Published: October 17, 2023 | Price: £365.99 | Author: Tom Logan

ASUS TUF Gaming Z790-Pro WiFi Review

Conclusion

A lot of the Z790 motherboards we’ve reviewed that support the 14th Gen Intel CPUs out of the box are expensive. With so much technology built in that’s not a surprise. PCI Express 5.0 is expensive. 20Gbps USBs don’t come cheap. Neither does Thunderbolt support. Add in the amount of power phases necessary to run the beefiest Core i9, the costs quickly rise.

The ASUS TUF Gaming range has always managed to do everything you actually need a product to do, without breaking the bank. Whereas many years ago a high end motherboard and more affordable option had huge performance differences, these days that’s not the case. The main thing you gain by going for a flagship model is connectivity, and overclocking potential. With the heat generated by the 14th Generation of Intel CPUs, overclocking requires more expensive cooling than you might imagine. Certainly more than anyone with a restricted budget can afford. Plus of course the processors are so good at automatically boosting that you don’t really need to overclock much any more. At least the average user doesn’t.

All of which makes the Â£365.99 MSRP of the Z790 TUF a complete winner. You’re not having to go down to the B-chipset. So you get all the benefits of the full-fat Z790 chipset, just in a more affordable package. We saw how the TUF has 60A 16+1+1 power stages, but also that they were more than enough for our Core i9-14900K. Performance might not have topped any of our graphs. However, digging into the numbers you can see that the gap between top and bottom is minimal.

It isn’t even that you’re missing out on to much connectivity. Four M.2 slots – albeit no Gen5 ones – and 8 rear USB ports are more than most will need. That returns us to our first words of today’s review. Sometimes you need to be honest with yourself about what you actually need. Yes we’d all love a flagship motherboard with features we’ll never touch. For most of us we’d rather save Â£300 on the motherboard and spend that on a better CPU or GPU. Areas where you are really rewarded for your extra expenditure.

All of which means that the ASUS Z790 TUF Gaming Pro WiFi is a bargain. Perfect for the gamers out there, and thus wins our OC3D Gamers Choice Award.