The Asus TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI is an ATX LGA1851 motherboard designed for Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 ‘Arrow Lake’ processors.

For what is effectively Intel’s 15th generation of desktop processors, it is all change. The introduction of a new motherboard chipset is not unusual for a new processor generation but for the last three years, Intel’s 12th, 13th and 14th-generation CPUs have happily used the 600 and 700-series chipsets. For the Core Ultra Series 2 ‘Arrow Lake’ Processors we have a new 800-series chipset, a new processor socket type in the LGA1851 and no more DDR4 memory option- from now on it’s just DDR5.

The Asus TUF Gaming range complements the company’s enthusiast Republic of Gaming branding but goes more for a rugged industrial MIL-Spec look with high-performance gaming in mind.  The TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI is a top-of-the-range motherboard for those wanting to make the most of Intel’s ‘Arrow Lake’ processors with plenty of component options.

The box comes complete with all the accessories that you need to install the board. There are two SATA6 cables, a WiFi antenna, M.2 screws and rubber mounting pads, and a special M.2 Q-Slide fixing for small NVMEs. There’s also a sheet of stickers and a removable plastic TUF Gaming nameplate that can be mounted on the heatsink.

Whilst there’s a quick start guide with all the essential info, there’s no full manual or driver CD / USB. The manual is available to download from the Asus website, as are the drivers. The board will automatically request that you download and install Asus’s Armory Crate app as soon as you start up Windows. Armory Crate will then download / upgrade the drivers that you need, which is pretty cool. There’s also a range of optional utilities that you can also install via the app. Whilst I’ve stayed away from Armory Crate in the past, it’s not a bad app, now, and useful for keeping your Asus drivers up to date.

The board itself is something special. Whilst Asus Prime motherboards tend to come in white, the TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI is a silver-coloured board. The silver PCB and heatsinks make the TUF Gaming motherboard look quite striking. The large heatsinks over the input/output panel and the VRMs are complemented by a sectional heatsink for the M.2 sockets that surrounds the second and third PCIe connectors.

The silver colouring will complement the aesthetics of lighter components but also provides a nice contrast with darker components. In the test rig, the pastel RGB lighting from the Corsair Titan RX RGB cooler and fans looked fantastic reflecting off the surface of the motherboard.

With a standard ATX layout, the board is easy to install and there were no surprised mounting in the test rig. All the connectors are where you’d expect them to be, making it an easy board to just swap out if you are upgrading.

It has two 8-pin 12V CPU power sockets (so make sure your PSU has the required outputs) and easy-to-reach CPU_FAN, CPU_OPT and AIO_PUMP headers at the top. There are 5Gbps and 20Gbps USB headers on the right side, below the 24-pin ATX power socket, with a couple of SATA6 connectors below them. There are two more SATA6 connectors at the bottom of the board, near the USB 2.0 headers and front panel headers. Lighting enthusiasts will appreciate the easy-access ARGB headers on the side and bottom of the board.

The LGA 1851 is only compatible with the new Intel Core Ultra Series 2 processors. It’s the same size as the LGA 1700, but don’t try to stick your old CPU in the new board. It is, however, compatible with coolers that fit the previous LGA 1700 boards.

For testing I used an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor cooled with a Corsair iCue Link Titan 240 RX RGB all-in-one cooler. With the Core Ultra Series 2 “Arrow Lake” processors only supporting DDR5 memory, I used two 16GB Crucial DDR5-6000 Pro modules. These are easy to fit using the Asus single Q-DIMM clips. The motherboard supports up to four DDR5 DIMMs to 192GB, running up to 9066+MT/s (overclocked). The board also supports the new CUDIMM modules.

The rear I/O panel has a DisplayPort and HDMI port for on-chip graphics, as well as 2x Intel Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports for DisplayPort and Thunderbolt video output. There are also 6x USB Type-A 10Gbps ports, an Intel 2.5Gb Ethernet port, five audio jacks, an Optical S/PDIF output and a BIOS flashback button.

The board has a header supporting 20Gbps USB Type-C (which supports up to 30W fast charging), a header supporting two additional USB 5Gbps ports, 2x USB 2.0 headers for four USB 2.0 ports and a Thunderbolt USB4 header.

There’s a small RGB area at the top right of the board. This complemented by three addressable RGB headers, one on the right side and two on the bottom, to power your case and/or fan lighting.

There are plenty of storage options. The four M.2 slots, support type 2242/2260/2280 NVMe SDDs. One slot is PCIe 5.0 x4, with the other three being PCIe 4.0 x4, one of which also supports SATA SSDs. All the M.2 slots use Asus’s screwless Q-Latch design, with the 2242 modules secured via an innovative Q-Slide clip. The main PCIe 5.0 x4 slot has a chunky screwless heatsink that’s easily removed.

Whilst you are probably going to be using your GPU audio, onboard audio is supplied by a Realtek ALC1220P chip for 7.1 surround sound. This includes front and rear headphone outputs.

Discrete GPUs are supported via a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot controlled by the Intel Core Ultra processor, with the Z890 chipset controlling 1x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, 1x PCI 4.0 x4 slot and 1x PCIe 4.0 x1 slot. A 1.5-slot GPU like the Radeon RX 7800 XT will obstruct the PCIe 4.0 x1 slot, which will likely not be a problem for most.

For connectivity, the motherboard supports Wi-Fi 7, via the external antenna, across 2.4,5 and 6GHz with up to a 2.9bps transfer rate. Bluetooth v5.4 is also supported. 2.5Gb Ethernet provides wired networking.

The Asus TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI is a very easy motherboard to install. Asus’s Q-design makes interchanging components a breeze.

Whilst the motherboard booted without any issues, there are a series of small LEDs at the top of the board. These can be used to troubleshoot boot issues with the CPU, memory and GPU.

The motherboard uses a pretty standard Asus UEFI BIOS, which it boots into on the first startup to set the CPU configuration. In order to sort out some of the teething problems with the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 desktop processors, vendors have been updating motherboard BIOS firmware, and Asus is no exception.

The Asus EZ Flash makes what was once a treacherous action very simple and virtually trouble-free. I downloaded the new BIOS firmware from the Asus website and unpacked it onto a USB stick. From the BIOS menu, I used the EZ Flash option and selected the new firmware. A few moments later and the PC rebooted with the up-to-date BIOS.

Should things have not gone quite right, the Crashfree BIOS 3 utility can search and upload a BIOSD file from startup. The board’s BIOS Flashback feature would also have allowed me to update the BIOS without entering the existing BIOS firmware or OS. Inserting a USB drive with the prepared BIOS update into the specially labelled USB port on the back of the motherboard and pressing the Flashback button automatically updates the board. You don’t even need to switch it on, all it needs is the 24-pin power connector to be plugged in.

Using the board’s AI optimisation feature, the Asus UEFI BIOS allows users to overclock their unlocked CPU, painlessly. For this you need an Intel Core Ultra Series 2 CPU with the “K” suffix, which means it is unlocked and can be overclocked. Triggering the AI optimisation in the BIOS has the board monitoring fan speeds and CPU performance to squeeze a little more out of your processor. Running stress tests allows the board to calibrate the overclock to maintain stability.

With just one click, I overclocked the CPU to achieve an 8% performance increase in the Procyon Office benchmark. This is all optional, as the board performed well with the default settings. The only setting I would check in the BIOS is that the XMP is enabled so that your memory runs at its full speed.

For games, the TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI with the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 285K and a Radeon 7800 XT performed excellently. I tested the set-up with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II and it ran flawlessly. Spider-Man: Mile Morales, as well, played great.

The ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI motherboard has a lot to offer gamers with an Intel Core Ultra Series 2-based gaming rig. There’s plenty of space for storage with four M.2 slots and four legacy SATA 6 sockets. It’s compatible with the latest memory modules and there’s plenty of room for expansion via the PCIe slots. Casual overclockers will enjoy the one-click performance boost offered by AI optimisation. And, last but not least, the silver styling of the board will look great in your case.

Yet again Asus provides a no-nonsense motherboard solution for gamers wanting performance and reliability that is easy to configure and tweak as desired. Not only is the TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI easy to recommend, but I’d also happily use it in my own gaming system.

The post ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-Pro WIFI ‘Arrow Lake’ Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The Asus Prime Z790-A WiFi is an LGA1700 ATX motherboard compatible with Intel 12th, 13th and 14th generation desktop CPUs.

As part of the Asus Prime range, it’s a fully-featured motherboard with a stylish look for daily PC use. That’s not to say it doesn’t have some performance tuning capabilities suitable for enthusiasts’ DIY builds.

Rather than just the moody black look of Asus’s gaming boards, the Prime Z790-A WiFi uses metallic heatsinks and M.2 covers to give it a more striking look in your case. There’s also a bit of RGB lighting near the IO panel to set your machine apart.

Along with the motherboard, in the box, there’s a Wi-Fi antenna, a selection of M.2 pads and screws as well as a few SATA cables. There’s also a chunky, easy-to-follow user guide and a (rather redundant) driver CD.

The driver disc also has some Asus utilities such as AI Suite 3 and Fan Xpert 4. As with the drivers, these utilities can also be downloaded from the Asus website.

Whilst it may not be a fancy Asus Republic of Gamer or rugged Asus TUF Gaming motherboard, the Asus Prime Z790-A WiFi has all the features that the average PC needs. Be it for business or gaming threes enough ports and sockets for most users.

The board supports up to 128GB of DDR5 memory modules, across its four slots, up to 7000Mhz. For storage, there are four SATA 6 Gb/s ports and four M.2 slots.

The rear input/output panel provides a reasonable amount of connectivity. The CPU’s integrated display can utilise the DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 sockets. The onboard Realteck S1220A 7.1 surround sound has line-in line-out and mic sockets on the IO panel and there’s a header for the case front panel.

There is support for up to 8 USB connections via the rear IO panel. That’s 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type-A), 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (2x Type-A, 1x USB Type-C) and  1x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (USB Type-C). The header connector supports further USB sockets on the case front panel (2x USB 2.0 Type-A, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A and 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C). The IO panel has an Intel 2.5Gb Ethernet port for wired networking.

Wireless connectivity is provided by the board’s Wi-Fi 6E capabilities which supports 2.5, 5 and 6Ghz frequencies for fast wireless networking. The rear IO panel has connectors for the external antenna provided in the box. The board also has Bluetooth 5.2 support.

The board uses two 8-pin 12V power connectors, so ensure that your power supply has these natively or that you have an adapter. New power supplies should have two of these connectors along with the usual 24-pin main power connector.

There are 5 PCIe slots on the board, 1x PCIe 5.0 x16 (for your GPU),1x PCIe 4.0 x16 1x PCIe 4.0 x4 and 2x PCIe 3.0 x1. If you have a large GPU, you’ll likely find one of the PCIe 3.0 slots and the PCIe 4.0 slot obstructed.

There are four 4-pin case fan headers, a 4-pin all-in-one liquid cooling header along with the CPU fan and CPU OPT fan header. And finally, if you fancy lighting things up, the board has connectors for addressable and non-addressable RGB lighting.

The supplied motherboard had quite the bend in the board, very evident when about to screw it down into the test rig. It’s not uncommon for motherboards to have a bit of a bend, but this one was so severe that I double-checked that it was the board and not my case. Whilst not as flat as I’d like it screwed down fine and the bend did not affect its functionality.

The physical installation went without a hitch. The board features Asus’s Q-Design features. This means only one clip for each of the memory module slots, screwless latches for the M.2 drives and a button release for the GPU PCIe slot. The Q-LED lights are also useful when troubleshooting CPU, RAM or boot issues.

I’ve had no problem with any of Asus’s Z700-series boards running Intel 12th, 13th and 14th generation Core i5 and i9 CPUs. The Prime Z790-A WiFi, however, presented me with an issue that, whilst I’ve come across once before with another manufacturer, puzzled me for a moment.

Over the last few years, we’ve been lucky in that Intel Z600 and Z700-series motherboards have supported three generations of CPU. The transition from a DDR4 machine to DDR5 could be done by just swapping out your motherboard and using your existing CPU, or if you want a new CPU, just slotting it into your existing motherboard.

For the Asus Prime Z790-A WiFi review, I thought nothing of slotting in a 14th-gen Intel Core i9-14900K CPU for my build test. After switching the machine on, however, I got a boot error, indicated by a white Q-LED on the board.

Whilst for me this was a simple fix, it could be an issue for others, and worthwhile mentioning to your retailer if you are buying one of these boards new. Although the Z790 chipset is compatible with Intel’s14th-gen CPUs, a BIOS upgrade can be required to get them working together. Some boards may have this update from the factory, but others, like the Prime Z790-A set for review, may not. To perform the update, you need a compatible 12th or 13th gen CPU. I’ve got a box of CPUs that I can use for this purpose, but this may not be true for most builders and upgraders.

Installing an Intel Core i9-12900K CPU had the machine boot up with no issues. Checking the BIOS revision and there must have been a dozen or so updates, including one for the 14th-generation CPUs. Updating the BIOS is easy and can be done by downloading the new BIO file to a thumb drive and accessing the Asus EZ Flash utility in the UEFI menu by pressing delete as the system boots. What was once a scary process is easily sorted out if something goes wrong with the motherboard’s built-in CrashFree BIOS 3 utility.

With the system running, you don’t have to do anything else. Windows will install and you can get on and use your PC. But, to get the most out of the Asus Prime Z790-A WiFi motherboard, you need to visit the UEFI BIOS menu. Here you can adjust many aspects of how the PC functions. The menu has two modes, EZ (the default) and Advanced. The EZ menu gives you access to everything you need without reaching into the guts of the board’s configuration options and potentially messing things up. The option that you do need to switch on is the XMP profile as this will get your RAM running at its full speed.

The advanced menus give experienced overclockers access to the settings required to tweak performance. Whilst that can be a lot of fun, the EZ menu also allows for performance boosts without any expert knowledge or blowing up your CPU. All you need is an unlocked CPU, which Intel denotes with the “K” suffix. By default, the board runs in “Normal” mode, that is with the CPU set to the recommended speeds and frequencies. Setting it to “Fast Tuning” or “Extreme Tuning” will automatically overclock your system.

With i9 CPUs I’ve found motherboard automatic performance gains to be negligible, getting better results with i5 CPUs. On the Prime Z790-A WiFi, with the i9-12900K the “Normal” score in UL’s PC Mark 10’s extended benchmark was 13599, the “Fast Tuning” score was 13611 and the “Extreme Tuning” was 13722. That’s less than a one percent performance gain for this CPU, but you may do better depending on your processor and cooling system.

For better overclocking control the advanced mode allows for careful frequency and voltage tweaks. This required patience, and a premium cooling set-up to get the best optimisation. If you have the time it can be good fun, and its great that even a more conservative motherboard like the Prime Z790-A WiFi can allow users to dabble with manual overclocking if they have an unlocked CPU.

Whilst the Prime Z790-A’s advanced functions are welcome, it is designed as a robust motherboard for everyday use. And here is where it really excels. It’s an easy board to install with a good user manual and easy access to the latest drivers and software on the Asus website.

It’s a reasonably priced board that acts exactly as it should, but with enough advanced features for enthusiasts to tinker with.

The post ASUS Prime Z790-A WiFi Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The Asus Republic of Gamers Strix Z790-F WiFi is a DDR5 ATX motherboard designed for Intel 12,13 and 14th Generation desktop processors.

We take a look and see if this is the motherboard for your gaming rig.

In offering PC gamers a huge range of motherboard choices, picking the right Asus motherboard for your Intel-based PC build can be a bit of a minefield. First, you’ve got your Asus Prime boards for everyday use, of which six are based on the Intel Z790 chipset. Then there are the Asus TUF Gaming boards, of which three feature Z790 chips. And finally, there’s the Asus Republic of Gamers boards.

All of Asus’ motherboards will do the job. But it’s when you start balancing price and performance, things start getting tricky.

I’ll be honest, 85% of PC gamers will probably be very pleased with an Asus Prime board, with the next, more discerning, 10% happy with a TUF Gaming board. It’s the last 5% that may want to get a little bit more out of their machines that the Republic of Gamers boards are tooled up to cater for.

Ignoring those top 1% who want to flex with ROG Maximus boards, ROG Strix motherboards offer top performance for gamers after something special. For the last few years, ROG Strix boards have suffixed the Intel chipset designation with an A, E, F and I. The ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi is suitable for small Mini-ATX cases. The Strix Z790-A Gaming WiFi is the range’s entry-level ATX motherboard with DDR4 and a white aesthetic. The Strix Z790-F Gaming WiFi is the same as the “-A” but with DDR5 memory compatibility. Finally, the Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi is the range’s flagship board.

The ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming WiFi is a slight step down from the Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi with only four M.2 slots and no PCIe 5.0 NVMe functionality. It does, however, gain an extra PCIe 3.0 x1 expansion slot over its more expensive sibling, which may be useful for some.

The LGA1700 socket fits all of Intel’s recent desktop CPUs. Whilst the motherboard makes no mention of Intel’s 14th generation CPUs, the Intel i9 14900K it installed worked perfectly without the need to update the BIOS.

The four DIMM sockets support up to 128GB of DDR5. These can run up to DDR5-7200 (with XMP).

Storage is catered by four M.2 sockets. Three of the sockets support PCIe 4.0 x4 and one supports PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA. There are four SATA 6Gb/s ports. That should be more than enough to accommodate most storage needs. RAID is supported via Intel Rapid Storage Technology.

There are a few other things on the motherboard that make things a bit easier for system builders. Asus’s “Q-Design” provides latches instead of screws to hold the M.2 modules in place, an easy Q-Release button for removing PCIe GPUs and handy Q-LED lights for troubleshooting problems. There’s also a “start” button on the board if you are building the machine on a bench.

As well as dedicated headers for all-in-one CPU water cooling, the board has headers for LED lighting. There are three addressable Gen 2 headers and one Aura RGB header. Extra’s include a thermal sensor header and a Thunderbolt header.

The motherboard has two 8-pin 12v power connectors at the top. Check that your power supply has these or purchase some adapters.

The I/O panel is about as full as you’ll need it to be. There’s a DisplayPort 1.4 which supports 8K@60Hz and an HDMI 2.1 port that supports up to 4K@60Hz for those using the CPU’s integrated GPU. There are the sockets for the WiFi 6E antenna and 2.5Gb Ethernet. Five audio jacks provide surround sound, or you can use the optical audio S/PDIF port.

The I/O Panel has 12 USB ports. There’s 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (2x Type-A and 1x Type-C), 4x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports and 4x USB Type-A 2.0 ports.

The back panel also has a BIOS flashback button and a clear CMOS button. Two buttons that may come in handy if you are into a bit of overclocking or if everything goes wrong.

If you feel that the amount of USB ports on the rear of the board is lacking, there are headers on the board for a few more case front panel USB ports.  There’s a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 connector, which supports USB Type-C with up to 30W PD fast-charge, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 header that supports 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and 2x USB 2.0 headers supporting an additional four USB 2.0 ports.

The box is full of accessories. There are a couple of SATA cables, some M.2 mount screws and foam fixing pads a spare strip of NVMe heatsink thermal putty. There’s also the WiFi antenna, a holder for an optional fan, some cable ties, a key ring and a sticker sheet. The comprehensive user guide has all you need to set up the board.

What’s missing is a driver CD, and about time too, considering no modern machines have CD drives. A USB stick with the drivers would have been good, but they are all there to download on the Asus website.

As usual, the Asus motherboard was a breeze to install in an ATX configuration case, the fixing holes and preinstalled input/output panel all slotting into place. It’s a hefty board that is robust when handled. This should give novice system-builder a bit of confidence that it’s not going to snap in two during assembly.

All you need to do on the first boot is a quick visit to the easy-to-use UEFI BIOS to switch on the XMP profile for your RAM. This performs the factory overclock required to get the memory running at its speed rating. And that’s it, the Strix Z790-F WiFi will configure the CPU itself. The PC will run fine with this setup.

If you want to dabble with a bit of overclocking, the Asus board will oblige. You will need a decent cooler, either a top-of-the-range air cooler or an all-in-one water cooler will do. Switching on the “AI Optimization” mode in the BIOS, booting the PC and running a few stress tests like Cinebench or the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility will allow the board to gather enough data to automatically tweak your setting.

Results vary, but you should see a stable performance improvement using an Intel Core i5 CPU. Compared to the Core i5s, I’ve found that the Core i9s don’t have much in the way of extra headroom when it comes to AI overclocking.

In a nutshell, the Asus ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming WIFI motherboard may be a step down from the Strix Z790-E Gaming WIFI, but you get an extra PCIe 3.0 x1 expansion slot. There’s still more than enough USB support and the four M.2 slots should be all you need for storage. It’ll even do you well for Intel’s 14th Gen CPUs.

It’s a superb motherboard for novice system builders, experienced tweakers and anyone looking for a decent motherboard for their gaming rig.

The post Asus ROG Strix Z790-F Gaming WIFI Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The Asus ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi is a premium ATX DDR5 gaming motherboard for Intel 12th,13th, and 14th-generation Intel CPUs.

This is not the newer version of the motherboard, which is the ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi II, released with Intel’s Raptor Lake refresh CPUs, but the original version that was released in September 2022. The newer revision has upgraded VRMs and Wi-Fi 7, and likely a few other tweaks under the hood, but other than that this older board is virtually the same, and it supports Intel’s 14th-generation CPUs. This means that if you play your cards right, you could net yourself a top-spec Intel DDR5 ATX motherboard for a fraction of the usual price.

In the box, as well as the ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi board, you get two SATA 6GB/s cables, a selection of M.2 screws, latches and pads, the Wi-Fi antenna, a cloth ROG keyring, a quickstart guide, the obligatory Asus sticker sheet, a thank you card, and the comprehensive user guide.

Asus’ ROG, or Republic of Gamers range of devices are aimed more towards enthusiast-level gamers. Instead of the sturdy industrial stylings of Asus’ TUF Gaming range, ROG equipment allows for more tweaking and is a bit showier, with a smattering of RGB thrown in for good measure. Certainly, Z790-E’s black PCB, stylishly integrated heatsinks, and RGB ROG Stix logo amplify the board’s high-end gaming aspirations.

It’s a feature-packed motherboard that should be more than enough for even the most discerning gamer. That doesn’t mean that the board is exclusively for gamers who like to mess about under the hood, as everyone will get something out of the massive connectivity and stability afforded by such a well-built piece of equipment.

Most importantly, the Z790-E is a DDR5 motherboard. Whilst Intel’s Z790 chipset supports DDR4 and DDR5, if you are upgrading from a motherboard with DDR4 memory modules to the Z790-E you are going to need to get some DDR5 RAM. DDR4 memory will not work with this board.

The board supports four DIMMs to a maximum of 128GB running up to DDR5 7200. There is support for Intel XMP overclocking to get the most out of your DDR5 memory modules.

The rear input / output panel has both DisplayPort 1.4 and HMDI 2.1 sockets for the CPU’s integrated graphics. There are twelve USB ports on the panel, which I’ll go into more detail about further down. The WiFi 6E antenna and 2.5Gb RJ45 Ethernet socket are also on the back panel.  If you are using the onboard Realtek 7.1 sound chip, you’ll also find the S/PDIF audio optical out, C/Sub, Rear and Line outputs, as well as Line In and Mic In, on the rear panel.  The IO panel has easy-to-find switches for clearing the CMOS (if your overclocking goes awry) and flashing back the BIOS, should you have issues during a firmware update.

The board gives users plenty of scope for fast data storage. There are slots for up to five M.2 solid-state drives. The PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot has a chunky heatsink (with a heat pipe) and supports 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110 size modules. The four PCIe 4.0 x4 slots support 2242, 2260 and 2280 size modules with one also supporting M.2 SATA SSDs. If that’s not enough, there are also five SATA 6Gb/s ports if you want to go old school.

The 2.6Gb Ethernet capability is complemented by 2×2 Wi-Fi 6E (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) supporting 2.4, 5 and 6GHz frequencies. Bluetooth v5.2 caps off the board’s impressive connectivity.

For your GPU there’s a reinforced PCIe 5.0 x16 slot. This also has a Q-Release button to easily unlatch your GPU for removal. Under that, there are two full-sized PCIe 4.0 x16 expansion slots, both of which you can access even with a larger GPU.

The motherboard has a ridiculous amount of USB ports. The rear IO panel has one USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port, one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, six USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB Type-A ports and four USB 3.2 Gen Type-A ports. There are headers on the board for a further nine USB ports if your case’s front panel supports them. That’s one USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 connector for a USB Type-C with 30W fast-charge, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers for four USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 headers for four more USB 2.0 Type-A ports. That should be enough ports for even the most dedicated fans of gaming peripherals.

At the bottom of the board, there are switches that allow for overvolting the PCU and for switching the PCI3 mode from Gen4 to Gen3. Unless you know what you are doing, I’d leave these well alone.

If RGB is your bag, the Aura RGB header and three addressable RGB headers will allow you to light your machine up like a Christmas tree. Lastly, there is a header for a Thunderbolt IO card if you need one.

There are a few extra quality-of-life things that make building a PC with the motherboard that much easier. I’ve already mentioned the handy Q-Release button for the GPU. The M.2 SDD slots don’t use screws (that are surprisingly easy to drop and get lost in the guts of your machine), instead they use little clips, Q-Latches, making installation of the tiny drives very easy. The Q-LED system helps point you in the right direction if there is an issue with the CPU, RAM, GPU, or boot drive on startup. Further information can be gleaned from the Q-code status code display which can be checked against the table in the manual. If you are setting the board up in a bench situation without the front panel connections, there’s a start button on the board that’ll boot and switch off the machine.

Asus motherboards tend to be a breeze to install and set up. The user guide points you in the right direction. But even physically installing the board in a well-built case should give you no trouble. The fixing holes are all well machined, in the right place, and should mate up with the risers in your ATX case, perfectly. The integrated IO panel fits nicely in the vacant space in the back of the case, with the chunky heatsinks giving you something to hold onto as you ease the board into place.

There are a few things to look out for.

All the M.2 drive slots have heatsinks that blend into the motherboard’s design. If you are using M.2 NVMe drives with integrated heatsinks you will need to remove and set aside the board’s heatsink(s).

Some NVMe drives with factory heatsinks increase the width of the screw-down point making them a tiny bit too thick for the Asus board’s Q-clips. I had this problem fitting an SSD with a heatsink in the PCIe 5.0 slot at the top of the board, but not with those further down. The top M.2 slot being, compatible with up to 22110 size modules, uses a fitting that doesn’t allow for screws as an alternative for regular 2280 M.2 drives.

The top of the board has two eight-pin 12v ATX power connectors. If you are using an older (or cheaper) power supply, you may need to buy an adapter for the second connector.

The chunky heatsinks at the top and to the left of the motherboard (as normally installed in an upright ATX case) may get in the way of larger CPU air coolers. I used a Corsair all-in-one water cooler with no issues.

The above are very minor, but worth noting. For most, they won’t present a problem at all.

Multi-generational motherboards don’t usually support the latest CPUs out of the box, which can be a pain if you haven’t got an older CPU lying about. To my surprise, the Z790-E had no problem running an Intel Core i9 14900K with the factory-installed UFEI BIOS. The BIOS is the firmware that controls the motherboard hardware and points the computer in the direction of the operating system on boot up.

It’s worth dipping into the BIOS with a new motherboard installation to just check all is well. With Asus boards (and pretty much all others as well) you just hit the delete key on start-up. The standardised Asus BIOS interface is exceptionally easy to use, allowing configuration by novices and experts, alike. Here, unless you are wanting to tweak the system, all you need to do is check that the CPU is properly recognised and switch on the Intel XMP for your RAM. This is all on the front page of the EZ Mode menu.

The ROG Strix motherboard has a one-click Asus AI overclocking facility on the EZ Menu screen that allows users to easily get a little bit more out of their machines without having to mess about. The board monitors your system fan operation, CPU frequencies and the resultant heat to boost performance based on the installed processor’s individual characteristics.

In my case, though, selecting the AI optimization option in the BIOS sent things surprisingly awry. Asus’s motherboards tend to be bombproof, but after switching on the AI overclocking, the board wouldn’t even boot, opting for a looping restart that was only cured by switching the whole thing off and pressing the CMOS reset button.

Whilst the Z790 motherboard was happy running with the Raptor Lake Refresh CPU out of the box, it seems overclocking the chip was a bit too much for it. Thankfully, this was, easily remedied.

A simple BIOS update to the latest version sorted out my overclocking woes. I’d never recommend anyone update a BIOS unless there’s a real need to do so. The Strix Z790-E motherboard does feature protection from failed updates, such as a BIOS rollback facility making the process a little less onerous.

My casual overclocking eventually achieved a modest, but stable performance boost of 215Mhz. this was with the CPU fans running at a balanced speed. A little bit more could probably been gained if I wanted the machine to sound like a jet engine. My experience with Intel’s 14th generation chip is that there isn’t much headroom to get a decent, stable, overclock out of them. But still worth a try. Of Intel’s CPUs, you tend to get a better bang for your buck by overclocking the cooler Core i5s than the i9s.

The motherboard ships with a driver and utility disc. As most machines no longer have CD/DVD/Blu-Ray drives, it’s not a lot of use. With a standard Windows installation, you should get enough generic drivers for the motherboard to function. I recommend downloading the latest drivers for your board from the Asus website.

There is an Asus utility, Armory Crate, which sometimes downloads automatically (after a prompt) and can be used to update your system with the latest drivers for your board. It also tends to offer up all kinds of “free” utilities that you don’t necessarily need. I’ve not been a fan of Armory Crate in the past, but I’ve warmed to it recently as it tends to be an intrinsic part of ensuring Asus gaming laptops and devices like the Asus ROG Ally perform efficiently.

Another bit of Asus software that can be controversial, is the Asus AI Suite. This allows users to tweak the system from the operating system rather than in the BIOS. Puritans will condemn overclocking a PC in this way as heresy, and it kind of is. But it’s also a great way to tinker with your machine without really messing things up. Traditionally, AI Suite can be difficult to remove and like Armory Crate past iterations have been known to be more trouble than they are worth. Personally, I think they are both better than they used to be and are worth a go.

The Asus ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi is a delight to install. Even when things didn’t go to plan, the remedy was easy. The easy-to-use UFEI BIOS menu makes it a great board for anyone wanting to tweak things under the hood, be they newbies or veterans. It’s a robust fully featured gaming motherboard that I’d be very happy running in my own PC.

The post Asus ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The Asus TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wi-Fi is a socket AM5 ATX motherboard designed for AMD’s Ryzen 7000 series desktop processors. The motherboard has the same industrial design that can be found across all of Asus’s TUF Gaming range of motherboards.

Although sitting one level below Asus’s enthusiast-level Republic of Gaming brand, TUF Gaming devices are still aimed at the more discerning PC gamer. Marketed as being robust, MIL-SPEC equipment, they tend to be fully featured and uncompromising gaming motherboards but at a more affordable price-point than the top-end ROG boards.

In the box is the motherboard, a magnetic Wi-Fi antenna, two SATA cables and three M.2 drive mounts + foam pads. As well as the comprehensive user guide, there’s a driver CD, a certificate of reliability, and a sheet of stickers.

Hopefully, we will see Asus finally move away from driver CDs to a thumb drive soon. If you don’t have a CD drive in your rig, more up-to-date drivers are available on the Asus website. In any case, Windows does a good job of accommodating the drivers until you get online and perform updates.

The board itself is weighty and feels solid. The black PCB and chunky heatsinks are a bold design that makes the TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wi-Fi perfect for displaying in a windowed case. With only the tiniest bit of RGB lighting, it’s a board that looks like it means business rather than just being showy.

The integrated I/O panel at the back and solid heatsink to hold onto make installing the board in even the tightest of ATX cases a breeze. The holes matched up perfectly with my case. The AM5 heatsink mount makes installing a cooler on top of a Ryzen CPU a painless operation compared to the faffing about around the back needed with Intel boards.

The board’s AMD X670 chipset offers users more feature options than those with the cheaper AMD B650 chips. Most notable is PCIe 5.0 support for both the GPU and NVMe.

There are only three PCIe slots, 1x PCIe 5.0 x16, 2x PCIe 4.0 x16 and 1x PCIe 4.0 x4. Unlike many boards, these are sensibly spaced and not blocked by even my reasonably chunky Radeon GPU.

Also sensibly spaced for easy access, and utilising Asus’s screwless Q-Latches, are four M.2 slots. These support M.2 (Key M) devices, type 2242/2260/2280, with one slot up to 22110. M.2_1 supports PCIe 4.0 x4 with two slots supporting PCIe 4.0 x4 and one supporting both PCIe 3.0 and SATA. There are also four SATA 6Gb/s ports, two of which share bandwidth with the PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot.

The above affords system builders plenty of scope for expansion and lots of space for NVMe SSDs including an extra-fast PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD. Whilst slow to increase, the number of Windows 11 Direct storage games is growing making fast NVMe drives even more of a worthwhile investment.

The M.2 heatsinks are integrated into the board design for three of the M.2 slots (the PCIe 5.0 being one of them). It is good to have one open M.2 drive for use with SDDs that have integrated heatsinks.

There are four DDR5 DIMM sockets supporting up to 128GB. These use Asus’s proprietary Q-DIMM clasps, with clips only at the top. I’m not a great fan as it is easy to incorrectly seat the RAM modules, which brings me to the next feature on this Asus motherboard.

I’ve been building PCs for twenty-five years. Whilst I have a nigh-on 100% success rate when pressing the “on” button for the first time, there will always be times when things don’t go to plan. With this build, whilst the machine switched on, the RGB lit up, and the fans ran, there was no signal to the monitor. Thankfully there was no need to panic.

The TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wi-Fi’s Q-LEDs offer system builders a bit of a helping hand, a far cry from the illegible beeps of yesteryear. A quick check of the motherboard and I could see the yellow DRAM Q-LED was still illuminated. Taking the modules out and reseating did nothing. I tested the RAM on another machine, and it ran fine. Armed with an air duster, I blew out the slots, reinserted the RAM, pressed the on button and the machine booted without issue. It doesn’t matter how many PCs you’ve built; you’ll always get the odd gremlin.

The motherboard audio is via a Realtek S1220A chip supporting 7.1 Surround Sound. There are output jacks for headphones, mic, and line out on the I/O panel, along with rear and sub jacks. There’s a header on the board for headphones and mic jacks on the front of your case. If you want to use the CPU’s integrated graphics the I/O panel also has an HDMI 2.1 port, that supports up to 4K@60Hz, and a DisplayPort 1.4, which supports 8K@60Hz.

The on-board features are capped off by a massive number of USB ports. There are ten USB ports on the rear, 1x USB-Type C 3.2 Gen 2×2, 4x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (3x Type-A and 1x Type-C), and 5 USB Type A Gen 1 ports. There are headers for nine USB on the front of the case, if supported, 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1, and 3x USB 2.0 headers sporting up to six USB 2.0 ports.

Every time I use an Asus device, be it a laptop, motherboard, or even the ROG Ally handheld gaming PC, the Asus standardised UEFI BIOS is a breath of fresh air. At the heart of any PC set-up, the BIOS menu allows users to tweak settings on the board independent of the operating system that loads afterwards.

With the X670E-Plus (as with most motherboards) the memory timing needs to be correctly set in the BIOS to get the most out of your DDR5 modules. This involves applying a sort of factory overclock, which for AMD hardware is called DOCP (or Direct Overclock Profile). It’s the same as Intel’s XMP memory setting. The BIOS menu’s EZ settings have this on the front page with the CPU information so if that’s all you want to add you don’t have to delve in deeper.

There’s also a PBO Enhancement (Precision Boost Overdrive) tuning setting on the front page of the EZ settings page, which may get more out of your CPU. In the past, I’ve had limited success applying such an overclock to my test Ryzen 9 7950X and it was the same with this board. I tend to have better luck squeezing a little more out of Ryzen CPUs using the board’s advanced settings. Even then, the already superb PCMark10 score increased by very little.

As with Intel’s top-end CPUs, there’s more headroom in AMD’s lower-end Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 CPUs when it comes to casual overclocking. If you have the time, the X670E-Plus has all the settings you need to tweak your setup. And that is the beauty of this motherboard, from a budding system builder’s point of view.

The TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wi-Fi is another Asus motherboard that was a pleasure to install and set up. A well-written user guide, Asus’s Q-system latches and LEDs take the pain out of the process.

If you build or buy a gaming PC with this board, even though it’s been out for a while, now, you are going to have a robust machine that will last you a good few years before it’s time for an upgrade.

The post Asus TUF Gaming X670E-Plus Wi-Fi Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

For the launch of Intel’s 14th Generation CPUs, ASUS has revisited its ATX DDR5 TUF Gaming Z790 motherboard to bring us the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI.

Sitting between Asus’s more budget-conscious Prime and enthusiast-level Republic of Gamers brands, the TUF Gaming brand styles itself on producing durable, military-grade components. Whilst they certainly look the part with a more industrial design, in my experience, TUF Gaming Z-series motherboards are dependable in that they offer reasonable performance tweaking without the instability that usually comes with overclocking.

Out of the box, the motherboard’s stylish black looks make it ideal for windowed cases. The layout hasn’t really changed from previous LGA1700 socketed TUF Gaming motherboards. But there’s no need to fix what’s not broken.

On a personal note, this is the first of these Intel TUF gaming boards that I’ve looked at running DDR5, so that exciting. Asus’s D4 boards have allowed users to continue to run their DDR4 memory. There’s no D4 version of the TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI.

As with the new Intel CPUs, this is a refresh, an update as it were, of the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-PLUS WIFI. Think of it like this year’s model, rather than a new component altogether.

There are pluses and minuses with this. On the plus side, the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI is a motherboard that the boffins at ASUS have had a year to tweak and refine. There should be no surprises, just what we had last year but that much better. On the minus side, there’s probably not much point in upgrading if you are already running with a Z790 DDR5 motherboard.

In real-world terms, the big differences lay with the DDR5 supporting up to DD5-7800+ versus the TUF Gaming Z790-PLUS WIFI and the inclusion of ASUS Enhance Memory Profile II. There’s also an extra PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and a Front Panel 20Gbps USB with up to 30W fast charging support. The board has upgraded DIGI+ VRM with some chunky heatsinks.

The ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI comes with everything you need for a pain-free PC build. In the box with the board, you have an external WiFi antenna, three pads for single-sided M.2 SSDs, two SATA cables, a sheet of stickers, a TUF Gaming Certificate of Reliability, and the Quick Start Guide.

Asus has replaced its usual comprehensive manual with a quick-start guide that offers more at-a-glance information for building the PC and configuring the motherboard. It’s still got all the info you need for putting the right connectors in the right place. If you want further, more detailed information, the full manual is available for download from the Asus site by using the QR code on the front of the quick-start guide.

The board’s integrated input/output (I/O) shield and well-machined construction means that it should easily slip into any decent ATX case. There are two eight-pin 12V connectors from the power supply (so make sure your PSU has those connectors) at the top left of the motherboards these and the CPU fan connectors can be a bit fiddly to get two if you have a top-mounted all-in-one cooler radiator installed. Everything else is easy to get at.

ASUS’s Q-Design implementation on the motherboard takes many of the annoying things about PC system building and provides easy solutions. These range from good to great.

The board’s Q-LEDs are very useful for novice system builders and pros, alike. These four LEDs assist when troubleshooting boot issues, allowing you to go straight to the offending component if things don’t go well after you press the on button. For me, it’s usually forgetting to plug in the GPU power cable (which gives me a white LED indicator) or not pushing in the memory firmly enough (a yellow LED warning on the board). It’s a very useful tool that highlights CPU, DRAM, VGA, and boot issues.

ASUS uses its Q-latches instead of microscopic (and easily lost) screws to secure up to four M.2 Solid-state drives to the board. Similarly, the RAM modules are secured by just one (Q-DIMM) clip making installation just that much easier.

The most useful is the PCIe slot Q-Release. Instead of desperately trying to push a half-obscured clip with your fingernail to eject your expensive GPU, there’s a button that you simply press that unclips your graphics cards.

The board goes beyond just being a functional design to one that is robust and accessible enough for PC system builders and anyone who may need to replace components in the future. This is reason enough to recommend the motherboard, without looking at the best bit, the BIOS.

The ASUS UEFI is one of the most robust and easy-to-use BIOS interfaces I’ve used. It’s here that all the magic happens, where you can tweak your PC as you see fit. Common across all ASUS motherboards it offers both easy options and a more advanced menu. It’s accessed via the usual press of the delete button whilst powering on. The default EZMode means that beginners can access important settings without the fear of messing everything up. That all-important XMP/AEMPII setting for your memory is on the front page of the EZMode user interface as well as Resizable BAR and the board’s AI optimization switch. There’s also a shortcut to the EZ Fan control settings and the boot settings.

More experienced users can dip into the board’s advanced settings with a single button press. You can still allow the AI to do the overclocking for you, or you can go old school and tweak the voltages and frequencies manually. There’s a lot of scope here if you have the patience to get the most out of your unlocked Intel “K” CPU.

Further tweaks and performance settings can be adjusted away from the BIOS meus using the Windows desktop ASUS AI application and the ASUS Armory Crate app. Whilst I prefer to make changes in the BIOS (where I can do a quick reset), novice users may prefer the familiarity of using desktop programs to make adjustments.

With the Intel Core i9-14900K already pushing the Raptor Lake tech to get a 6Ghz top-end, my AI overclocking results only garnered a small increase in speed. A better cooling solution may have helped. But, in the past, I’ve found it’s the unlocked Intel Core i5s that have yielded better overclocking results rather than the power-hungry Core i9s with their high thermals. This is also true for the 14th-generation CPUs with the Core i5-14600K.

The lack of PCIE 5.0 NVMe support, usually reserved for high-end boards and WiFi 7 are probably the only things that I’d say were missing from this motherboard. But I’m not even sure we are ready for PCIE 5.0 NVMe drives right now.

With four M.2 sockets, three supporting PCIe 4.0 x4, and one supporting PCIe 4.0 x4 and SATA SSDs, the board has your fast NVMe storage needs covered. Three of the four M.2 sockets have heatsinks integrated into the motherboard’s design. There are still four 6Gb/s SATA ports if you are going old school with your hard drives.

The four DIMM slots can take a total of 192GB of DDR5 RAM modules up to DDR5 7800 (OC). The board supports both Intel’s XMP and Asus Enhanced Memory Profile II (AEMPII) to get the most out of your RAM via its factory overclock settings.

With five PCIe expansion slots, you are likely to still have a couple free after plugging in one of today’s huge GPUs. Even with a reasonably sized graphics card in the reinforced PCIe 5.0 x16 slot I only had one PCIe 3.0 x16 and PCIe 3.0 x1 slot accessible. The PCIe 4.0 x16 and PCIe 4.0 x4 slots were both obscured by the GPU. If you are making use of the CPU’s integrated GPU, the rear I/O panel has both DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 outputs.

I actually can’t keep up with USB specifications. Perhaps wisely, ASUS has dropped the various numeric classifications in their marketing and instead specifies USB support by the data throughput. The I/O panel has a 20Gbps USB Type-C port, a 10Gbps USB Type-C port, two 10Gbps USB Type-A ports, and four 5Gbps Type-A ports.

If that’s not enough wires to have plugged into the back of your machine, the motherboard has a header connector for up to seven more USB slots on the front of your case. If your front panel has the capacity, you can have a 20Gbps USB Type-C port with up to 30W fast charging, two 5Gbps USB Type-A ports, and four USB 2.0 ports.

Realtek provides 7.1 surround sound with front headphone output and mic in, line in, line out, surround, and rear audio jacks on the rear I/O panel. There is also an S/PDIF port for optical out.

For connectivity, the board supports WI-FI 6E (802.11ax) at 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz bands. There’s also Bluetooth v5.3.

Apart from a tiny illuminated “TUF” logo on the top right, the motherboard does not have any RGB lighting of its own. If, however, you want to light up your case, there are three addressable Gen 2 headers for WS2812B LED lighting and an Aura header for 5050 LED RGB lighting on the board.

It’s such an easy and fully-featured motherboard to set up. But also, specification aside, as is the norm with a TUF Gaming motherboard the Z790-PRO WIFI looks really nice in your case.

The ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI is the perfect companion for a new PC based on Intel’s 14th-generation CPUs. Whether you are building a PC yourself or buying one prebuild, the motherboard is fully featured and easy to tweak.

If you are still rocking a 600-series motherboard with DDR4 and feel it’s time to upgrade, or you are looking to get a new build for Intel’s 14th gen CPUs, the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI is worth considering.

The post ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-PRO WIFI Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

The TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI is an AMD Socket AM5 ATX motherboard designed for AMD Ryzen 7000-series CPUs. STG’s Darren Price, takes it for a test.

Looking at the box, the TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI motherboard gave me quite the feeling of deja vu. I’ve reviewed a few similar Intel-based TUF Gaming XXX-Plus WIFI D4 motherboards, and this board looks virtually identical. The big difference is that this board supports DDR5 memory, as AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series chips don’t have an option for DDR4.

Positioned between Asus’s mainstream PRIME and the enthusiasts’ Republic of Gamers branding, TUF Gaming kit is aimed at PC gamers who want robust equipment with a rugged look.

AMD’s B650 chipset gives Ryzan CPUs a cheaper option than X670E-based motherboards. There’s less USB, SATA, and PCIe Gen 5 functionality, but most users won’t notice that, anyway.

The TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI supports all AMD’s Ryzen 7000-series desktop processors, but for the test I paired the board with a Ryzen 9 7950X CPU and 32GB of PNY DDR5 6000Mhz RAM. The GPU used was the test rig’s trusty Radeon RX 6900 XT.

Installing the motherboard was a breeze. The integrated IO panel slipped into place and the screw holes all lined up nicely. AMD’s easy-to-use AM5 CPU cooler mount made connecting the Coolermaster all-in-one cooler a breeze.

The top of the board has two 12v power connectors, an 8-pin and a 4-pin. Make sure your power supply has compatible cable connectors.

Being a Ryzen 7000 board, it is not compatible with DDR4 RAM modules, leaving DDR5 modules the only memory option. But with DDR5 RAM prices starting to fall, upgrading is viable, even if the fastest modules are still a bit on the expensive side. The motherboard has the Asus Z-clip RAM slots with a single clip holding the modules in place. The board supports up to four modules to a maximum of 128GB running up to 6400MHz+ (via AMD EXPO). The two 16GB PNY DDR5 modules seated easily.

I populated two of the three M.2 sockets with NVMe drives. Two of the M.2 Sockets support PCIe 5.0 x4, and modules from 2242 to 2280, and one supports PCIe 4.0 x4 and modules from 2242 up to 22100. All the M.2 sockets have headsinks integrated into the motherboard’s industrial-looking design. Old-school SATA SSDs and hard drives are accommodated via four SATA 6Gb/s ports on the side of the board.

There are four PCIe slots. The top slot, a PCIe 4.0/3.0 x16 slot is for the GPU. The first of the two PCIe 4.0/3.0 x1 slots has a gap between it and the top slot, but a modern GPU is still likely to cover it up. Most users will find that only have easy access to the other PCIe 4.0/3.0 x16 slot and the remaining PCIe 4.0/3.0 x1 at the bottom. This shouldn’t be a problem as modern gaming machines have little need for discrete sound, networking, and other expansion cards.

The onboard audio is supplied via Realtek ALC S1200A 7.1 Surround Sound, with rear and sub outputs as well as line-in/out and mic on the rear I/O panel. There’s no optical audio output. The integrated GPU is served by both HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 sockets, also on the I/O panel.

Wired connectivity is via a Realtek 2.5Gb Ethernet port. The board also supports Wi-Fi 6, with an external antenna, at both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. There’s also Bluetooth v5.2.

With the machine all together it was time to switch it on and check out one of my favourite features of Asus motherboards, the UEFI BIOS interface. The TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI uses a version of Asus’s standard UEFI BIOS interface. This easy-to-use user interface allows users, both novice and veteran, to painlessly set up and make adjustments to the PC’s hardware performance. With both an at-a-glance EZ mode for quick adjustments to memory, fan, and boot options, and an advanced mode for getting right under the hood it’s a clean well-designed UI.

From the BIOS EZ System tuning using AMD Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO), the CPU switched from normal operation to “PBO Enhancement”. This is a quick and painless way to automatically get a little bit more out of the system. This simple way of overlocking requires no PC system knowledge and uses the CPU’s performance headroom to boost frequencies, whilst monitoring voltages and thermal limits. Another easy-to-use BIOS feature is the QFan Control allowing users to tweak fan speeds to maximise cooling against acceptable fan noise.

Even with no PC knowledge the TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI will work to give you the best performance without fuss. Whilst the motherboard will configure itself and recognise the installed CPU and RAM, I did have to enable the DOCP (Asus’s Direct OverClocking Profile) to use the DDR5 factory overclock settings, boosting the frequency from the default 4800Mhz to 6000Mhz. The PBO setting is also not enabled by default.

The Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI is a great motherboard for gamers planning on using AMD Ryzen 7000-series CPUs. It’s a well-built and great-looking foundation for a great gaming PC built upon a robust design. It has all the functionality required for high-end gaming without unnecessary extras. It’s easy to set up but still allowing for a bit of tweaking and adjusting performance as required. Another standout motherboard in the Asus TUF Gaming lineup.

The post Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WIFI Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Asus’s TUF Gaming B760-Plus WIFI D4 offers a fully functional 12th and 13th generation Intel LGA 1700 ATX motherboard for the more budget conscious gaming PC system build.

The desire to over-spec a new PC build is strong, especially if you are an early adopter of a new generation of CPUs. Intel’s 13th generation processors launched alongside compatible motherboards exclusively sporting top-of-the-range Intel Z790 chipsets. It’s reasonable to assume those early adopters, first of the block with the new CPUs, would want to place them in the best, and most expensive, motherboards available. It’s highly likely, though, that most Z790 motherboards are not being used to their fullest extent. So why pay for something that you are not going to use?

Unless you are going to be overclocking your CPU, filling it up with M.2 NVMe SSDs, and plugging in an extraordinary amount of USB peripherals, you don’t need a Z790 motherboard.  And this is where the Asus TUF Gaming B760-Plus WIFI D4 comes in. Not only is the board a bit cheaper than Z790-based motherboards, but it also supports cheaper DDR4 RAM.

I’ve been running an Asus TUF Gaming Z790-Plus WIFI D4 motherboard with an Intel i5-13600K CPU in the test rig for a while. Side-by-side the Asus TUF Gaming B760-Plus WIFI D4 looks almost identical to its slightly more expensive sibling.

Asus’ TUF Gaming range sports a more industrial styling than its enthusiast-level ROG or entry-level PRIME brands. Asus boasts of military-grade components in the TUF board, a certificate listing the design specs is included in the box. But, more importantly, it looks like a very nice motherboard. Compared to a Republic of Gamers motherboard, it may lack the RGB LEDs and the brushed metal finishes, but it’s still going to look good in your case.

The TUF Gaming B760-Plus WIFI D4 is a feature-packed motherboard. There are four DDR4 DIMM sockets for up to 128GB of RAM. If you want to use the CPU’s integrated graphics there are DisplayPort 1.4 and HHMI 2.1 sockets. The board’s PCIe 5.0 x16, PCIe 3.0 x16, and two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots should offer enough expansion slots for most users. Storage-wise, it has three M.2 slots two supporting up to 2280 and one up to 22110 sizes. If you are still going old-school with your drives there are four SATA 6Gb/s ports on the board.

There’s also a generous number of USB ports on the back of the board plus even more via the front header connectors. The rear I/O has one USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, a USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, 3x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and a USB Type-A 2.0 port. The headers on the board allow an additional USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2, two USB Gen 1 ports, and four USB 2.0 ports. There’s also a Thunderbolt USB4 header socket.

Connectivity is via an integrated WiFi 6 adapter, Bluetooth v5.2, and Realtek 2.5Gb Ethernet. There’s onboard Realtek 7.1 audio via five audio jacks and an optical S/PDIF output.

In the box, as well as the motherboard, you’ll find the WiFi antenna two 6Gb/s SATA cables, an M.2 screw package (for securing two M.2 drives), four pads for single-sided M.2 installations, the TUF certificate card, a TUF Gaming sticker, a driver disc. There’s also the usual comprehensive, well-written user guide, that’s a hallmark of Asus boards and all you need to set it up and get going.

Installing the B760-Plus WIFI D4 motherboard was easy. The integrated I/O panel on the rear of the board meant that I could just place it straight in the case without pushing it into place to get the ATX standoffs to line up with the fixing holes. Some of this is a credit to the test rig’s well-machined Themaltake case- a reminder that it is always a good idea to go with a decent case for your PC build.

Fitting components into the board is a relatively painless process as well. Asus uses memory slots that only have one clip requiring the DDR4 RAM modules to be carefully inserted before being clipped in place. The manual shows the correct configuration of RAM modules to ensure the best performance.

The motherboard’s three M.2 sockets have Asus’ screwless Q-latch system. You just slot in the module and twist the latch to secure them in place, with no risk of losing a tiny screw somewhere in your build. Each M.2 socket is cooled with a heatsink that integrates into the board’s design.

The board can easily accommodate most PC cooling systems. There’s a 4-pin CPU fan header, a 4-pin CPU OPT fan header, a 4-pin AIP pump header, and four 4-pin chassis fan headers.

The boards’ 8-pin and 4-pin 12v power connectors did have me fishing about in my power supply unit’s cable bag. Make sure that you have the correct ATX power cables for your PSU. The ATX power sockets at the top of the board are tucked away behind a heatsink, which was a bit fiddly.

Apart from the handy Q-LED indicators, that can be used to troubleshoot issues, as previously mentioned, the motherboard is bereft of any native RGB lighting. The board is, however, Aura Sync compatible with both an Aura RGB header and addressable Gen 2 headers.

With the Core i5-13600K CPU (cooled by a Corsair AIO cooler), 32GB of DDR4 memory, and a couple of M.2 drives installed, the machine booted the first time.

The inclusion of a driver disc is a puzzling throwback to an earlier time, with the likes of MSI now supplying USB thumb drives, instead. The PC will still boot with Windows defaults, but you’ll need to go on the Asus website and update and install the specific drivers for the board.

It’s worth noting that whilst the motherboard correctly sets the CPU frequency, it will not automatically set the memory to the XMP timings. Other settings, such as secure boot and Resizable BAR may also need to be manually selected.

Fortunately, Asus’ easy-to-use UEFI BIOS dashboard makes configuring and fine-tuning the motherboards very easy. Pressing the delete key as the machine starts accessing the UEFI menus. The board defaults to the EZ menu, allowing the XMP setting to be engaged without the fear of messing up any other settings. At the top of the menu, the Resizable BAR setting can also be accessed. EZ mode also allows access to the board’s Q-FAN controls to automatically adjust fan speeds according to component temperatures.

In the EZ menu screen, you can see the main difference “under the hood” between Asus’ B760 board and its Z790 board. The system tuning option at the top right of the EZ UEFI screen only has the choice of “normal” and “power saving”. The more expensive boards also have AI overclocking features that you don’t get with the B760 board. Asus’ AI overclocking allows users to get a little bit more out of their machines without having to mess about manually adjusting frequencies and voltages. Switching to “Advance mode” gives more experienced users access to all the board’s settings to fine-tune the PC performance.

I can’t stress enough just how well-designed the Asus BIOS user interface is. It’s easy to use for both newcomers and veterans alike. As well as tuning the board’s performance, BIOS updates, automatic/optional integration with Asus’ Armory Crate, and the MyAsus app can all be activated via the UEFI BIOS dashboard.

If you are after a smart, nice-looking, no-nonsense but still fully functional motherboard to complement your Intel 12th or 13th Gen CPU and DDR4 RAM, the Asus TUF Gaming B760-Plus WIFI D4 motherboard will fit the bill.

The post Asus TUF Gaming B760-Plus WIFI D4 Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

It’s the heart of any PC build and your entire PC experience depends on it, that’s why picking the right motherboard is so important.

Is the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790 WIFI D4 the motherboard you are looking for? Let’s take a look.

I’ll be honest. I’m a huge fan of ASUS motherboards, they tend to be easy to install and easy to configure. They also provide a simple way to overclock your CPU and get that little extra out of your system. The TUF Gaming Z790 WIFI D4 looks like another winner for ASUS.

The Z790-based motherboard supports both Intel’s new 13th generation Raptor Lake CPU as well as Intel’s 12th generation processors. It also supports up to 128GB of DDR4 memory.

As a TUF board, it’s built rugged. The board feels solid in your hands. The built-in input/output shield means that the board slides nicely into your ATX case.

As I assembled the test rig, I found the board’s screw holes matched perfectly with the Corsair case’s standoffs. As any system builder will tell you, it’s nice to have a board just drop into a case without feeling as if you are forcing or bending it into position.

This board is an upgrader’s dream.

As I mentioned, this is a DDR4 board. Whilst the purists may want to take advantage of the Z790 chipset’s higher DDR5 speeds, I’m still on the fence as to whether you are getting the bang for your buck over DDR4. This is especially true if you already have some decent DDR4 modules and are thinking of upgrading to an Intel 13th-generation CPU (or a 12th gen CPU- more below).

With a capacity for up to four DDR4 modules supporting up to 128GB running at a max of 5333MHz, this ASUS board’s memory capacity will do for most users.

The Intel CPU socket looks essentially the same as it has been for a few years, just with the number of pins increasing for Intel’s 12th-generation CPUs. This means that older PC coolers may not work with the LGA 1700 socket, though some offer adapter kits. The Z790 chipset supports both the older 12th-gen CPUs as well as Intel’s new 13th-generation Raptor Lake CPUs. This offers some flexibility and an upgrade route if budget is a concern, which is another tick for upgraders. I paired the board with an Intel Core i5- 13600K, a decent CPU that offers great performance in games at a reasonable price.

The ATX power is supplied from the power supply unit to an 8-pin and a 4-pin socket on the board. This is worth noting as I have to get an adapter for the 4-pin socket.

DDR4 modules are easily installed. I used two PNY DDR4-3200 modules. The RAM slots only have a clip at the top, as part of ASUS Q-Design Q-DIMM, so you have to make sure the bottom of the module is properly seated as you push it in and the clip at the top clicks into place. This can be a bit disconcerting but it is designed to make inserting and removing modules easier. You just have to be a bit careful if you are unfamiliar with ASUS boards.

Another stand-out feature of ASUS boards is the M2 Q-Latch. Instead of messing around with a tiny screw to hold in M.2 SSDs, there’s a little latch to secure the devices in place. I find this especially useful as I’m always removing and replacing M.2 drive for reviews.

With four SATA 6GB/s ports and four M.2 slots, there are plenty of data storage options. All the M.2 slots support PCI 4.0 x4 with one slot also supporting M.2 SATA drives. Three of the M2 slots have integrated heatsinks styled to match the industrial look of the TUF board.

There’s a reasonable amount of expansion slots, something even the more expensive motherboards tend to scrimp on. There’s a fast PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for the graphics card, a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, and 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.

One of the two PCIe 3.0 slots will likely be obscured by your GPU, though. I paired the board with a Radeon RX 6600 XT, a great GPU from AMD that’s perfect for 1920×1080 gaming, and also doesn’t do too badly when pushed to 4K with FSR.

The generous number of USB ports should be enough for most users.

The rear panel has 8 ports: 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port (Type-C), 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (2x Type-A and 1x Type-C), and 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (Type-A). There are headers for a further USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port, 2x USB 3.3 Gen 1 ports, and 4x USB 2.0 ports on the front of your case.

Sound is provided via a Realtek S1200A chip that supports 7.1 surround sound. The I/O panel has five 3.5mm audio outputs plus an optical S/PDIF output.

The board supports Wi-Fi 6 at 2.4GHz and 5GHz as well as Bluetooth v5.2 connectivity. There is an external Wi-Fi antenna that screws into two connectors on the back panel. The board also has an RJ-45 2.5Gb Ethernet socket for wired networking.

Whilst the test rig booted up with no trouble, that’s not always the case, even for seasoned system builders. There’s always a chance that you have a faulty component or something is not quite pushed in firmly enough. This is when the board’s Q-LEDs come in very handy for novice and expert PC system builders, alike.

These LEDs at the top of the motherboard signal the status of the CPU, RAM, Display, and boot device on startup. These are very useful for troubleshooting and locating boot issues.

With the PC booting up, it’s on to another noteworthy feature, the ASUS UEFI BIOS. With both a basic (EZ) and advanced mode, the clean and tidy interface allows the board to be set up with ease. The only setting I needed to adjust was the XMP profile to get the most out of the DDR4 memory, the rest I could leave alone. The BIOS has AI fan control and overclocking to squeeze a little bit more out of the CPU.

ASUS’s more expensive boards expand on this offering more extreme automatic overclocking.

This can be a double-edged sword as there’s little performance improvement to really be gained and you do risk stability issues.  This is not the case with the TUF board as setting EZ System tuning to extreme and XMP to the ASUS recommended settings, the board performed rock solid across the tests and a few games.

To put the board through its paces and to make sure it allowed us to get the most out of the 13th-generation i5 CPU, it was tested with some standard benchmark tools: Crossmark, PC Mark 10, Procyon, and Cinebench R23. These benchmarks assess PC performance across office apps, photo and video editors, and 3D rendering.  For the most part, the Core i5-13600K performed on par with Intel’s 12th-generation i9 and AMD’s Ryzen 7 7700X, the Core i9-12900K only bested the 13th-generation i5 when it came to multi-core applications, the older i9 having a higher core count than the new i5.

I was very impressed with the results from the Core i5-13600K and the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790 WIFI D4 motherboard.

Whilst the board is fully featured, it does miss out on some of the trappings some other more expensive Z790 motherboards enjoy. There are no PCI-E 5.0 M.2 slots or WiFi 6E, but there is a Thunderbolt 4 header on the board for a PCIe Thunderbolt card.

The board comes with a comprehensive manual and a disc containing drivers and utilities. With CD drives a thing of the past, it would be nice to see ASUS follow the likes of MSI and include the software on a USB thumb drive.

All the drivers and utilities can be downloaded from the ASUS website and installed after setting up the operating system.

The ASUS TUF Gaming Z790 WIFI D4 is really more of a replacement for its predecessor, the ASUS TUF Gaming Z690 WIFI D4 board, than an upgrade. It is the perfect motherboard for someone upgrading to a 12th or 13th-generation Intel CPU who already has some DDR4 RAM. It’s a fully-featured and robust motherboard with a design maturity that puts more expensive competitors’ motherboards to shame.

Like its predecessor, the ASUS TUF Gaming Z790 WIFI D4 offers tremendous value for money for a feature-packed board with a price that’s lighter on your wallet. I’d highly recommend the motherboard as part of a prebuilt system, a DIY build, or an upgrade.

The post ASUS TUF Gaming Z790 WIFI D4 Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.

Intel’s 12th Generation Alder Lake CPUs are here. What’s not here, though is the fancy new DDR5 memory to go with the new chips, unless you want to spend a fortune on the hard-to-find modules.

ASUS, have a solution.

Enter the ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 motherboard designed for the new Intel CPUs. Instead of DDR5, this is an LGA 1700 socket motherboard that supports a maximum of 128GB (4xDIMM) of DDR4 memory modules running the way up to 5333 Mhz.

I can’t tell you just how much performance improvement you are going to get from using DDR5 with your new Intel CPUs. I’d say, at this juncture, any (likely small) improvements over the DDR4 modules in your current machine will be offset by the inflated price that you are going to be paying.

An upgrade to Alder Lake is expensive, enough.

Unlike your 12th Gen Intel CPUs, you are not going to get away with shoveling these new CPUs into your existing motherboard until you’ve saved up some more cash for a new one. Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs use a new socket with 1700 pins as opposed to the 1200 pins for the last few generations. This new LGA 1700 socket means a new motherboard and perhaps even a new cooler (or just some new standoffs if you are lucky).

Asus’s TUF (The Ultimate Force) line is touted as high-quality and rigorously tested equipment aimed at gamers. The Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 motherboard even comes with a certificate of reliability listing the independent testing apparently carried out of the board.

Compared to Asus’s Strix and Maximus components, TUF is regarded as at the budget end of the company’s gaming gear. I can assure you that there is nothing budget in the build quality of the ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WIFI D4. With the price of Z690 motherboards being a few hundred dollars more expensive than the Z590 boards, it’s still a sizable investment, but it delivers a lot of bang for its buck.

The box comes with the motherboard nicely packaged in its anti-static bag, a magnetic Wi-Fi antenna, little bags with M.2 drive standoffs and pads, a sheet of stickers, a comprehensive user manual, driver DVD, and the aforementioned certificate of reliability.

Asus manuals are easy-to-follow and packed with all the information that you need, be you a veteran PC system builder or a novice. The front of the manual lists the board’s specs and includes a labelled diagram of the layout.

The ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 is an ATX board so it will fit in a quite small case. For the test build, I paired the motherboard with a Corsair 7000D Airflow mid-tower case, only because I’m over squeezing review components in a tiny case.

The Corsair 7000D Airflow is a well-built chassis with lots of cooling options and plenty of space to work. The board has an LGA 1700 socket which is a different configuration than boards for Intel’s previous CPUs. This means that you need to be careful that your cooler fits the different height of the CPU when in the socket.

Many cooler manufacturers are selling revised standoffs to ensure compatibility with older coolers. I used a Corsair H150i Elite LCD all-in-one cooler as these come with the new LGA 1700 standoffs. What’s particularly good is that the RGB lighting on the TUF board is compatible with Corsair’s iCUE RGB software, ensuring a coordinated RGB colour scheme.

Looking at the motherboard itself, it is packed with features. The amount of expansion ports and sockets is on par with those found on boards that are a lot more expensive.

There are five PCIe slots, 1x PCIe 5.0 x16 (with a protected slot with a metal surround for jumbo GPUs), 1x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1x PCI 3.0 x4and 2x PCIe 3.0 x1. That’s plenty of expansion slots if you want to add extra SATA sockets or a Thunderbolt card (via the Thunderbolt header).

The rear of the board has eight USB ports. There’s a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C port, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports and 5x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports (4x Type-A and 1x Type-C). The USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (or SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps) was a bit of a surprise, allowing for some blistering data transfer speeds via portable NVMe SDDs.

The board has USB headers supporting up to seven front USB ports. That’s 1x USB Gen 2 connector (for USB Type-C), 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 header that supports 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, and 2x USB 2.0 headers that support up to 4 USB 2.0 ports (one of which I used for the Corsair cooler and fan control).

There are 4x M.2 (Key M) 2242 / 2260 / 2280 sockets making them compatible with the latest storage solutions. They all support NVMe SSDs in PCIe 4.0 x4 mode with one also supporting SATA as well. Three of the M.2 sockets are covered by heatsinks, with one (the SATA-capable socket) uncovered. This one is suitable for NVMe SDDs with factory-fitted heatsinks, such as the WD_Black SN850. Rather than using screws, the M.2 drives are held in place using plastic latches- it’s a pretty good design and a lot less fiddly. For old-school storage aficionados, there are four SATA 6GB/s sockets for traditional hard drives.

Users wanting to make use of the Intel integrated UHD graphics on the CPU will find the board’s HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 (which both support 4K @60Hz) useful.

As well as the M.2 sockets, the VRMs are also accommodated with heatsinks. The board has four 4-pin fan headers and an AIO cooler header.

For connectivity the board has built-in Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) and supports Bluetooth v5.2. For wired networking, the board has an Intel 2.5Gb Ethernet port.

Onboard audio is provided by Realtek. The rear panel has audio jacks for up to 7.1 surround sound, line-in, and mic in as well as an optical S/PDIF output. The audio features 2-way AI noise cancellation.

Installation was easy. I did have an issue with the seating of a memory module, but the board has LED lights to highlight issues such as this, making troubleshooting easy. The LEDs point out issues with the CPU, DRAM, VGA, and boot. A quick blast of air and reseating module had everything booting up properly.

On first boot, the board took me straight to the Asus UEFI BIOS setup. I’m a great fan of Asus BIOS menus. They are so easy to navigate, which is useful for novices and experienced builders, alike. I was pleased to see that, whilst this board is not an Asus Republic of Gamers board, the BIOS retains much of the same functionally as the more expensive offerings.

For the first proper boot, I used the default setting to see what happened. The PC immediately started installing Windows without changing anything in the BIOS. This is just as I’d expect, as the BIOS settings can be tuned later.

Scanning the default BIOS settings, I saw a few things that needed setting straight away. First, the Intel XMP memory setting needs to be switched on to get the most out of the memory. I also wanted to switch on Resizable BAR to improve the efficiency of the GPU. All these initial settings are on the front page of the BIOS, so you don’t need to go searching for settings.

Another thing that’s great about Asus BIOS settings is the one-touch overclocking capabilities. The front screen of the BIOS allows users to select fast tuning or extreme tuning for AI overclocking. This setting allows the board to monitor performance and adjust the CPU overclock accordingly. This will only work with Intel’s unlocked 12^th-Gen CPUs, those with the “K” suffix (i.e. i9-12900K. i5-12600K, etc.). You also need a decent cooler to get the most out of this function, but it’s very easy to use.

The TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 overclocking settings allow even the most novice users to get a little more out of their CPUs.

As I’m using a Corsair H150i cooler with a 400mm radiator and three 120mm fans, I was able to switch to the Extreme tuning mode with little change in the CPU temperature under load. This one change boosted CPU performance in the 3D Mark Timespy test by 8.7%

If you want to tweak the board even more, the advanced settings allow for some fine-tuning. I was not expecting a lower-end board like this one to have so many advanced options, to be honest, almost putting it on par with a Maximus board. You are not likely to get the same level of overclocking performance from the board compared to its more expensive brethren, but, the tools are there, nevertheless.

The BIOS also has tools for easily updating the firmware, with the opportunity to roll back the BIOS to an earlier version if anything untoward happened. You just download the new BIOS firmware from the Asus website, install it on a USB and use the Asus EZ Flash 3 utility upgrade.

The board also features Asus Crashfree BIOS 3 allowing the board to automatically recover from a BIOS download from the Asus website from a USB memory stick without having to access the motherboard settings.

The board also comes with a driver DVD that also includes some utilities and the motherboard manual. All this is also available from the Asus website if you don’t have access to a DVD drive (when are they going to start just putting this stuff on a USB stick?). Of note is the Asus AI Suite 3 that allows users to monitor CPU performance, temperatures, and fan speeds as well as tweak performance from the desktop rather than in the BIOS.

The Asus TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 is a surprisingly fully-featured motherboard for Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs.

Its uncompromising features make it a very attractive alternative to some of the more expensive Z690 boards. The DDR4 compatibility makes for a more affordable upgrade without having to fork out a fortune for DDR5 memory. I’ve used both Strix and Maximus Asus boards in the past and there’s nothing that would stop me from using this TUF board in a high-end gaming rig.

The safety features built-in make it the perfect board for users new to tweaking PC performance and upgrading firmware. It’s a robust board with a good pedigree behind it that’s suitable for novice builders and veterans wanting to squeeze a bit more out of their 12th Gen Intel CPUs.

The post ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-PLUS WIFI D4 Motherboard Review appeared first on Shane the Gamer.