Final Thoughts
As I mentioned in the beginning of this review with the introduction of Intel’s 14th generation core processors we’ve seen motherboard manufacturers refresh their Z790 motherboard lineups. This board is of course a refresh of the original Z790-E Gaming WiFi board. While it is very much the same, ASUS has made some improvements that you’ll appreciate, especially if you are going to be using a new 14th gen processor.
The first is the power design. While the board has the same number of power stages (18) for the CPU, ASUS has upgraded them to 110A (instead of 90A), which gives you up to 1980A available for your power hungry 14th gen processor. ASUS is keeping those power delivery components nice a cool with two large heatsinks so you won’t have to worry about thermally throttling either. You are also getting a nice upgrade to WiFi 7 with ASUS’s new Q-Antenna. I really like that in the Armoury Crate software you can check your wireless signal strength and even find the best direction to place to antenna. Don’t forget you are also getting 2.5G LAN on this board too!
One thing I really like about this board is that ASUS has not added Thunderbolt 4. I don’t know about you, but I don’t own anything Thunderbolt and I review PC hardware for a living. Instead we get USB 3.2 gen 2×2 with power delivery, which I definitely prefer. I have many USB 3.2 gen 2×2 portable SSDs and it is nice to be able to get the full speed. Not including Thunderbolt 4 here allows ASUS to keep the price of this board lower, and I feel most people won’t miss it. Talking about connectivity on the rear I/O you are going to find 12 USB ports (10 Type-A, 2 Type-C) so if you need to connect a lot of different devices you are covered. Plus all of these ports are high speed (10Gbps or higher).
When it comes to storage you of course are going to get a PCI-Express 5.0 M.2 slot, but you also get four PCI-Express 4.0 M.2 slots. So you can fully load this board out with storage! All M.2 slots not only include heatsinks, but they also have ASUS’s M.2 Q-latch system, which allows for tool-free installation of your M.2 drives. Once you use a system like this you’ll never want to go back to using the tiny screws you find on many other motherboards. Talking about ease of use you also get ASUS’s PCIe Slot Q-release button, which is an easy to access button that will release your graphics card from the top PCIe slot. This is so much more convenient than trying to access to actual release latch.
For first time builders or even more advanced users ASUS’s AI overclocking feature is great and is part of that value-add when buying an ASUS motherboard. ASUS actually puts a chip on the board itself which does all of the heavy lifting when it comes to getting the best performance (overclock) out of your system. The best part about it is that it is a single click either in the BIOS or in the Armoury Crate software.
Right now you can pick this board up at our favorite online retailer for $479.99. For the feature-set I think this price is fair. Thinking about this board I really cannot come up with anything I don’t like, so with that said we give the ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi II Motherboard a 10 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!
Pros:
– 18+1+2 power phase design with 110A power stages
– WiFi 7
– Lots of USB ports including USB 3.2 gen 2×2
– Five M.2 slots including one Gen5 slot
– AI Overclocking
– M.2 Q-latch & PCIe slot Q-release
Cons:
None that I found
