ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming WiFi Motherboard Review

The Box and Packaging

The box and packing was surprisngly compact for a full size ATX motherboard. Insode, you’ll find the usual user guide, a ROG keyring/lanyard, 2 x fan holder, graphics card holder, 2 x spare M.2 Q-latch, a thermal pad for M.2 SSD, and some cable ties.

The ASUS ROG Strix Z790-E Gamning WiFi Motherboard

The motherboard comes in a black matte finish can comes with a really cool looking ROG Strix design on the reverse side of the board. The I/O hood features a large VRM heatsink array with bult-in heatpipe, and comes with Aura lighting displaying the Strix Logo … looks pretty cool.

One thing you’ll notice about this motherboard is the amount of M.2 heatsinks onboard. It’s definitely needed to help cool the latest PCIE Gen5 SSDs, which are know to run extremnely hot.

Some good news for existing Z690 motherboard owners. If you’re and you’re planning to upgrade to the newer Z790 motheboard, it uses the same LGA1700 socket as the previous gen Z690, so the mounting brackets for the CPU cooler are the same.

A Closer Look

As you can see below, you get 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, supporting the latest next-gen graphics card, there’s also 2 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slots (support x4 mode), and 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slot.

The motherboard comes with  4 x DDR5 DIMMS slots supporting memory speed of up to DDR5-7800 OC+.  Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram. 

You’ll find 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. Make sure you both of these are connected to ensure smooth operation.

On the top-right side of the board, diagnostic LEDs, the onboard power-on button and 2 x ARGB headers (1 x 3-pin and 1 x 4-pin)

I love the PCIE slot Q-Release and the M.2 Q-latch, which allows hassle-free and easy intallation of the graphics card and M.2 SSDs. And talking about storage, there’s 4 SATA ports, 1 x PCIe 5.0 x4 mode, and  4 x PCIe 4.0 x4 mode M.2 slots.

On the bottom-left corner, you’ll find the ROG SupremeFX chip and premium audio caps, which gives you 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC ALC408. And for connectivity, it comes with Intel’s 2.5G LAN with Asus LANGuard, as well as WiFi 6E + Bluetooth 5.3.

The rear I/O panel features a DisplayPort, HDMI port, 3.2 Gen 1 ports , BIOS Flashback button, Clear CMOS switch, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port (1 x USB Type-C), 7 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports  (6 x Type-A + 1 x USB Type-C), Intel 2.5G LAN port, Killer E3100 2.5G LAN port, WiFi 6e antenna, and an array of audio connectors.