ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-Plus WiFi LGA 1700(Intel 14th,12th &13th Gen) ATX Gaming Motherboard(PCIe 5.0,DDR5,4xM.2 Slots,16+1 DrMOS,WiFi 6,2.5Gb LAN,Front USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C,Thunderbolt 4(USB4),Aura RGB)

This board right here? It’s the backbone of my whole build. I dropped in the i5-14600KF and my RTX 3080 FTW3, and this Z790-Plus didn’t even flinch—it was like it was born to run with beasts. Setup was smooth, BIOS was clean, and ASUS didn’t skimp on the layout. Everything’s spaced out right—no finger acrobatics needed to plug stuff in. Power delivery is clean with that 16+1 DrMOS setup, so when I pushed the CPU clocks a little, it held strong with zero drama.The DDR5 support? That’s where things really pop. I’m running some 6000MHz sticks and this board took it without a hiccup. Booted straight up, no weird voltage tweaks needed. If you’re about that snappy load time life or running heavy apps back-to-back, DDR5 on this board absolutely rips. And those 4x M.2 slots? Come on. I tossed in two drives already and still got space to expand. Fast storage everywhere, no bottlenecks in sight.Connectivity is stacked. You get WiFi 6E built in—connection is crisp, even through walls. That 2.5Gb LAN port? Super clutch when I wanna plug in and stream heavy with zero lag. Front USB-C, tons of rear I/O, Thunderbolt 4… they really thought of everything here. I’m running a dual-monitor setup with external drives and a capture card, and there’s still ports left untouched. The Aura RGB syncs up with the rest of my case lights and looks clean—not overdone, just the right glow.I’ve built on a few motherboards before, but this one feels like it was made for folks who actually use their rigs hard. It doesn’t just look tough—it is tough. Temps stay in check, airflow’s smooth, and the VRMs don’t heat up even when the CPU’s at full send. My system’s been stable, fast, and locked in ever since. Everything just plays nice together, like this board is the glue that holds the chaos together.

When Microsoft announced that Windows 10 was no longer going to be supported, I knew I was going to have to update to a new PC. I was running on an old 3rd gen Intel processor which couldn't support Windows 11 and some games required new processes that my CPU couldn't do. So, I decided it was time to build my second PC.The building process was fine and it was a decent size for the chassis I bought. It looks pretty cool too. The only real issue I had was that there were no drivers installed, so I had no networking. This meant I had to bypass a step in the Windows installation process to get to the desktop. Then, using an external hard drive and a laptop, I got all the drivers and everything was fine.I have heard stories of people needing a Bios update to use a 14th gen processor, but the one I got apparently already had the update, because it booted with CPU just fine. As I said, the only issue was with the lack of drivers, but that wasn't a particularly difficult problem once I realized that was an issue (though it would be for someone who doesn't have a spare laptop or something).Overall, this new build has been night and day compared to my old PC. It does boot very quickly, especially with a good M.2 SSD. Runs every game I've played very well. It sells for $250 on the Asus website, but I got it off Amazon for $200, and it was certainly good for the price.9/10, IGN, would play again.

This is an excellent and very practical motherboard, suitable for both gaming and everyday tasks. While it may not have a PCIe 5.0 x4 slot for an M.2 SSD, it does have a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for graphics cards and other expansion cards. Since it was released before WiFi 7, it still has WiFi 6E, but since WiFi 7 and PCIe 5.0 SSD's are both very recent with very few devices on the market that can actually use these technologies, these trade-offs have very little impact. The included heatsinks for 3 of the 4 M.2 SSD slots are excellent. I have yet to see my SSD's rise above 32 degrees Celsius, even when gaming. It would have been nice if this model came with a Thunderbolt 4 port on the rear I/O panel, but they have to make extra money somehow. The motherboard includes a Thunderbolt 4 header and an extra USB 2.0 port to allow for one of their Thunderbolt 4 expansion cards. At least using one of these expansion cards in the second PCIe 4.0 x16 slot doesn't affect the bandwidth of the other expansion slots, but using a Hyper M.2 expansion card in the PCIe 5.0 slot causes the first PCIe 4.0 x16 slot to drop to x8 bandwidth and the second slot to drop to x4 bandwidth. With 4 M.2 slots though, there really isn't a reason to use one of the Hyper M.2 cards unless you feel you absolutely need a PCIe 5.0 SSD. Similarly, there isn't really any need for a Thunderbolt 4 expansion unless you need a DP-capable USB-C port or USB data transfer speeds of 40Gbps. The rear I/O panel provides plenty of USB ports as it is, ranging from 5 Gbps USB Type A to 20 Gbps USB-C. With this motherboard, I use an i7-13700K CPU and Intel XMP RAM that can go up to the processor's maximum 5600 MHz. Thanks to ASUS Ai Suite III, I was able to set up a stable OC profile with the CPU running at an average of 4800 MHz reaching up to 5900 MHz on the P-cores, and with the memory frequency set to the advertised 5600 MHz. However, since Ai Suite III requires Memory Integrity to be disabled, I followed the advice of someone on a forum and re-enabled Memory Integrity after disabling Run at Startup for Ai Suite. Thanks to that advice, I now have ASUS' AI overclock working with Memory Integrity enabled. I have updated the BIOS regularly without issue, keeping my overclock settings by saving a BIOS profile .CAP file to a USB drive before updating. After the update, I just load the profile and everything goes back to how it was. The Q-Slot has made removing my GPU so much easier. This is important because the only M.2 slot that doesn't have a heatsink gets covered by the GPU when it's placed in the PCIe 5.0 slot or the first PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. I briefly tried placing one of my SSD's in that M.2 slot, but I ended up moving it to a different slot because, as expected, the SSD got much hotter underneath the GPU than in one of the slots covered by a heatsink. If you want to use that slot, I would recommend getting an effective low-profile SSD heatsink. The Q-LED's have been very helpful with troubleshooting issues at startup. For example, the GPU LED kept coming on during startup for some time. After trying a few things, I discovered that Windows kept forcing the CPU to use its onboard graphics during startup, even if I had the onboard graphics disabled in BIOS, which is why the splash screen that allows you to enter BIOS at startup as well as the Windows loading screen never appeared through my GPU output. Thankfully, my monitor has several input ports, so I was able to connect both the onboard graphics and the GPU to my monitor, set the GPU output as the main display, and now I no longer have this issue. This really is a great motherboard, and I would buy it again. I just hope they make an equivalent of this motherboard in the future with the new BTF layout that ASUS announced so when I need a new motherboard 8 years from now, I can get the same kind of practical gaming motherboard for the BTF PC that I will inevitably build.