Biostar Z790 Valkyrie Motherboard Review: Better, but not Best

Improved, but still needs some work to compete with the big boys.

Biostar Z790 Valkyrie
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

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Firmware

Biostar’s firmware on the Z790 boards, like the others, doesn’t receive a significant facelift outside of some options exclusive to Intelt’s latest CPU platform. There’s an EZ Mode and your more standard advanced mode with the different sections spanning the top. While it has many of the basics, the overclocking options are limited with regard to memory. If you’re into tweaking every little thing to extract every ounce of performance from your sticks, this isn’t the board that will do it. If you’re more of a set-EXPO/XMP-and-forget-it memory person, this isn’t a concern (assuming your memory is on the QVL list). Overall, we like the BIOS, but in terms of appearance and features, it just isn’t up to the level of its competition.

Software

For software, Biostar has the Aurora suite that combines various functionality in one application. You’ll find audio functionality (volume control - Smart Ear), RGB (Vivid LED DJ), fan control (AI Fan), a hardware monitor, and overclocking functions in the OC/OV section. Everything worked as described. But, overclocking is limited to BCLK adjustment and voltage (no CPU multiplier adjustments). Overall, we like the Aorura application and hope for additional features/functionality to be added in new revisions.

Test System / Comparison Products 

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver. Additionally, we updated to F1 22 in our games suite and kept Far Cry 6. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows: 

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Test System Components
CPUIntel Core i9-13900K
MemoryKingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 CL36 (KF560C36BBEAK2-32)
 GSkill Trident Z DDR5-5600 CL36 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK)
GPUAsus TUF RTX 3070
CoolingCoolermaster MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
PSUEVGA Supernova 850W P6
SoftwareWindows 11 64-bit (22H2)
Graphics DriverNvidia GeForce Driver 522.25
SoundIntegrated HD audio
NetworkIntegrated Networking (GbE or 2.5 GbE)

(Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the 1.2KW monster we used previously) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing. 

Benchmark Settings 

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Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings 
ProcyonVersion 2.1.459 64
 Office Suite (Office 365), Video Editing (Premiere Pro 22.6.2.2), Photo Editing (Photoshop 23.5.1, Lightroom Classic 11.5)
3DMarkVersion 2.22.7359 64
 Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets
Cinebench R23Version RBBENCHMARK330542
 Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
BlenderVersion 3.3.0
 Full benchmark (all 3 tests)
Application Tests and Settings 
LAME MP3Version SSE2_2019
 Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLIVersion: 1.2.2
 Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX) 
Corona 1.4Version 1.4
 Custom benchmark
7-ZipVersion 21.03-beta
 Integrated benchmark (Command Line)
Game Tests and Settings 
Far Cry 6Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HD Textures ON
F1 2022Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, Ultra High (default) Bahrain (Clear/Dry), FPS Counter ON

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Joe Shields
Motherboard Reviewer

Joe Shields is a Freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US. He reviews motherboards.