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
