Introduction
This time we’ve the brand new ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI in our hands for an in-depth review. The TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI features Intel’s Z890 chipset, for the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 lineup. For those unfamiliar with ASUS’s TUF GAMING line, that is the road targeted on the Entry level gamer, or someone constructing one among their first PCs, but with a ‘tough’ design and aesthetic using quality components with a definite design. With that being said, this continues to be a Z890 motherboard and is priced at such with a price tag of $319.99 on the time of writing.
When you usually are not accustomed to the Intel Core Ultra Series 2 CPUs, or the Z890 chipset, you’ll want to take an in depth have a look at our Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & Ultra 5 245K CPU Review that we did on the product launch last yr. There we go into depth on the brand new features, and performance of the chips overall. We do need to remind our readers that this latest generation from Intel provides ample Gen5 PCIe lanes to permit for each a Gen5 GPU, AND a Gen5 NVME drive to operate concurrently, which was a standing grievance from our review staff with the last generation from Intel.
Outside of the extra Gen5 lanes, you’ll notice the extra Gen4 lanes available if the chipset manufacturer so chooses official support as much as 6,400 MHz memory speeds while not having to overclock, and the initial groundwork for adding an NPU to your system for AI in the long run. The last necessary thing to notice is the requirement for manufacturers to incorporate at minimum two (2) Thunderbolt 4 Ports, which is greatly appreciated for expanded connectivity options.
Packaging and Contents
The ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI is available in on the $320 price point, putting it within the mid to low end of the pricing for a Z890 motherboard that we’ve seen come through our doors so far. As such the package contents are a bit more sparse than you may see on other Z890 motherboards. You’ll find the usual two (2) SATA 6Gb/s cables, WIFI antenna with stand, M.2 NNVME mounting screw, M.2 rubber pads, the usual stickers, a TUF GAMING nameplate to go over your VRM cooling, a fast start guide and regulatory notices, and at last ASUS’s latest M.2 Q-Slide. The Q-Slide allows for quick removal of any M.2 device from the first M.2 slot, it simply clips on to the uppermost M.2 slot and slides to lock in your drive.
One very last thing we would like to notice, we’ve seen prior to now that the packaging for the ASUS motherboards has been quite robust looking, but have thankfully never needed to check it. This time the packaging arrived in a less-than-perfect condition (As you may see from the photos), nevertheless, the packaging held up perfectly and you might not tell as soon because the box was opened.
ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI Features
While appearance just isn’t something we are likely to concentrate on, the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI is a muted black-and-white theme that we’re sure most gamers will enjoy. It has small details, from the “TUF” on the Gen5 M.2 cooler with the M.2 Q-Release system, and cooling for the lower M.2 slots. Beyond this, you will notice a bigger VRM Heatsink system and a metal-reinforced Gen5 PCIe slot.
Outside of all this, we’ve seen most manufacturers have a big DIY-friendly approach with the recent generation of motherboards, and ASUS isn’t any exception to this with the TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI. ASUS has included a PCIe Q-Release system for PCIe removal with the press of a button on the highest slot, the M.2 Q-Release for removal of the Gen5 NVME slot, along the Q-Latch for quick removal of the drive itself. After this, there’s also the Q-Slide mentioned earlier within the review, which allows for quick and straightforward installation of any size M.2 within the Gen5 NVME slot that’s fully tool-less. The last DIY-friendly inclusion is the BIOS FlashBack button to permit for easy BIOS updates, you simply have to have your BIOS on a USB drive, plugged into the marked port, and with a click of a button you may update the BIOS without the necessity to install a CPU or memory within the system.
Power Delivery
ASUS has chosen to go together with a 16+1+2+1 Power Phase Design for the TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS. This provides the user with 80 Amp Power Stages from DrMOS that we see very often on ASUS motherboards. This power setup will provide the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI with enough power to permit for the typical user’s Overclocking. ASUS has further provided TUF chokes to deliver rock-solid power to the CPU, these are coupled with TUF 5K black metallic capacitors allowing for a bigger temperature tolerance. For all this heat generation ASUS has elected to go together with an Enlarged VRM Heatsink, which performed admirably as noted later on this review.
Memory and Storage
As with all Z890 motherboards, the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI is compatible with DDR5, un-buffered, non-ECC memory, with a maximum capability of 192 GB, or 48 GB per slot. ASUS has included the ASUS Enhanced Memory Profile III (AEMP III) with this motherboard, this essentially allows for the BIOS to tune the memory frequency with limited input from the user. ASUS claims an as much as 25% increase in speeds, nevertheless, it ought to be noted that this feature is just available when using two DDR5 memory sticks.
Moreover, ASUS also includes DIMM Fit for memory tuning, the intent of that is to have the BIOS analyze the person memory modules for optimal performance and to see potential issues when pushing the memory past the usual 6,400 MHz speeds officially supported, all the way in which as much as 9,066 MHz listed speeds. We didn’t dive deep into either of those features, nevertheless without our Patriot 6,200 MHz memory kit we had no issues meeting its rated speeds with the XMP settings.
For NVME storage ASUS has provided a complete of 4 (4) M.2 NVMe slots for the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI. This includes two (2) from the Core Ultra Series 2 CPU, the M.2_1 slot that gives full PCIe 5.0 speeds, in addition to the following slot down below the second PCIe slot at PCIe 4.0 speeds. There are two (2) more slots from the Z890 chipset, situated above the lower PCIe x16 slot, M.2_3/4 which can be side by side and will be found under the lower M.2 cooler. The M.2_4 drive is shared and supports PCIe 4.0, or SATA modes. Finally, there’s the flexibility to put in 4 (4) total SATA 6GB/s drives.
Expansion
You’ll find a complete of 5 (5) PCIe expansion slots on the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI. The uppermost is the lone PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and is the just one provided by the CPU, while the remaining 4 (4) are all PCIe 4.0 slots which can be provided by the Z890 chipset. For this, the highest slot is the one one which has the Q-Release system for quick PCIe slot release. One thing to notice is that only the highest and bottom slots are full x16 size, with the remaining slots being two (2) at x1, and one (1) at x4, all three of which cannot have a bigger card installed in them.
I/O
The rear I/O for the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI is restricted in comparison with a number of the costlier Z890 motherboards available on the market. You’ll have one (1) Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C port, one (1) USB 20GBps Type-C port that also allows for DisplayPort output, three (3) USB 10 GBps Type-A ports, three (3) additional Type-A 5 GBps ports, a full-size DisplayPort, an HDMI port, WIFI antenna connectors for the WIFI 7 (From a MediaTek MT7925), an Intel 2.5G RJ-45 port, five (5) total audio jacks, an Optical S/PDIF out port, and the BIOS FlashBack button referenced earlier. The audio on this motherboard is all from the Realtek ALC1220P to supply as much as 7.1 Surround Sound.
Looking past the Rear I/O options there are additional storage options found on the motherboard itself. Outside of the Storage options mentioned earlier for each M.2 slots in addition to SATA 6Gb/s ports, the user will find one (1) USB 20 GBps connector for USB Type-C plugs, one (1) USB 5GBps header for a further two Type-A connectors, in addition to two (2) more USB 2.0 headers for a complete of 4 (4) more additional USB 2.0 connectors in your case.
When you are an RGB fan on the market, the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI provides some on-board LEDs near the 24-pin power connector, in addition to additional connection options. There are three (3) Addressable Gen 2 headers for connecting to. As at all times these can all be controlled, in addition to any RGB RAM, USB device, or GPU, via ASUS’s AURA SYNC system.
The last connectors we would like to the touch base with are the fan connections available for the user. All connectors are full 4-pin connectors, with two (2) designated for CPU cooling, one (1) for an AIO Pump header, and the last 4 (4) for chassis fans. All of those are situated in the everyday locations that you’ll see and are easy to make use of for installation in a case.
UEFI
As we’ve come to expect from latest motherboards, ASUS has provided the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI with an AMI UEFI BIOS with GUI support, which most users will immediately recognize. This UEFI is almost an identical to most other modern ASUS implementations, whether it’s an AMD or an Intel system, nevertheless, ASUS has modified the colour scheme to match the TUF GAMING series gold and black appearance and has the background set because the TUF logo.
If you first get into the UEFI you will discover yourself in “EZMode”, which immediately gives the user a fast overview of your RAM status, CPU temperature/speed/voltage, fan speeds, and quick overclocking amongst other things. From here we were capable of easily set our fans, and AIO pump, to 100% speed for our testing to maximise our system performance. After that, we quickly adjusted the XMP profile on the RAM to realize the complete 6,200 MHz speed available.
If you find yourself able to dive a bit deeper and enter “Advanced Mode”, you may just hit “F7” and you will discover yourself in a Favorites section for quick access to your most used settings. It is nice to do not forget that hitting “F7” at any time will alternate between each “EZMode” and “Advanced Mode”. While we went in depth within the UEFI’s Advanced Mode, we usually are not going to offer a full written review, nevertheless, you may take a have a look at the gallery below where we’ve added pictures of nearly all of the pages.
For the over-clockers on the market you’ll find yourself spending most of your time on the “Ai Tweaker” page. This page provides access to your XMP profile settings, performance preferences, Intel settings, clock frequencies, core ratios, and every other setting you may imagine needing. The Advanced page will dive into a number of the sub-system options just like the USB configuration, NVMe configuration, and more. The last part we would like to notice is the Tool tab that permits you to flash your UEFI with ASUS’s “EZ Flash” utility which worked perfectly for us on this motherboard, in addition to tools for secure NVMe drive erasing, and various other quick tools. As we mentioned above, please take a scroll through our gallery below for a more in depth dive on the Advanced Mode settings.
Motherboard Performance
With it being a brand new yr we decided it was time to revamp our performance review portion of our review. You will note from all of our team that we’re beginning to mix our testing and results right into a single section, with a gallery showing all of our results typically at the tip. We hope this helps speed up your ability to search out the knowledge you might be on the lookout for and offers you a little bit of a greater read. There may be one very last thing we would like to notice, going into 2025 we’ve decided to alter our Z890 testbed CPU to the Intel Core Ultra 7 265K.
We’re going to start with our normal storage review, and as with the adjustment to our testing layout, we’ve tweaked our testing drives barely. For our primary drive, we are actually using the MSI SPATIUM M570 PRO FROZR (originally reviewed at the tip of 2023), while the secondary drive we are going to use on any non-primary M.2 slots is our trusty ADATA LEGEND 970 2TB NVME SSE. As usual, we’re using CrystalDiskMark for testing, and through testing, we run the 1 GB profile on each drives concurrently to place the utmost load on the motherboard that we are able to.
For the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI, we were capable of achieve our greatest speed with the M570 installed within the M.2_1 and the ADATA 970 within the M.2_4 slot. We were capable of max out the M570 at a read speed of 12,377 MB/s and a write speed of 11,677 MB/s, while the 970 hit a read speed of seven,126 MB/s and a write speed of 6,995 MB/s (near maxing out the Gen4 slot it was in). The opposite two tests we ran were essentially the identical speed, take a have a look at the gallery for the ultimate speeds.
Next, we tested the memory bandwidth by utilizing AIDA64’s Cache & Memory Benchmark, where our Patriot memory kit was capable of achieve a Memory read speed of 94,4829 MB/s, a write speed of 84,571 MB/s, and a replica speed of 86,707 MB/s. These are right consistent with the speeds we’ve come to expect with this memory kit on the Intel Z890 platform.
Following this testing we hit the synthetic benchmarks of PCMark, 3Dmark, Cinebench, Blender and at last V-Ray. In all of those tests, we bumped into no surprises and the whole lot was testing around where we expect from the 265K CPU. For PCMar,k we hit a complete rating of seven,319, which rivals previous testing for our Intel Core Ultra 9 285k in the identical test. Our 3Dmark testing gave us a Max Threads rating of 16,894, and Night Raid gave us a final rating of 25,236, with a CPU-only rating of 23,681. When doing the Cinebench testing we had a Multi Core rating of 36,098 and a Single Core rating of two,324. Blender gave us final scores of 219.62 for Monster, 143.45 for Junkshop, and 109.17 for Classroom, all of that are good scores where we expect them. Finally V-Ray clocks in at 35,346.
The last a part of our testing that we’re ensuring stays around is our VRM Temperature test. As a reminder for this test, we run Cinebench R23 for no less than 15 Minutes on Multi-Core to completely stress the system, then we record the VRM/MOSFET temperatures as reported by HWiNFO 64, in addition to observed temperatures as measured by an Infrared Handheld thermometer, with all testing occurring at an ambient temperature of ~75°F (~24°C).
The ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI didn’t appear to report a temperature for the VRM / MOSFET, we suspect that is as a consequence of a problem with the version of HWiNFO that we had available on the time of testing. Our handheld testing provided us with a temperature of 42.5°C maximum on the VRM cooling within the MOSFET area and a 40.7°F temperature for the Z890 chipset. Each of those are barely below a number of the higher-end boards we’ve seen recently but are well inside reasonable temperatures to expect on this contemporary generation of Intel chipsets.
Conclusion
The ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI might fall into the lower to mid-range of the ASUS Z890 lineup, but did it punch above its weight class? Truthfully the reply isn’t any, however it didn’t disappoint either. ASUS provided this motherboard with a mean amount of M.2 slots with 4 (4), adequate cooling for the VRMs, a mostly toolless installation for major devices, and metal reinforcement on the first PCIe slot.
Installlation and Use
Installation of the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI was quick and straightforward. Installation onto our test bed was about average, as was the connection of our fans and AIO pump. We did have some slight hiccups with Windows 11’s installation. While we were capable of install it without a problem, after we went to begin to use updates we noticed that our ethernet was not connected. This was quickly fixed with a visit to ASUS’s support for the ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI and transferring the driving force to the pc. After this, we had no issues with Windows. After we got into our testing routine, there have been no issues. All of our testing software installed with no issues, and testing went and not using a hitch.
Final Points
The ASUS TUF GAMING Z890-PLUS WIFI went through all of our testing with no issues and scored as expected if not a bit higher. The VRM cooling performed in addition to we could hope, and left loads of room for the installation of the CPU cooling. Overall this was a really solid motherboard, it will possibly be summed up because the Jack of All Trades, however the Master of none. It’s a very good motherboard, and at $320 might be appropriately priced, however it doesn’t provide any “WOW” factor, or supreme value for the cash.
On the time of writing, the motherboard is on sale for $50 off each on ASUS’s store web front and in our pricing widget below where you will discover the sale. This sale price of $269.99 does make it more attractive at this price point in case you are on the lookout for a strong, Z890-based motherboard for Intel Arrow Lake CPUs.
