The black coloring of the new implementation is a matter of taste, but the improvements made make the new Maximus Z790 Apex Encore a more balanced board equipped with the latest technologies such as WiFi 7 or Bluetooth 5.4. Although we now have an M.2 PCIe 5.0 x4 slot directly on the PCB and therefore got rid of the need to use the Hyper M.2 adapter, I would have liked the removal of the heatsink that cools the M.2 drives and the PCH to be made toolless, as with other manufacturers.