ASUS Z490-Plus WiFi TUF Gaming Preview

Up Close – Continued

At the bottom right we find a RGB LED strip header sitting above the usual front panel connections. There are also some more SATA ports here too, in the vertical orientation.

  

Lastly we have a couple more fan headers surrounding the USB internal header. You can also get a closer look at the M.2 heatspreader with its combination of smooth blackness and tight lines.

  

If you prefer your cooling to be connected in the midboard then the TUF Gaming has you covered, with both an AIO and System fan header mounted between the heatsink and the uppermost PCIe slot.

  

The power stage is a 12+2 setup with control by DrMOS. We don’t yet know the full amp rating, but with the lowest we’ve seen so far being around 50A it should still be more than enough to enable us to overclock the latest 10th Gen Intel CPUs.

  

Around the back we find a selection of ports that will be familiar to anyone who has looked through all of our previews up to now. There is a combined PS/2 port for reasons we still don’t fully understand, USB 3.2 Gen2 in both A and C alongside USB 3.2 Gen1 ports. A DisplayPort and HDMI is there for anyone using this with an iGPU equipped CPU instead of a discrete graphics card, and the 2.5G LAN and WiFi antenna headings round off the back panel options.

  

The TUF Gaming VRM heatsinks are a bit of a step away from those we’ve seen in our previews up to now. With only a few fins sticking out of a fairly thin heatsink we hope that ASUS have put enough metal here to keep the temperatures low when we really start to push the motherboard overclocking. It looks a lot different to the majority of current designs. It is, dare we say it, old school.

  

And now a preview for cats. Meow meow meow purr meow. Meow meow meow ooh shiny laser pointer… *kadunk*