Intel LGA 1700 ATX VRM 20+1 phase motherboard, DDR4, five M.2 slots, PCIe 5.0, Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C port, Wi-Fi 6E, AI Overclocking and Aura Sync RGB, Black

Reviewing ASUS TUF gaming plus DDR4 WiFi versionI was looking for an upgrade from a Gigabyte Z390 so decided on a DDR4 board so that I could save by using existing memory. After a frustrating experience with an otherwise impressive Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Elite AX which suffered from memory compatibility issues, I sent that back in disgust and jumped shop to Asus!The Gigabyte board had it's positives such as the ability to flash the BIOS with no CPU or memory installed and some pretty on board lighting effects, but this board excels in many other more important areas. I plugged in my CPU and existing DDR4 memory and the whole thing just worked (the Gigabyte board would not even boot until BIOS was updated, and further failed to operate whatsoever when certain memory sockets were occupied).An annoyance with socket 1700 boards is the requirement to use a different CPU cooler to that of socket 1200. As I own a water cooler this is particularly a big deal as it means ordinarily I would require a conversion kit, but not so with this board as it has holes to accommodate both types of cooler (the Gigabyte board didn't). Also Intel CPU's appear to ship without stock coolers these days.This board also had plenty of USB C ports supported (2 on the rear and 1 header) as well as a 4 M.2 drive sockets and more PCI slots than average (5). Sadly one PCI port is obscured by my graphics card!So as far as hardware and hardware installation goes, this board is simply superb. Software install with Windows 11 was a bit fiddlier than I'd like, but not really any worse than most previous boards I've owned. Gigabyte in comparison excels here, but I eventually got the job done after typical download of drivers from Asus support plus Intel Inf updates and an unknown device recognised with a Dell driver. XMP memory profile works without issues which is a big plus as my original board was less than happy with XMP and would constantly switch this off automatically.The box contents are rather disappointing, with just the board, the odd screw, some sticky pads, wifi antenna and a couple of very short Sata cables. This appears to be a trend though as the Gigabyte board was similarly sparse! I remember my Z390 box was stuffed with all sorts of cables and mounting hardware!I've messed around with some USB superspeed devices on this board and no issues so far with all running significantly faster than the standard 480MB/s. I've thrown a few AAA games with ray tracing at it (using suitable GPU of course), and it and all seems stable amd smooth. Early days yet, but so far I am impressed with this board even if it doesn't have the super model good looks of the Gigabye Aorus or Asus ROG boards!This board is priced higher than the Gigabyte Aorus but so far has proved to be more stable so it seems you get what you pay for! OK so I'm comparing stability of this board paired with a 12th gen 12600k with a Gigabyte Z690 which was possibly faulty and a Z390 with 9th gen 9600k CPU, but some problematic games which a 9th gen CPU should happily handle are now running buttery smooth with all the same PSU, GPU, memory etc.

Plus: easy to instalclean to understand how you can use4 - NVMe m2 portsvery good audio codecsolid construction and easy to instal graphic card port PCI 5.0mobo for gamersVery good WiFiMinus:Price (too high)not too many USB ports on back panelNot enough USB sockets on mobo to cenect all USB from PC case (front panel) I have Corsair 7000x. This case has a 4 USB socket on front. I bought extra USB spliter to conect my case to mobo. Extra 10 pound,But final opinion about this motyherboard is Very good. I can honestly recommend.

The BIOS is highly adaptable for the needs of most users. The board is well laid out with plenty of FAN and a/RGB headers. 4 M.2 SSD slots with decent thermal covers. A good number of various USB ports on the I/O. A very good board for the price.

TL;DR: Great motherboard for work, mid-range editing and loads of peripherals. But if you haven't built a PC in a while, be on your toes, things have changed.Use case:The last time I built a PC was in 2013, with an ASUS z97-k motherboard driving an i7-4790. The main reason I picked ASUS again was that after the previous 2000s standard of motherboards lasting no more than 2-3 years on average, the z97-k setup still runs fine after ten years of daily work including video editing, rendering, and having hundreds of browser tabs open (and nowadays the latter taxes the system the most).The motherboard market:The fact that mid-range motherboards now cost 2.5x-3x as the high-end used to in 2013 (and the high-end now costs 10x) is a hard truth to concede to. There's no inflation, component price and shipping cost rise to account for a 300%+ hike. But the trend is not going down, so that's just what the game is now.Why go for a z790?Having spent way too much time with hardware testing videos, it's clear the z line is still the one that the best and sturdiest components go into. I don't like building a new PC every couple of years, so I need my components to last.For a 12th, 13th or 14th generation Intel, going with the z790 range was a no-brainer after seeing how z690 pricing was now often higher. The differences may be down to a couple of USB ports or M.2 slots, but why buy older for more money?Why the D4?At the time of writing, for web-based work, DDR4 RAM still performs as good and all components are still much cheaper than going for a DDR5-based build. I got my Corsair Pro DDR4 sticks for half the price of a similarly performing DDR5, so it was a no-brainer.Why the TUF Plus?While the ASUS line of boards is quite dizzying in its naming conventions, don't let the weird TUF GAMING name put you off if you're not in fact going for a gaming setup. You don't actually need to go up to the ProArt line of "creator" motherboards if you're not editing in 6K/8K or running an entire professional cinema-level editing and post-production studio off your machine.If you have lots of fast storage needs, you will love the many, many M.2 slots in this one. And no you don't "need" Gen5 drives. Gen4 is plenty with quality drives (Samsung 990 Pro, Crucial P5, even the Toshiba Kioxia G2's). I'm used to SATA SSD and HDD speeds -- that's the real jump.Also, LOTS of peripheral opportunities, which I'm happy to see with 2 cameras, 1 external audio preamp, 3 Stream Deck devices and other various USB dongles and doodads.Build experience:The build process for this z790 was mostly smooth.I liked the clear markings for screw holes, connection placement is generally well thought-out.I was very glad to realise that the M.2 slot that goes straight to the CPU does not share its PCIe lanes with the GPU slot, which is a weird "feature" in recent motherboards that I didn't even know about before building.The only M.2 slot without a preinstalled heatsink is obscured by taller GPUs so be sure to install that first and pop an extra M.2 heat sink on it to protect your drive from the GPU's heat.Overall the onboard heatsinks are not bad, but not very thick either. So for my fastest drives I ended up putting them in my slightly more robust heatsinks.When to pop the mainboard into your case is a tough question. The Fractal Torrent Compact is considered a "smaller" ATX case nowadays, even though it's bigger than my "large" Cooler Master from 15 years ago. I still had a horrible time plugging in the CPU's PSU cables to the top of the board (almost no clearance there), not to mention everyone's favourite cables, the power led, reset etc. things.Biggest gripes:1. Picking this exact board for a mid-range build was an absolute nightmare. The product comparison system on ASUS's own website is not fit for purpose. Instead of neatly organised tables and properly filtering out matching specs, dumps of spec lists with minor spelling alterations mean finding actual differences between very similar products is like looking for a needle in a haystack. I had to resort to building an entire spreadsheet to compare the ASUS, MSI and Gigabyte offerings of this range. It's ridiculous.2. Spending an hour figuring out that manipulating the back I/O panel did nothing to remove it, and in fact I was not supposed to be removing it either, just slot it into my case. However, other than the motherboard's specifications summary having a single line under "Special Features" saying "Pre-mounted I/O shield", there was absolutely no mention in the build otherwise good build guide that for this specific board, separating the back I/O from the shield and putting the shield on the case first before installing a motherboard is _not_ what you have to do, like you used to have to do for decades.3. The motherboard's manual is quite arbitrary in how it lists what's what on the board, and there's no single image showing what everything is. A lot of similar headers are stacked next to each other, or are scattered all across, with the teeniest-tinyest fonts. Not the most user-friendly.Summary:Despite all the minor shortcomings, this is a solid, good board, in the current market it's pretty good for value. It's the perfect compromise for people who want to do more taxing work on their desktop than daily general use, but don't want to go all-out for the ProArt range.

Ordered the Wednesday came Thursday morning. Board is fantastic. Installed ultra 7 and 7600mhz ram with xmp and no issues.Love it. Thank you.

item has 1 missing m.2 heating, also motherboard screws weren't there I'm not sure if they come whit screws I can live whit that but having a missing heating item definitely used returned item, 7 out of my 10 orders from Amazon started arriving used, and I just can't see why they have buy used options and sell the new item as used anywheres. the product on the other hand good can handle i9 13900kf with overclock had a 40k score on Cinebench R23 whit this motherboard if you can get a new one its a good one

Great stable motherboard, I had no installation issues on my first-ever build of my own computer, and I was even able to update the BIOS using ASUS EZ Flash 3.

Solid and easy to install and setup. Very happy with the purchase.