ASUS TUF Gaming Z690-Plus WiFi D4 Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

This is one cool looking motherboard, adopting a much darker design than their previous models too. All the grey digital decals are really toned down and it’s more of a black on black design than a dark grey with light grey. It looks a lot better for it too, giving it a more serious look. However, there are also some larger heatsinks, giving it better cooling performance, and also improving the aesthetics further.

the processor benefit from the upgraded 14+1 DrMOS design, fitted to their durable six-layer PCB. However, the board also uses high-quality alloy chokes and durable capacitors throughout, ensuring stable power delivery.

Of course, keeping that hardware cool is just as important as pushing power through it. There are two huge heatsinks surrounding the socket, and technically a third, as the one of the left is made up from a dual tower design with large fins and slots cut through them to allow for improved airflow.

The power is fed from an 8-pin PSU connector, but there’s an additional 4-pin too, which will help provide more stable voltages when using boost/overclocking features.

The board may not have DDR5, but DDR4 is hardly lacking these days. It’s a mature platform and this board will support up to 5333 MHZ (OC) and uses their OptiMem II technology. I like that they’ve used a reinforced pin design on the clips and midpoint too.

This is certainly a new feature, with the latest PCIe 5.0 interface on the top slot, and their new reinforced ASUS SafeSlot design. There’s also a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot at the bottom of the motherboard, two 1x, and a 4x. Actually, looking at many other Z690 boards, this has more slots than most.

All the usual I/O stuff is here, two RGB headers at the top, two more at the bottom, USB 3.0 front panel, and Type-C front panel headers are included. There are two SATA ports here.

And two more at the bottom, along with plenty of fan headers. This board is built to be practical in a wide range of systems, and I like that. Then you have that full-width heatsink on the bottom, which looks great, but it also hides two 2280 M.2 mounts which PCIe 4.0 support.

Obviously, this will protect the drives and help keep them cool too.

There’s a smaller heatsink on the top mount too, but this one will support up to 2x 22110 M.2 Gen 4 drives, giving us a total of four M.2 mounts.

There’s a protective shield over the audio chipset, and it’s actually surprisingly well equipped too. Realtek 7.1 Codec, with DTS processing, and premium audio capacitors are all certainly welcome additions.

At the rear, you’ll find both HDMI and DisplayPort, unfortunately, the specs don’t tell me what version of each. There’s four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, plus two USB 3.2 Gen 2. The Type-C runs as the fastest USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 (20Gbps). Networking options are great too, with the latest Intel WiFi 6, and Intel 2.5 GbE LAN.

While the board does have some RGB built-in, it’s very minimal, with just some rights in the top right and bottom-right edges of the PCB. Actually, I like that it’s so understated; just enough to let me know it’s powered on!