TweakTown's Rating: 90%
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The Bottom Line
This classy TUF Z890 board from ASUS has a lovely aesthetic and a mature BIOS. Thanks to an impressive five PCIe slots, you won't need to ditch your expansion cards either.
Pros
Five PCIe expansion slots
Brushed metal heatsink design
Front USB 20Gbps with 30W Fast Charge support
The rear USB ports are all 10Gbps minimum
Cons
Tough competition at this price
Average networking
Should you buy it?
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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing
Now, here's a beauty! The ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi keeps things simple and understated. Forget about silk screening and lines and curves plastered everywhere. This board will easily blend into a wide variety of builds. White or silver boards have an inherently clean look about them.
The TUF Z890-Pro Wi-Fi is a mid-range offering. ASUS has shifted the TUF brand away from its military-themed roots, and now it sits as ASUS' third-tier gaming brand, below the ROG and Strix families. It's all just marketing, though, and gamers or creators shouldn't need to be pigeonholed.
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Like all Z890 motherboards, the TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi brings many ease-of-use improvements, support for Intel Core Ultra 200S CPUs, and high-speed CUDIMM support. The platform is solid even if Arrow Lake didn't set the world on fire. With the right partnering components, an Arrow Lake system can be used in plenty of use cases.
Item Details
Model ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi
CPU Socket LGA 1851
Chipset Intel Z890
CPU Support Intel Core Ultra 200 series
Memory 4x DDR5 DIMM slots, up to 192GB, up to 9066+ MT/s (OC), Non-ECC, Clocked Unbuffered DIMM (CUDIMM)
Expansion slots 2x PCIe x16, 1x PCIe x4, 2x PCIe x1
Storage 4x M.2, 4x SATA
Ethernet Intel I226-V 2.5G
Wireless & Bluetooth MediaTek MT7925 Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
USB Up to 2x Thunderbolt 4, 1x USB 20Gbps, 6x USB 10Gbps, 2x USB 5Gbps, 4x USB 2.0
Audio Realtek ALC1220P
Form Factor ATX
MSRP $329
The Z890-Pro Wi-Fi has a solid feature set, though many of its features are common to boards in this price range. You get 2.5G LAN, 160MHz Wi-Fi 7, four M.2 slots, dual Thunderbolt 4, and lots of fast USB ports, including front PD 3.0 support,
But there's a more interesting characteristic. The board has five PCIe expansion slots. It's one of few with that many slots, making it an excellent option for users with expansion cards.
ASUS priced the TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi at $329. That's a little expensive compared to some competing offerings, but the appeal of a board often comes down to more than just a feature comparison checklist.
Photo of the ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-PRO WiFi ATX Motherboard
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Packaging, Accessories, and Overview
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VIEW GALLERY - 33 IMAGES
In contrast to some of the plainer boxes we've seen recently, the TUF Z890-Pro Wi-Fi has some extra logos on the front.
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The rear of the box provides a complete list of all the key features and specifications.
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TUF Z890-Pro Wi-Fi comes with a basic set of accessories. The Wi-Fi antenna is a highlight. It's adjustable and well-built. You also have two SATA cables, some M.2 bits and bobs, a quick setup guide, an ASUS Webstorage cloud service flyer, and some attractive silver TUF stickers.
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The final accessory is a plastic cover with TUF branding. It can be installed atop the primary VRM heatsink. I have no idea why anyone would prefer a cheap-looking thing like that over the lovely brushed metal finish of the underlying heatsink, but the choice is yours.
It's becoming rare to see bundled flash drives with anything less than high-end boards, so you'll need to visit the ASUS website to get the board's drivers and utilities. You can rely on the DriverHub app, but go over the optional modules to avoid installing a bunch of apps you may not use. The TurboV Core system control app and Aura Sync ARGB control software are a couple that will come in handy.
Motherboard Overview
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The ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi is a lovely-looking motherboard. The brushed metal heatsinks give it an industrial look, and the fonts used give it a classy appearance.
Just one tiny ARGB area is located at the top right of the board, not far from the main 24-pin ATX connector. The board includes three ARGB headers. With its attractive silver and white design, you can choose from a wide range of color themes from across the light spectrum.
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The Z890-Pro Wi-Fi is well-equipped to handle many fans and cooling. It has eight 4-pin fan headers and some additional headers, including a thermistor header, COM port, and Thunderbolt 4 header, but otherwise, the board is unremarkable in terms of internal I/O. For example, it lacks power and reset buttons and a debug readout.
The USB header complement comprises a single Type-C 20Gbps port with 30W Fast Charge support, two 5Gbps ports, and four USB 2.0 ports.
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Four DIMM slots support speeds of DDR5-9066+, with up to 192GB supported. That's not an incredibly high speed, and for some reason, the board only supports up to 192GB of memory, as opposed to 256GB for many of its competitors. 192GB is more than enough for most users, and ASUS may introduce a BIOS update to support higher capacity kits, as 256GB is the platform limit.
A quick memory test with a CUDIMM kit saw us reach DDR5-9200 with XMP settings. That's not a bad result, and it goes beyond the officially supported speed of 9066 MT/s. Of course, ASUS has plenty of ROG offerings for those who want to run fast memory. It makes a lot more sense to pair the TUF Z890-Pro Wi-Fi with a more mainstream kit in the DDR5-6000 to DDR5-7200 range. We used a 7200 MT/s kit for our benchmark testing, and it worked like a charm.
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The Z890-Pro Wi-Fi has a capable 16+1+2+1 (VCCCore, VCCGT, VCCSA, and VNNAON) phase VRM with 80A stages. It's more than enough to handle an overclocked Core Ultra 9 285K.
Despite the improved power efficiency of Arrow Lake processors, good-quality Z890 motherboards come with over-spec VRM solutions and accompanying heatsinks. The brushed metal heatsinks of the TUF Z890-Pro Wi-Fi don't just look great; they work well, too. A test with a 10-minute loop of Cinebench R24 led to a peak VRM temperature of 59 degrees Celsius, which is only slightly behind some of the much more expensive Z890 boards we've tested.
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The Z890-Pro Wi-Fi has four PCB-mounted M.2 slots. The primary M.2 slot supports PCIe 5.0 drives, while the other three support PCIe 4.0. As expected, the primary slot has a dedicated cooling block with a well-designed retention mechanism. Less expected is the large plate that cools only the second slot. It shares cooling duties with the underlying chipset heatsink. A long metal plate cools the bottom pair of slots.
This setup is interesting. Cooling a single drive with such a large plate might seem odd, but some extra cooling area makes sense, given its proximity to a heat-dumping graphics card. The bottom pair of slots are connected to the chipset and should remain mostly free from the heating influence of a graphics card.
Four SATA ports join the four M.2 slots. Several competing boards have five M.2 slots; whether you need five or more is up to you. Given the PCIe lane restrictions inherent to AM5 and LGA 1851 platforms, five or more slots mean compromises when you fully populate a system with expansion cards. That brings us to our next point.
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The Z890-Pro Wi-Fi features an impressive five PCIe slots. The primary slot supports PCIe 5.0 x16 devices (with x8+x4+x4 bifurcation support) and is reinforced for heavy graphics cards. The others support PCIe 4.0 and are all connected to the chipset. They consist of an x16 slot (x4 electrically), a single x4 slot, and two x1 slots.
Of course, if you use a dual or triple slot graphics card, you'll lose access to at least one of them, but for those who aren't that interested in gaming, the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi is one of few boards that supports up to five expansion cards. Excellent!
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The rear I/O of the board is reasonable but falls behind that of some of its competitors.
The highlight is the USB complement, consisting of dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports with DP support. The other six USB ports are all 10Gbps ports, making the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi a solid option for users with several bandwidth-loving USB peripherals, such as external hard drives and SSDs.
It's good to see both DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports, meaning the board is a good choice for those looking to use Arrow Lake processors' strong integrated graphics and multi-monitor support.
A BIOS flashback button is a welcome inclusion, though Intel has yet to confirm if its next-generation CPU family will use the LGA 1851 socket. It remains to be seen how useful it will be. For now, it will be helpful for unreleased non-K Core Ultra processors. If you wish to reset the BIOS, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way via a jumper.
The networking options are where the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi falls a bit behind. It includes an Intel i226-V 2.5G controller and a MediaTek MT7925 Wi-Fi 7 controller, which supports 160MHz connections only. Compared to just a couple of years ago, that would be a solid pair of networking options, but competitors are stepping up, and 5G LAN and 320MHz Wi-Fi support are not uncommon in the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi's price range.
Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports and S/PDIF. A Realtek ALC1220 codec drives these.
UEFI and Test System
UEFI
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Though ASUS doesn't promote the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi as an overclocking board, it's still packed with many OC-oriented features and tweaking functionality.
With many options comes a steeper learning curve, but a general set-and-forget user will find most of what they need on the EZ-Mode page without even having to navigate to the advanced section.
Like most ASUS boards, the fan control page is top-notch, while the Q-Dashboard page is helpful for troubleshooting. This page lists nearly all the boards' headers, slots, and ports, showing a green light if they're populated. It's an easy way to troubleshoot a problematic component or peripheral.
It's exceedingly rare for ASUS to trip up regarding its enthusiast-tier BIOS functionality and quality control. Though we cannot spend hour after hour going through all the settings or testing with various components, it is always good when everything works, mainly when playing around with memory. We didn't have to reset the CMOS even once during our admittedly limited time with the board. It recovers quickly to a default state should you ask too much of it.
Test System
Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding
Cinebench 2024
Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that Intel and AMD have relied on to showcase their newest platforms during unveilings. The benchmark has two tests: a single-core workload that utilizes one thread, or 1T, and a multi-threaded test that uses all threads, or nT, of a tested CPU.
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Cinebench shows the Core Ultra 9 285K at its best. The Z890-Pro Wi-Fi returned a result well within an acceptable margin-of-error range for a 285K.
Blender
A rendering application like Blender is one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU like a Core Ultra 9 285K. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.
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The motherboard makes little difference in our Blender test; the result of 396 seconds is five seconds faster than the slowest result. That's not much in percentage terms for a test that takes over six and a half minutes to complete.
Handbrake
Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher result means the task will take less time to complete.
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The 285K is an excellent chip for rendering and encoding; we see it again here. This is a decent result for the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi, as the slightly faster ASUS Apex and MSI Unify-X boards are dual-DIMM boards, which appears beneficial here.
Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory latency
7Zip
7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's influenced by memory speed and latency changes and scales with the number of CPU threads.
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A result of 192.22 BIPS in this memory-sensitive benchmark is a strong result for the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi.
AIDA64 Memory Latency
Memory latency has traditionally favored Intel and its monolithic designs; however, Arrow Lake is far less impressive in that regard. A nanosecond or two here or there is not noticeable, but more significant margins, mainly when the memory is frequently accessed, will result in more undesirable and cumulative idle cycles.
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The 285K's memory latency performance is a weak point of the new architecture, but a decent DDR5-7200 kit such as the G.Skill one we use for testing shaves a good 10ns off of what you'd expect from a DDR5-6000 kit. It's another strong result for the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi here.
Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark
PCMark 10 Productivity
We'd love to use our PCs purely for leisure, but some of us have to work, too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.
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The TUF board is mid-pack here, though the differences between the boards are not significant. The test results can also vary if run several times.
3DMark Storage
UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game. This test is the same as running the actual game without the inconsistencies inherent in application testing.
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This result is as expected for our Teamgroup Z540 PCIe 5.0 SSD with the operating system installed. The MSI board is ahead, likely due to the positioning of its primary M.2 slot.
3DMark Time Spy Extreme
Time Spy Extreme is losing favor as a graphics benchmark in favor of Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.
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Here, the board sits mid-pack. However, the differences are not significant in percentage terms.
Benchmarks - Gaming
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when things like ray tracing are removed, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.
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The tested boards all deliver essentially identical results in this GPU-limited game.
Horizon Zero Dawn
Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards when using the' favor performance' preset.
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Here's another gaming result that shows the motherboards are all within a small percentage of one another, at least in terms of average FPS.
Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.
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Metro Exodus, along with the other gaming results, shows that the motherboard usually makes little difference in gaming performance when all other components and settings are equal.
VRM and SSD Temperatures
These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. In the case of VRM testing, each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.
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As long as you have some airflow around the CPU socket, a fully loaded Core Ultra 9 285K is no challenge for the TUF Z890-Pro Wi-Fi.
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This is the only weak result for the Z890-Pro. A peak result of 62 degrees Celsius is the highest of the tested boards. It's odd, given the integrated heatsink has a lot of area. It does sit very close to the graphics card, which, when in an idle state with the fans not spinning, means there's a hot backplate sitting just a couple of millimeters below the M.2 heatsink. Still, it's not too bad. Good case airflow can make all the difference.
Final Thoughts
The ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi is an interesting option in its price range, mainly if you can use its primary strength: the number of expansion slots on offer. Five slots make the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi one of few boards with that many, so if you have several expansion cards, that might be the singular reason to choose it over a competing board.
Expansion slots aside, the board comes with a solid, if regulation, set of features. Four M.2 slots, 2.5G LAN, and 160MHz Wi-Fi 7 are the minimum you'd expect in this price range. The rear USB complement, consisting of six 10Gbps USB ports, makes it an excellent option for users with several high-speed USB devices. They join the dual Thunderbolt 4 ports.
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The board has a lovely aesthetic, too. If you fancy a PC with a light theme and deck it out with ARGB, the ASUS will suit you. Do leave that horrible plastic heatsink attachment off of it, though! The heatsink design is arguably the best-looking of any mid-range Z890 motherboard.
It's a solid performer, too. Although the motherboard makes little difference when all other components are equal, the ASUS performed well, and its BIOS is a mature offering. The same can't be said of every Z890 board in the early phase of the Arrow Lake release.
At $330, the Z890-Pro Wi-Fi offers reasonable value, though it's not the board's strongest suit. There's a lot of strong competition around this price point, all of which offer similar, if not superior, feature sets.
It all depends on what you value most. There are other alternatives if you want 5G LAN, five M.2 slots, or 320MHz Wi-Fi 7. But, if you've got that cherished sound card, M.2 expansion card or anything that you don't want to jettison, the TUF Gaming Z890-Pro may be one to consider. If not the only one to consider in this price range.
Let's face it: the ASUS brand has a loyal following, and the TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi will appeal to many buyers on the strength of the brand name alone. That's fine! It's a solid board. It would really stand out if it were $20 or $30 cheaper. But with its lovely look, solid feature set, support for five expansion cards, and typical ASUS BIOS quality, it's a small premium many will be happy to pay.