This last week Intel launched their new Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs and with that the Z890 chipset as well. I started off our testing by taking a look at the Iced-out Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Pro Ice, but that wasn’t the only motherboard that came in. Asus sent over a few boards as well and now that I have a little more time I can finally dive in and see what they have to offer. I’m starting off with the Asus TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi which isn’t Asus’s cheapest Z890 board but does look to be a good mix of features without costing as much as some of the other gaming-focused boards. I was really impressed with the Asus TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wifi that I took a look at last month. Will their Z890 TUF Gaming board do the same? Let’s find out!

Product Name: Asus TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi

Review Sample Provided by: Asus

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

Packaging and Accessories

The packaging for the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi looks exactly the same as the TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wifi that I recently took a look at. The front has a black background and they have the TUF logo across the entire box in a grey color. The Asus branding is up in the top left corner and the full model name is printed in that TUF yellow and white. Below the name, Asus has a line of different badges and certifications to give you an idea of at least a few features. In the bottom right corner, they show off its Asus Aura sync support and then it has the Intel-mandated badges that show this works with the new Core Ultra CPUs and a badge showing this has the Z890 chipset, if that model name didn’t already let you know. Around on the back of the box, there is a little more going on, namely a full top-down picture of the board which I’m always happy to see. It's not a big deal when shopping online, but if you are shopping in person it's nice to be able to see what you are looking at. Beyond that, they touch on a few key features, namely the Thunderbolt 4 port, Wifi 7 and 2.5G NIC, and a few of their “Q” features that simplify things. It also has a fairly complete specification listing and alongside of that a line drawing showing all of the connections on the rear I/O.

When you get inside of the box the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi is sitting in a cardboard tray that has a few extra bits that keep it from moving around even when upside down. The board itself is wrapped in a static protective bag. Then up under the motherboard tray, you will find the documentation and accessories. For documentation, you get a paper talking about Asus WebStorage and a black and white manual. I hate that I have to point it out, but this manual is at least specific to the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi, a lot of companies these days save and print just one universal manual that might cover an entire line of boards. Along with those you also get a half shelf of TUF branded stickers. For accessories, you have four small baggies with M.2 accessories in them. Two have rubber bumpers for when you run different length M.2 drives. One has a standard M.2 post and screw and the last has the M.2 Q-Slide. Anything with the “Q-“ in it from Asus is focused on making things easier and this one does it by sliding to support 2242 and 2260 m.2’s without any tools. It slides on the backplate on the main M.2 slot. One of the two larger bags you get has two black SATA cables with one having a right-angled connection on one end. Then the last has a TUF Gaming removable nameplate that slides on over top of the rear I/O cover/heatsink to change the look up.  

With the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi having a WiFi 7 NIC, it does of course also have a wireless antenna and if you have seen any of the Asus boards for the last few generations going back to 2022 have the same design. It is black and flips out. The base has a rubber grip and is magnetic. The only change here is the connections at the end of the cables have snap on connections which they call Q-Antenna.

Board Layout and Pictures

While the last TUF Gaming board’s styling isn’t what I might run in my PC, it did have a cool big pickup truck-like feel that targets a big market segment that no one else focuses on. For the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi however, they have changed things up once again and ironically this clean and simpler look is more of what I would personally like, I do still kind of wish it had the other styling just to get more of a variety. That said, the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi looks great with its blacked-out board and heatsinks.

The TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi isn’t completely covered in heatsinks, but it isn’t too far off. The largest heatsinks are the two around the CPU socket. These have a few different functions. They handle keeping the 16+1+2+1 80A VRMs cool.  They don’t have a heatpipe connecting the two, they are just jammed in together so that isn’t needed to transfer the heat. The left heatsink runs up over top of the rear I/O which gives that nice covered look and gives the cooling hear a lot more surface area. When we look up under that cover you can see multiple fins sticking out into that space as well. The top is covered by the two heatsinks being up against each other. Asus does put heatsinks on the NIC on some of their new boards but I can’t see if they are doing that here. It is a lot less important with the 2.5G NIC compared to the 5G and 10G NICs. All of the M.2s except for one have their own dedicated heatinks as well. The PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot at the top has by far the largest heatsink with a thick heatsink with the TUF logo designed into its shape and showing on the machined end. This heatsink is toolless with a simple push button to pop it off. The second M.2 heatsink down at the bottom does require tools, it has two screws that hold it down. The top slot has a small backplate with thermal tape to add a little more cooling for both sides of the drive. The bottom heatsink runs the length of the board and covers two M.2 slots. Last up for cooling the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi has a heatsink on the chipset as well. That is low profile and has the TUF branding on top of a clear cover on top, it doesn’t have much for cooling surface area.

Before working our way around the board, we might as well touch on the M.2 and PCIe capabilities of the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi. Where a lot of boards have just two PCIe slots, Asus has packed this board full like an old-school board. There are two X16 length slots, one x4 length slot, and two x1 length slots. The top X16 slot is the main PCIe slot and runs right off of the CPU and is the only PCIe 5.0 slot. This does have metal shielding around it to give it more strength to help support modern GPUs. It also has a built-in latch with a button to release it to help make that more accessible. The two X1 slots are PCIe 4.0 and x1 lanes as you would expect. Then the x4 length slot is also PCIe 4.0 and surprisingly runs at x4 and doesn’t get disabled when you use the M.2 slots which is great to see. The two x1 slots are most likely going to be covered by a large GPU but the x4 is in a nice and usable location. Then down at the bottom, the x16 length slot down there has x4 lanes as well. For the M.2 slots, there are three with heatsinks and one sitting next to the x1 PCIe slot that doesn’t have a heatsink. The top slot with the large heatsink is PCIe 5.0 x4 and supports 2242, 2260, and the standard 2280 length drives by using the sliding mount included in the box. The uncovered M.2 is a 2280 length and it is PCIe x4 but still runs off of the CPU. The bottom two M.2 slots are then running on the chipset and are PCIe 4.0 x4 with one also supporting SATA M.2 drives. One of those slots can handle 2280 or 22110 length drives and the other handles 2242,2260, and 2280 length.

Starting in the top left corner, let’s check out what all the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi has to offer. This area is mostly filled with the heatsinks for the VRMs and the rear I/O but up above that Asus did tuck in the two 8-pin CPU power connections. I would love to see a fan header in that area like they have done in the past, either here or just below the rear I/O for a rear case fan but other than that this is all you would expect in this area.

In the top right, it has the CPU socket and the four DDR5 DIMMS taking up most of the real estate, but even still a lot is going on. Up on the top edge, there are three 4-pin fan headers, one being for the AIO pump. Two of those come with cool little covers on them to protect the pins, apparently this is an area where boards see accidental damage more. Between those ASsus also has slipped in small surface-mounted LEDs that let you know the boot status. The TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi doesn’t have a status LED other than these so they will be especially helpful if dealing with a boot issue. Moving down the side edge there is one 3-pin aRGB header in white and the 24-pin motherboard power. Below that is a newer front panel USB 3.2 Gen 2 header and one standard USB 3.2 header as well.

The bottom right corner starts with the button that releases the top PCIe slot latch. Then below that there are two SATA ports at a right angle facing out the side. In the far right corner, you have the front panel connections. Then a chassis intrusion detection header and there are two more 4-pin PWM fan headers (5 in total so far). There are two more SATA ports, this time facing up which gives the board 4 in total. Then on the left, there are two more 3-pin addressable RGB headers which give a total of three addressable but none of the legacy older 4-pin RGB headers.

Continuing along the bottom edge to the bottom left quadrant there are two USB 2.0 headers. Then you have the clear CMOS header. There is a Thunderbolt header and then our last 4-pin PWM fan header giving the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi a total of six. There is one COM header then you have the front panel header for the audio. For audio, the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi is running the Realtek ALC1220P 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC and has a shield as well as the isolated PCB to try to keep interference to a minimum.

For the rear I/O, the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi has a pre-attached I/O which which is standard these days but still good to see and that is blacked out other than the silver used for the legends for all of the connections and the TUF logo. On the far left it comes with two onboard video display outputs, a DisplayPort and an HDMI. Next to that is a small button for the BIOS FlaskBack feature that can let use a USB drive to update the BIOS without a CPU or memory installed. Next to that, you have two Type-C connections. One is a USB 20 Gbps port and also has DisplayPort Alt mode. Then the second is a Thunderbolt 4 USB port. There are three light blue USB Type-A ports that are all 10Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen 2) ports and then three dark blue that are all USB 5Gbps (USB 3.2). The TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi has one wired NIC which is an Intel 2.5G and this has Asus’s TufGuard which gives surge protection on the NIC. Then next to that are the two snap on wireless antenna connections for the board’s WiFi 7 NIC. Last up, on the right it has a standard audio connection configuration which we don’t see often anymore. You get five total audio jacks and one optical S/PDIF output.

The back of the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi shows off the black PCB. Along with all of the certification badges that they have printed back here it also has a large TUF Gaming logo across most of the bottom. There aren’t any extra shields or supports back here. Beyond that, you can see that a majority of the audio circuitry does have the isolated PCB but there are four splits in it in different places.

BIOS

Rather than have stacks of pictures I put together a basic video that just goes through and clicks on each menu option in the BIOS so if there is anything you want to check out you can see it and pause when needed. The TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi starts off on the EZ mode page. This has the TUF color scheme with black, grey, and the TUF yellow. On this page, they have simplified things for users who might not be comfortable with the full BIOS. You can turn on XMP and swap your boot order by drag and drop. You have access to Asus’s AI overclocking and you can see your CPU temps with a graph, core voltage, and all of your fan speeds. The most noticeable thing for me however is Asus’s move to a higher resolution for the BIOS. It doesn’t change the functionality at all but it looks significantly better.

Jumping over to the Advanced mode you have on the right side of this and every page the hardware monitor that shows CPU, Memory, and Voltage information live. Up to there are a few basic options like the language button and search that helps you find something specific if you know the name. The first page is the main tab and this has the BIOS version, PC information, and date and time. From there up top the Ai Tweaker page is where they have all of the overclocking-specific features tucked away. At the top of that page, it shows you the target frequencies for your current settings so you can see what your changes are doing. The basic BCLK and performance preference settings are up top. As you go down there are pages for core-specific settings, e-core settings, AVX, and dram controls. The DRAM controls page is overwhelming with just how much control you have in there. Then near the bottom, you have the VRM and CPU power management pages. Honestly given how important the PL1/PL2 settings are, I’m surprised those aren’t up top on the main page.

Getting on the advanced tab then dives into a lot of the motherboard specific settings. Asus has it split up letting you get into USB, Network, NVMe, PCH, CPU, Thunderbolt, APM, and even Trusted Computing settings here with all of those and a lot more having their own pages. The monitor page has sub-pages for the temperatures, fan speeds, and voltages that show you all of the different readings for each. Then they also have a Q-Fan settings page, a majority of the settings are in the tool like all of the individual fan settings. The settings that aren’t should just be in the tool. Speaking of, you can open up the Qfan tool up top or by pressing F6. It is a tool that lets you pick or create your own fan profiles for each fan plugged in. It might go unnoticed by most people, but Asus has 8 points in their fan manual fan curve settings whereas most boards (including the competition to this board) have fewer. This isn't just a software change, the fan controller has been upgraded to support this.You can change what device they use for temperatures which is huge, you can set fans near your GPU to worry about your GPU speeds. This is the tool I use the most on my own PC to fine tune keeping things cool but also quiet.

The boot tab has your boot priority and other boot settings. Then the last tab is the Tool tab. This has the EZ Flash utility which has been upgraded from version 3 to 4 this generation. The big upgrade, it now will accept zip folders so when you download a new BIOS you no longer need to unzip it before booting up into the BIOS. Making a BIOS upgrade even simpler. Doing it that way also upgrades the ME version at the same time. You have an SSD secure erase tool. The BIOS Q-Dashboard has Q in it so we know it is designed to make things simpler. This has a line drawing of the board including the rear I/O. It shows each device that is installed with a green dot and mousing over those shows what the device is even going as far as to show my wireless mouse receiver for example on the USB ports. The SPD information tool just shows the full readout for each installed stick of RAM. The Profile is where you can save different BIOS setting profiles, this is nice for overclocking especially if you want to save a known good overclock or have profiles depending on the season (for when it's hot or cold). The MyHotKey tool lets you set specific functionality when booting and pressing that key. You can jump into the EZ Flash directly or set it to boot from a specific device.

Test Rig and Procedures

Test System

CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K– Live Pricing

Cooling: Enermax LIQMAXFLO 360mm Liquid CPU Cooler - Live Pricing

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste - Live Pricing

       Memory:        Crucial Pro OC 32GB 6400 MHz CP2K16G64C38U5B - Live Pricing

Storage:        Crucial T700 2TB - Live Pricing

Video Card: Nvidia RTX 4090 FE - Live Pricing

Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 - Live Pricing

Case: Primochill Wetbench - Live Pricing

OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Live Pricing

Performance

When it comes to performance testing, typically motherboard to motherboard we aren’t going to see any big performance difference when running the same components and clock speeds. The exception to that is when boards are auto overclocking of course and there are a few areas where components can make a difference like with ethernet and USB controllers. For testing the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi did well, in fact, it performed a little faster than the Aorus Pro Ice. Gaming performance was in line with one being higher, one being lower, and one with the same frame rate. Then for the network testing the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi performed well on the wired test coming in at 2496.6 Mbits/sec for the 2.5G NIC. The wireless performance on the other hand wasn’t as good in comparison to the Aorus board but was around where most Asus boards have been testing on our non-Wifi 7 network. The reason for the performance gap on wireless comes down to the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi having 160 MHz wireless support whereas the Aorus board, being a higher-end board, has 320 MHz and it shows in the performance even with our wireless network being limited to 160 MHz, not 320 MHz.

Before finishing up my testing I did want to check out the lighting but the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi does just have one small spot of lighting up above the 24-pin motherboard power. They have three underglow LEDs with a translucent pixelated TUF in the PCB above them so that it glows slightly. I would love to see the underglows all across the board rather than having it all in one spot. But the TUF look doesn’t really need lighting at all and I’m surprised they included it.

I also ran the 286K using AIDA64’s CPU stress test with the FPU workload for a half hour to heat up the VRMs to get a look at how well the heatsinks were handling things there. The TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi was 51.3c in the hottest area which was up in the corner between the CPU and both of the rows of VRMs. The top heatsink ran warmer than the left heatsink which given that it is smaller makes sense but does tell us that the two heatsinks weren’t transferring heat much between them like they would with a heatpipe. There was a little heat in the chipset heatsink but not much, so the covered heatsink wasn’t an issue there and beyond that most of the heat was in that large heatsink for the M.2 which was running nearly as warm as the VRM heatsinks.

Overall and Final Verdict

Once again Asus has done a great job with the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi. It has a nice mix of connectivity including Thunderbolt 4 on the rear I/O and short of a fan header over on the left side of the board there isn’t anything I would change there. You have a huge heatsink for the fast PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot that has an easy toolless design. The other three M.2 slots have one simpler heatsink shared for two slots and one without a heatsink. The VRM heatsinks are huge, but our thermal tests did show that a heatpipe connecting the two would even temperatures out a little. The styling of the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi is clean with its black on black design without too much lighting, but I do still kind of miss the truck-like styling that the TUF Gaming X870-Plus Wifi had. Performance was solid with the one exception being the Wifi performance when compared against the Aorus board I previously took a look at. That WiFi performance difference comes down to the 160 MHz wireless NIC in the Z890-Plus where the Aorus board has a 320MHz wireless NIC. Spoilers, I’ve tested some of Asus’s other boards (covering coming soon) which have a 320 MHz NIC and they close that gap. So if you are looking for even better wireless performance, that is the feature you want to keep an eye out for. Assuming your router or access point supports it.

As for pricing, the TUF Gaming Z890-Plus Wifi isn’t Asus’s budget motherboard, their two prime boards are currently their cheapest LGA 1851 and Z890 options. But it is the cheapest board that they have that is targeting gamers. It has an MSRP of $319.99 and boards like the Z890 Aorus Elite and the Z890 Tomahawk do come in a little cheaper at $289 and $299 before additional rebates currently. The Z890-Plus Wifi does have a noticeably higher number of fast USB connections both on the rear I/O and with the front panel connection being 20 Gbps. So there is value there and Asus fits a lot of value in other areas, like with features in the BIOS. But it will depend on what you value on if that is worth the extra money. 

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.