have recently tested, we are providing the test results below to give an idea of what a user can expect in a pure stock installation. While the option for factory overclocking was available, we only tested the motherboard with a base configuration.
M.2 Performance
For this motherboard, we tested the five (5) available slots, and performance is right in line with expected. All of our M.2 slot testing was performed with our PCIe 5.0 test device, the ADATA LEGEND 970 2TB NVME SSE. In our testing with this motherboard, we see speeds right in line with what we have come to expect with this drive in a Gen 4 slot. With all five slots being Gen 4 we are seeing around 7,128MB/s read, and 6,869MB/s write speeds, take a look at the gallery to see the final speeds we achieved with each slot.
Memory Bandwidth
For our application benchmarks, we are going to start with Aida64, and its memory read and write performance test. At the default settings, with the memory set to 6200MHz, the read performance on this motherboard is 96,878 MB/s of bandwidth, with the write performance coming in at 84,957 MB/s, both of which are what we expect, if not slightly higher, than what we have recently seen from this memory kit on other motherboards.
PCMark 10
The standard PCMark 10 test result that we were able to achieve is 9,420, which is right in line with what we would expect.
Cinebench R23
With Cinebench we ran the multi-core test multiple times and consistently received a score of around 34,889, then for the single-core test we scored 2,186.
Blender Benchmark
With Blender, we were able to achieve 212.033 samples per minute for the monster test, 147.65 for junkshop, and 102.94 for the classroom tests, which is right about what we expect with the Intel Core i7-14700K.
3DMark
We ran both Time Spy and the CPU Profile tests with 3DMark. With the Time Spy test, we achieved a CPU score of 22,707, and for the CPU profile on max threads, we achieved 15,074.
V-Ray Benchmark
Running V-Ray we achieved a score of 23,938, which is about what we would expect.
Conclusion
Today we were able to test the MAXSUN Terminator Z790M D5 ICE a relatively new offering from MAXSUN. This motherboard is a feature-packed motherboard, that pushes some of the thoughts we have had for mATX motherboards. From its five (5) total M.2 NVME slots to its ease of installation and use, we have found this to be a very capable motherboard that would be ideal for creators needing plenty of high-speed data storage.
Installation and Use
The installation and setup of this motherboard was quick and painless, the mATX form factor can be a bit troublesome fitting larger hardware on, but we ran into no issues with that here. Additionally, we were able to easily install our M.2 drive with its own cooler in any of the five (5) total M.2 slots. Even though this is a brand we have no experience with, we had no issues navigating the BIOS or setting up our Windows 11 test environment.
Final Points
Today’s testing of the MAXSUN Terminator Z790M D5 ICE gives us a small, but mighty, motherboard that gave us no problems with installation or testing. The cooling on the VRMs was adequate and allowed us to maintain performance through all of our testing. Beyond that, the ability to install five (5) NVME drives provides astounding storage expansion options for those needing large storage amounts in a small form factor.
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