ASUS WS Pro Z390 Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

How Much Does it Cost?

This is a high-end professional motherboard that is packed full of impressive features. As such, it comes with a pretty staggering price tag of £386.99. That’s a lot of money for any budget and puts it in line with the ASUS RoG Formula and Ultimate motherboards. Similar price and specifications between those models, but again, targeted at different markets. Of course, that PLX chip may be worth every penny for the right user.

Overview

The price is obviously enough to put off many consumers, but this isn’t a consumer motherboard. It’s targeted at the enthusiast market and the professional/business market. For those looking at things like Xeon, X399, X299 and other high-end solutions, the price isn’t as scary as you might think. Of course, you do get a lot of features and high-end performance for your investment, but for your average PC build, it’s likely a poor investment.

PLX and Beyond

While you can typically only run two or three consumer GPUs for gaming, there are other uses out there. The PLX chip means you can run all four slots at a higher speed than on typical gaming motherboards. This is useful for rendering applications, PCIe storage, and more. If you’re doing a lot of visualisation work, then there are clear benefits to this configuration. Who knows, perhaps PLX will make its way onto more consumer boards in the future.

Exceptional Connectivity

If you care about building a workstation, then it’s likely you’re going to have banks of high-end storage. With 6 SATA ports, standard HDD and SSD configurations are easily dealt with. However, the inclusion of two U.2 and two M.2 mounts means that you can connect plenty of super fast storage as well as Intel Optane drives. External devices aren’t left behind either, with both USB 2.0, 3.0 and 3.1 Gen two front panel headers. Furthermore, there are 12 USB ports on the rear of the motherboard, including six Gen 2 ports, one of which is Type-C.

With two Gigabyte LAN ports, you’ll have no issues pairing this to your networks, NAS, and other network devices. Although at this price, throwing in some WiFi would have been nice. Finally, the fantastic ALC1220 audio hardware means you’ll have no issues hooking up high-performance speakers and headsets too.

Build Quality

A premium price should mean premium quality, and thankfully in this case, it does. The WS Pro Z390 uses excellent high-end components, which not only improve the durability of the hardware, but also the performance. Quality heatsinks, chokes, capacitors and more all go a long way. Furthermore, the PCIe slots are armoured, and those two extra-long M.2 heatsinks both cool and protect your drives.

I do have some criticisms though, as there’s no pre-installed rear I/O backplate, which I think should be standard at this price range. The DIMM slots aren’t armoured either. That seems picky, but if they can put an RGB header on a pro motherboard, then they can do that. Hardly deal breakers, obviously, but it would be nice to see these addressed.

Should I Buy One?

Well, that’s a tricky question indeed. Are you a gamer or a home user? Then no, it’s not for you! However, if you’re working in rendering, game development, running scientific applications, visualisation, building a server, or other high-end applications, it does have a lot to offer. with support for 8th and 9th Gen CPUs, it’s great, as you can upgrade the motherboard now, and the CPU at a later date.