Intel Z890 Motherboard Mega Guide (2025) — ASUS, ASRock, GIGABYTE & MSI

ASUS ROG Strix Z890-E Gaming WiFi — gamer-creator hybrid with headroom

Strix-E gives you much of the Maximus experience without the price tag: full Gen5 PEG + CPU-Gen5 M.2, a generous M.2 count (often six-plus), TB4 on rear IO, Wi-Fi 7, and finned heatsinks over the hot zones. The VRM is comfortably sized for i7/i9 all-core with a simple top-rear exhaust; training for high-7K XMP at 96–128 GB is unremarkable with AEMP III / DIMM Flex.

The layout is friendly to capture cards and front USB-C ingest; park OS/cache on the CPU Gen5 bay, put write-heavy scratch under the fattest PCH sink, and keep “cold” libraries in the lowest slot. QoL includes Slot Q-Release, M.2 Q-Latch, FlashBack, and sane fan control presets. It’s the board I price against everything else in this tier.

Spec snapshot

1. 1. • ATX, robust VRM w/ fin stacks
      • 4× DDR5 with modern training
      • PCIe 5.0 x16 PEG; CPU-Gen5 x4 + multi-Gen4 M.2
      • TB4 rear, Wi-Fi 7, strong front 20Gbps

Official page: ROG Strix Z890-E