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.
