ASUS ROG Strix Z690-E Gaming WiFi Review

Up Close – Cooling and Backplate

Remember how we said that the M.2 heatspeader was big? This is why. Back to back M.2 slots stretching the whole width of the PCB. It is nice to be able to add another M.2 without having to dismantle your GPU to reach the slot.

  

We love the idea of “Game First, Work Second”, except if that was true these words wouldn’t exist and I’d be a little bit closer to completing Hollow Knight. We have to confess our first temptation with this curved heat pipe was to see if you could twang it like a ruler. We didn’t.

  

Removing it reveals the third of the three M.2 slots, should you have a drive – perhaps a PCIe 5.0 one – that demands a higher level of cooling than a mere heatspreader can provide.

  

Chunky isn’t solely the purview of the M.2 slot though, as the Strix Z690-E continues the ‘massive hunk of metal’ heatsink design we saw on the Maximus Formula. All metal. Extremely solid. We don’t yet know what power phases lie beneath, beyond them being listed on the ASUS website as 18+1, but if the Maximus has 105A we think the Strix probably has 90A at least.

  

Another view of the heatsink and it’s massive girth.

  

Behold the thiccness. Bask in it. This isn’t just for show either as our temperature results will reveal.

  

Lastly the rear panel has, from top to bottom, display outputs, BIOS tools (Clear CMOS and BIOS Flashback), USB ports of varying Type-A speeds and two USB Type-C in 10G and 20G formats. The LAN is a 2.5G offering, whilst the WiFi is the speedy 6E we’ve all grown to love on recent motherboards.