ASUS ROG STRIX Z790-A Gaming-WiFi II Motherboard Review

How Much Does It Cost?

The Asus ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming WIFI II (LGA 1700) DDR5 ATX Motherboard is a bit on the expensive side, with an MSRP of £474.98 but currently £446.99 at the time of writing, it’s about £50 more than most rivals, but that’s been true for ASUS products since the dawn of time, so no surprise there. I also think for the money, it’s a little lacking in connectivity, with rivals having faster LAN and Gen5 M.2 mounts, but honestly, if you don’t need those, it’s no big deal, and this board more than makes up for its shortfalls with its raw CPU performance.

Overview

When it comes to getting great performance from your CPU or GPU, or ya know, both of them simultaneously, the Asus ROG Strix Z790-A Gaming WIFI II is pretty fantastic. It’s going to make a great motherboard for gamers and content creators, or more specifically gamers who create content. It’s a fast gaming motherboard, delivering high FPS and strong 1% lows throughout our testing, and with five M.2 storage mounts and four SATA ports, getting huge amounts of storage installed, with varying RAID configurations, it’s going to more than makes up for its lack of Gen 5 M.2 mounts.

For rendering, it delivered really good single and multi-core performance from our CPU, and the robust VRM configuration is more than capable of maintaining high boost clocks for extended periods. There’s room to have an even better VRM cooler, as it did get warmer than some, but still far from anything I’d be worried about, and that would have only increased the price further, so it’s walking a nice sweet spot in that regard.

There’s a good range of heatsinks on all the storage bays too, which I like, and since they’re modular in design, you can use some onboard heatsinks or take them off and use aftermarket solutions to suit your needs too.

I like the PCIe 5.0 slot design, it’s very robust and should deal with larger graphics cards easily, and it even has a quick-release button too, which is always great to see. There’s a 1x and a 16x (wired as 4x) PCIe slot too, so adding in something like an I/O card or capture card is easy enough, but if you need more PCIe slots, you’ll likely want a higher-end model. However, for a modern gaming PC with one GPU, this is more than enough for most.

Should I Buy One?

This is a well-rounded motherboard, and while it could be improved with faster connectivity and even a Gen5 M.2, it more than makes up for it with the fact it has a huge number of USB ports and M.2 mounts, allowing for lots of peripherals, lots of storage, and it more than holds up when it comes to raw CPU and gaming performance, making it perfect for a high-end gaming PC build and for those who like to make gaming content.