ASUS ROG STRIX-E Gaming Z490 Motherboard Review

Peter Donnell / 4 years ago

While ASUS may have a lot of appeal in the enthusiast market with their mighty MAXIMUS and HERO boards, the STRIX boards are still firmly focused on the gamers. Make no mistake though, this is still a pretty serious motherboard, with a more advanced feature set and a bit more expensive vs their TUF series, but certainly not as expensive as its bigger brothers in the HERO and MAXIMUS series either. You still get big VRM heatsinks, a 14+2 Digital Power Stage, and a good chunk of armoured hardware overall, so it’s already ticking all the right boxes for us.

ASUS ROG STRIX-E Gaming Z490 Motherboard

ASUS has kept the feature set focused on what your typical gamer would need. There’s both Intel LAN and WiFi 6, which are more than fast enough, but no 2.5G or 5G option here like on the more expensive boards. There’s great overclocking support, fast memory support, and rather fantastic audio hardware ready right out of the box though. Plus, with six SATA ports and a pair of M.2 mounts, you’ll have no issues cramming in all the storage you’re likely to need.

Features

Socket LGA 1200
Intel Z490 Chipset
DDR4 4600 MHZ (OC)
OptiMem II
14+2 Power Stage
Extended VRM Heatsinks
Intel I225-V Gigabit LAN
Intel WiFi 6 AX201
SupremeFX S1220A CODEC
DTS Sound Unbound
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What ASUS Had to Say

“The ROG Strix Z490-E Gaming motherboard is designed to cope with the demands of 10^th Generation Intel^® Core™ processors, with boosted power delivery and an optimized cooling design providing more surface area for heat dissipation. ROG Strix Z490-E Gaming features AI enhancements and intuitive dashboards to help you overclock and tweak various parameters easily. Performance aside, ROG Strix Z490-E Gaming catches the eye, sporting cyberpunk inspired aesthetics including a mirrored stainless steel finish.” – ASUS