20 Best X99 Gaming Motherboard (2022 Updated)

After purchasing the i9 12900k I had to make a choice on motherboard/ram to pair with it. After deciding that im going with DDR5 I settled on this board here with some trident z5 5200mhz. Its been about a month now and everything is still running as good as can be.

Not only is it a very powerful motherboard, it also looks gorgeous and matches my build perfectly. I would definitely recommend this board to anyone looking to upgrade to a 12th gen chip and DDR5 memory.

The only issue I had was during initial set up I was missing my lan, wifi, and bluetooth drivers along with a handful of others. With no internet and no CD drive I had no way to get those drivers. The simple solution was to buy a cheap external USB disc drive and pop in the CD that comes with the motherboard.

Youll be able to download any missing drivers in seconds. Hope this helps!! #PCMASTERRACE.

I had constant crashes in games until I updated the BIOS. The drivers, which are out of date and malfunctioning, come on a CD, because reasons. However, windows 11 was able to run without any of them.

The WIFI worked out of the box even without plugging in the antenna. The BIOS is highly configurable, that is good. I did have some confusion trying to find the XMP profile for the memory. Press F7 to enter easy mode and then there will be an option to activate XMP.

I don’t know why this doesn’t show up in the normal BIOS as it did before I updated it.

I couldn’t believe how heavy and solid this motherboard was when I opened it up and held it. The heatsinks are top notch quality, it has all the features you could ask for, more then enough expansion slots for ssd drives, all the i/o you could possibly need, plus it’s ddr5 compatible.

The icing on the cake is the nice rgb “”Republic of Gamers”” light that illuminates on the board. I love. Don’t believe these 1 star or 2 star reviews, they either have no idea what they’re doing or are taking their frustration out on a review.

If you buy this board, I GUARANTEE you, you will not be disappointed.

I usually use ITX boards but my case also takes M-atx so I tried this board. First thing I notice is post time, Best I could do with this board was 13secs, which for me is quite high, But I did notice that unlike ALL other Intel Z690 boards that I tried, this board powers on right away after a power loss, Unlike the others that have a 2.

5-4sec delay, but even with this attribute, it still posted slower than most, and that is with fast boot and no storage devices attached, attach a usb storage device, regardless of speed and it will add several secs to Asus boards, why they take so long to check a non-boot device is way beyond me.

Board did see my G. Skill 6000 ram perfectly and XMP worked without issues. Using the one button click with the Amory crate software to Oc the system achieved good results with minimal heat increase.

Of course the Amory crate software has around a zillion services running which concerns me. Rgb lights worked well, software worked well, Fan control was good. Unlike the Msi control center the Amory crate software was stable at all times.

My benchmarks on this board were comparable to the Other Intel competitors, If this board would post quicker I would of kept it, but my MSI Meg Unify posts quicker and runs just as well.

The motherboard looks pretty nice and the overall specs are fair for a B560 board. However, the unit started to show problems on day two of running it. In particular, the RGB lights on the board would randomly go off or wouldn’t come on when you turn the computer on.

Even after updating everything and installing Asus’ Armoury Crate, the board still wouldn’t function correctly. One of the USB ports also didn’t work. The bad thing is that I was replacing an Asus Rog Maximus VIII motherboard that just died on me.

When I transferred my Windows license to this motherboard, that used up my license transfer. But then this one didn’t work correctly either! After buying a Gigabyte B560 Aorus Pro AX board (which is wonderful and works perfectly!), I couldn’t transfer the license again.

So, I had to buy another copy of Windows 10 to install on the computer. In the end, I wasted time on the build with this motherboard and had to purchase another Windows 10 license. All in all, not happy with Asus products.

On my next build, I’ll definitely avoid them (I also have light bleed on an Asus Pro monitor. shoddy company I suppose).

Most money I’ve ever spent for a motherboard. Chasis fan 3 header directly next to the CPU socket and hidden under the CPU cooler. With CPU air coolers as large as they are now, the chasis 3 fan header is difficult to access.

Same for the M2 slots. Have an RTX 3080 and both are covered by the GPU as well as the 1x PCI. Any tinkering post install is quite difficult. 4x Power Header located which is nearly impossible to get to especially if there are exhaust fans at the top of the case.

It is a microATX board; but, layout of pins and headers in some very difficult to reach locations. Definitely not a motherboard for easy upgrades in the future. Tinkering requires disassembly. Also, had an M2 drive die after day 1.

Not sure if it’s the socket or the drive. This socket, like those in recent past also extremely fragile, even with caution. Bending pins are extremely easy, even if you’ve built PCs before.

To get it out of the way, this review was prompted by Asus’ offer of a 90-day warranty extension for my Strix Z690-A motherboard, but that in no way is influencing my opinion, only prompting me to submit a review.

Although I’ve only had the machine up and running for about a week and a half, that week and a half has been absolutely smooth, with no problems whatsoever. My last motherboard was from (a competing company also beginning with an A) that had given me problems from the start, so much so that I’d had it replaced under warranty only to have those same issues recur.

That motherboard was replaced along with the microprocessor and chip cooler; there are no new motherboards for the old chip. I’ve got an i7-12700K installed in the Strix with an AIO water cooler, and the installation went smoothly and easily, with the exception of one mounting hole being reluctant to line up with my Corsair case’s bolt hole.

Since the previous board lined up without issue, I think that the ASUS was a slight bit off. A little bit of levering with a small driver got it to finally align. The owner’s manual could be a little more involved.

Physical installation as well as initial start-up may be a bit confusing for a first-time builder. That said, it was a simple matter to install, populate, and get running. And run it has! I have had zero issues with the Strix, and it blazes.

Since I was recycling my old system parts (except as previously mentioned), I’d needed a DDR4 board. I’d had an ASUS in a previous build that ran well, so that plus reviews (and excluding the company that had made the board I was replacing) had me going with an ASUS board.

I’d chosen this one in large part because of its CMOS reset button; my old board had needed resetting about every 3-4 boots, and due to its problems, that was when staying with stock settings! I haven’t played with processor overclocking yet so don’t know how much I’ll be needing that reset button, but I’m glad to have it anyway.

The only changes I’ve made to the UEFI have been to set the memory to an SMP setting; no problems. I don’t know why, but my download speeds via Ethernet cable are almost always literally twice what they were with the previous board.

Whereas I would rarely see 300mbps on the old board, and much more often in the vicinity of 100-120 tops, I am frequently seeing 500+mbps on the Strix. Oh yes, I like! I haven’t tried a wireless connection yet.

So far, not only do I have zero regrets concerning my purchase of the ASUS Strix board, I am very satisfied with it. I would give it 4. 5 out of 5 stars due to those minor issues mentioned above, but have no problem rounding that up to 5 stars for a review.

For what it’s worth, I rarely give 5 stars; 5 stars means perfection and, although this board’s and it’s owner’s manual are not perfect, they are very close to it.

I wish I had paid more attention to the layout. The I/O cover extends all the way to the edge of the aluminum heatsink thus preventing any large air cooler from being installed. They sacrificed PCI express slots for M.

2, especially in the slots below the graphics card. Also the battery would be better placed toward the bottom, instead under the graphics card. The Z690 F is the same board in the black version. The graphics card push button is a good idea, but it adds cost.

If you take off all the M. 2 aluminum covers like I did, it’s not needed. The board with the best layout I’ve seen lately is the Rog Strix Z590 E Gaming Wifi. Being last gen, the price is lower and supports SLI.

That one paired with the I7 11700k should perform pretty well. If I can find that cpu for less than 249. 99 it might be a good alternative for a test bench. Buyers for this Z690 A are going for the aesthetic which is pretty good paired with a Corsair 5000d airflow case in white.

The biggest cons are lack of a post code readout, slot layout, and price.

Very pleased with the board as it is very well built, the features and functionality are solid. I like the number of ports and headers, etc and their positionings. The motherboard LED debug codes are very helpful and easy to reference online, so that’s a big plus.

I do wish motherboard and case manufacturers would do better in designing power connections as they are always such a pain to connect during the build process. The heatsinks for the board are beefy and pretty efficient.

I get some very good thermals with this board even with my high end cpu and gpu. I really like the way the m. 2 Gen 3 drives are secured. I wish the main Gen 4 name drives were secured in the same fashion.

All in all a very good motherboard choice for 11th Gen Intel cpus in particular.

I worked days setting up my custom water loop, 4 NVMe drives (all listed on the motherboards compatibility list) and just cannot get this board to run right. Tech support was unable to get the issue fixed but I figured it out so could boot into Windows but will not reset into the boot drive and always crashed back into the BIOS (which is also updated to latest version).

I have UEFI set up correctly as well and went through the whole troubleshooting process – reset to default, reset the CMOS etc. I eventually got Windows 11 installed, ran benchmarks and my CPU idles between 30-35 and on the stress, it only went to 45-50 so cooling on the board is good on my CPU water block.

The chipset itself, sits around 70 degrees Celsius in my Lian Li Dynamic 11 which I think is a little warm but the new chipset might just run hot. I ran Cyberpunk and it crashed. Also with COD Vanguard.

Ran 3dmark okay and Battlefield 5, so I am not sure if that might be Windows 11. I am also running Lian Li SL120’s and they will not sync with the Armory crate so I cannot control fan speed curves, only sync the lighting.

So sometimes it sounds like a plane taking off all of the sudden with 9 fans spinning 100%rpm for no reason. The board always overclocks my processor. It just keeps wanting to squeeze more out of it and their methods of turning off their A.

I. overclock are a little confusing because you have to tell it to “stop learning” Pushed my P- Cores to 5400MHz LOL so at least I know not that I got a good CPU. I didnt turn on overclocking and do not want to play with overclocking yet until I have programs installed and then I can start playing with those settings because the P and E core overclocking is new for me.

Regardless, this should run like a Cadillac out of the box, I have built many PC’s, using ASUS mobo’s and this has been this has most difficult and frustrating build I have encountered thus far. For the price I paid, the continuous troubleshooting to even get it running out of the box, I cannot recommend this to my fellow PC gamers and building enthusiast.

No Doubt, It is the prettiest looking boards on the market for Z690’s white case builds but sometimes looks are not everything.

Since Ive gotten this motherboard it has been nothing but problems. I bought it to use thinking it was the latest and greatest from asus but since Ive had it, its been nothing but problems. The included fan controller is complete trash, it wont let me do anything with the fans or detect the fans half the time.

The aura lighting software is so buggy it causes my computer to crash half the time I try to set a solid color. I decided to remove all of asus software from my computer and now it seems stable but I cannot control the fans because the controller is controlled thru armory crate and Im stuck on rainbow puke.

My old Msi motherboard ram my gskill trident z5 6000mhz c36 ram perfectly with xmp but this 1100 motherboard cant even boot into windows half the time with xmp selected. Sorry for the rant but you should probably avoid this motherboard at all cost.

I am so disappointed with this motherboard.

I love this motherboard for the most part. The build quality, number of PCIe slots, overclocking options (and simplicity), the built-in RAID ability, dual M. 2, etc all great features. There are just 4 points against it, which cumulatively made me knock off one egg: 1.

Releasing PCIe cards once they’re inserted into PCIe slots on the motherboard requires pressing against these little grips on the motherboard to release the lock. Since the graphics card I installed (EVGA 2080ti) is 2.

5 slots wide, the card covers up the grip and makes it impossible to reach to release the card. So taking out the graphics card broke the PCIe grip on the motherboard. 2. Fans, pumps, RGB components, etc need to connect to both power headers on the motherboard as well as (often) to 19-pin USB2 headers to be controlled.

Whilst the motherboard provides a generous assortment of power headers, it only comes with a single 19-pin USB2 header. I had to purchase a PCIe card that provides two 19-pin USB2 headers to get around this.

3. The built-in network cards tend to have issues with Windows 10. Despite updating the settings not to let Windows do any power management, the network cards become deactivated each time the machine is restarted and the only way to get it reconnected to the network is to uninstall/reinstall the network drivers and restart the machine.

This also causes issues with Windows Updates as the network connectivity is lost after the first restart and if the update requires more downloads it’s bound to fail. I’ve tried updating the drivers, spent a great deal oftime Googling, troubleshooting, etc still with no luck.

4. The motherboard doesn’t come with Bluetooth & WIFI, which is disappointing when you’re spending close to a thousand bucks on it.

I do 3D Animation/Motion Graphic work and I have to say. WOW!!! Excellent board!!!! New 0502 bios fixed a lot of initial release issues. Aura is now working perfectly, the new bios updated the aura lighting programming.

The trick with the x299 series and this particular board for me at least was to set the cpu cores to specific core and leave everything else on auto including leave the Asus Multi Core setting to auto.

This fixed all turbo boost 3. 0 issues and GPU throttling issues. My benchmarks and real world performance has significantly increased with the new bios update along with the setting adjustment. Everything is rock solid stable and lightning fast.

Before it seems like something was hitting the brakes but not now. For the current price of this board, it is excellent especially if you need more pci-e lanes as this contains dual plx chips. I hope intel continues a 2nd round of processors for the LGA 2066 socket and doesn’t screw everyone and make you buy a new x399 intel platform like the roadmap indicates.

Solid choice and in my opinion, more stable than the Gigabyte Designare EX motherboard which is the equivalent to this. Boxx tech is using the designare board in almost all x299 builds, I hope they switch to this as I trust Asus motherboards much more than Gigabyte especially for content creation workloads.

Cheers!.

Pros: PLX chip lets you run 4 cards in PCIE 16x. Great BIOS. The BIOS has all the features I was looking for and almost all of them were in sensible locations with sensible names and descriptions. One click overclock works well and overclocked my 9800x to 4.

6ghz all cores without any heat issues. The board accepted my 9800x even with the older bios that came in the box. The bios came out before the 9800x was announced and I was worried I would have to get another cpu to be able to update the bios to accept it.

That wasn’t a problem though! Cons: The board would not post with my ram set to XMP (3733 MHz). I had to clock the ram down to 3200 MHz to get it to boot. The same ram worked fine in my z370 board at XMP settings (though the ram was in dual channel on that board and quad channel on this board).

This board has been great. Probably something you should expect, but stability has been awesome. Didn’t support my new 5700G out of the box, but the BIOS flash system made updating to a compatible BIOS an absolute breeze.

Options are great, with good control over various functions and onboard devices. If there is one caveat, it is that I cannot disable an M. 2 device through the BIOS without actually physically removing it from the slot.

This coupled with the drives mounting underneath the chipset heatsink setup, is quite inconvenient. Might be an edge use-case, but it is what it is. The other minor nitpick is IOMMU groupings (for device passthrough in Linux) could be slightly more optimal.

But there are ways around that anyway.

After going through two defective MSI X570 Gaming Pro Carbon units, I gave up on them and bought this instead. From a performance and general build quality perspective, I’m quite happy. However, I’m now faced with having to buy a sound card or external DAC because of the interference on the on-board sound chip.

That doesn’t happen often so it’s not a big deal for now. My biggest gripe is with Armoury Crate, the software that controls the RGB, among other things. I don’t know why none of the big motherboard manufacturers can’t employ some decent programmers and QA people because ALL of their utilities are unreliable junk.

Armoury Crate worked fine for about the first two months I had this board. Then, it took an update (which you can’t decline since it’s a Windows Store app) and all of a sudden, it can’t see any AURA devices in my system any more.

When the system is powered up, the RGB is stuck on one static colour, when it gets to Windows, it changes to another one but you can’t adjust it at all. The software has had at least half a dozen component updates since then and it still doesn’t work.

The ROG forums are full of people with this complaint. If I try to install AURA Sync independently (which is available for this board), it just refuses to run. Asus support (which I have to admit, has come a long way in recent years) is trying to help but doesn’t know what the problem is and doesn’t seem willing to entertain the thought that maybe the software is to blame.

I’m not prepared to reload my entire machine a second time just to fix this thing that will probably break again later. I’d sooner just turn off the board’s RGB entirely and forget it. On top of that, I sleep my machine at night and Armoury Crate’s service is randomly waking the system.

It doesn’t provide any functions that should require it to wake the system but it does anyway. I don’t care that this isn’t a “high-end” board, don’t put RGB on your products if you can’t write decent software to manage it.

Overall, this is still a solid X570 board for those who don’t want to pay ridiculously high prices for higher end boards full of features they don’t need. Just know that you’re likely to have frustrations with Armoury Crate and that you might either need a separate sound card or some ferrite cores on your headphones.

Just transitioned from Intel to AMD Processors and was looking to add additional memory to the motherboard but 2+ sticks won’t post in BIOS or Windows. Using Memory: G. Skill F4-3600C16Q-64GTZNC 64GB 4x16GB DDR4 3600MHz Memory Module Checked AMD QVL for 3000 Series and the model number is listed for compatibility.

I’m able to get into UEFI BIOS with one memory stick but I get a DRAM light on the motherboard when I try to run 2 or more. Even tried enabling D. O. C. P. as I could not find XMP settings. Loaded all drivers and are up to date once I was able to get into Windows initially.

Purchased through another retailer that cannot be named in this comment but that’s besides the point.

This review is for the MSI Review Rebate Program. I have usually found myself in the upgrade camp vs total build camp. I think this model makes it an easy go to recommendation overall. It has excellent wifi/bluetooth which cheaper models do not offer.

It has the sleek all black stealth thing going for it. Great NMVe heatsinks to add function to fashion. Plenty of the important I/O modern boards and users will want. PCIe 5 slot for graphics card etc etc.

So I honestly was not shocked when all the DDR5 RAM evaporated and all that’s available is pretty questionable at best. I knew this board paired with the Intel 12700k would handle anything I put in here so I went with the fastest RAM I could at the not to ridiculous price point, RipJaw 4000mhz CL18 RAM got the nod and added to the all black stealth look the board has.

All I had to do was activate XMP in BIOS with one mouse click and was off to the races running at full speed. BIOS is very easy to use and navigate making my life much easier overall. Great quality of life improvements such as plenty of on-board Fan and ARGB inputs.

Looking at benchmarks and testing this board performs right up there with it’s bigger brothers and has just enough included to make you feel like you are not missing out on anything yet not having anything you probably don’t need.

My new rig consists of: Intel 12700k MSI Z690 Tomahawk DDR4 G. Skill RipJaws DDR4 4000mhz CL18 MSI MAG CoreLiquid 280R MSI Vega 56 Air Boost System runs very cool, quite, and nice accented RGB on the cooler.

Something to also note is the MSI lighting and system monitoring software is easy to use and also efficient. I really like the MSI approach as they really offer great product at all levels and this tier is exceptional value for money.

Thanks MSI and Newegg for the great service and products!.

This review is for the MSI Review Rebate Program. The reason I picked the Tomahawk Z690 DDR4 board is because DDR5 is a myth, they are like the leprechaun, people talk about them a lot but nobody seems to find them on any online shops.

So it ruled out any DDR5 boards for me. I first looked at Asus, because I’ve been using Asus motherboard all my life. The problem for their cheaper boards (liking TUF, prime etc. ) is they are severely handicapped.

Only 4 SATA ports and not enough USB or M. 2 ports. The Tomahawk, on the other hand, have much more ports than those cheap Asus boards. Asus only have one higher end DDR4 board, but that one have minor issue with CPU cooler compatibility.

They made their VRAM heatsink too large so most CPU cooler won’t fit or fit only in special positions. The Tomahawk board have a reasonable size heatsink and I have no issue installing my Noctua D15S cooler.

Then there’s the Gigabyte boards, they are even worst. They only have one output for Audio at the back. I have a 5. 1 speaks and there’s no output for the sub and rear speakers. The Tomahawk board have a more traditional back plate with the standard 5 outputs for audio.

Gigabyte also have a bad reputation for their BIOS, their shipped BIOS can’t even find the M. 2 drive. The MSI BIOS looks much more polished and stable, I can post right out of the box with no issues, although it’s not really perfect (yet).

The MSI Tomahawk DDR4 board is the best of it’s kind, anything better you would need a DDR5. But I do have some issues with their BIOS. My RAM is G. SKILL Ripjaws V 3600Mhz. Initially I can simply click the XMP profile and it will post with 3600Mhz no issue.

However, after I installed my whole system with all the SSD drives (I have 2 M. 2 Samsung drives, 2 SATA SSD and 4 hard drives), the system can only post at 2133Mhz. I guess it may have some conflict with my SSD or M.

2 drives? I haven’t have time to debug it yet. So I tried the latest BIOS (from 2021-Nov) which is even worst. Every time I boot from cold or restart, it will complaint about “CPU or Memory Changed !!! Please enter setup to configure your system.

” I can still boot to windows after 2 or 3 tries with this message and I don’t reboot very often, so it’s not a huge issue for me, but I do hope MSI with fix it in the future. The new bios still doesn’t fix the RAM overclock issue and I can’t downgrade back to the old bios using the regular M-Flash method (will need to use the bios flash button later).

But anyway, all manufacturers including Asus, Gigabyte and MSI have issues overclocking DDR4 rams. They seemed to put all their efforts in supporting the DDR5 ram. Although it’s a very logical decision to buy DDR4 right now (better price, similar or better performance than cheap DDR5 rams), but I’m worried about the long term support for DDR4 rams on the Z690 systems.

Im selling this board because I no longer have a desktop system which supports it. The board itself is very stable and their are no other X99 boards on the market that are as feature rich or as customizable.

I have used the specific board I listed in the sell long enough to know its stability and functionality. The ability to overclock and push this board to its limits knowing that the board is designed that way is a feature lacking in most other rivals.

I have never had any issues being able to update firmware and even changing back to a previous firmware if needed for maximum stability. Lock ups and OS failures related to hardware were rare. Asus set the standard in its design and based on my experience with this particular motherboard any future desktop systems I build for myself will only use Asus workstation motherboards.

When I originally bought this board over a year ago there were issues I documented here mainly specific to running a Broadwell-E V4 Xeon CPU, but seeing I have finally taken the time to revisit, ASUS fixed things, so I have updated accordingly.

I have successfully switched this board over to mono-block based water cooling, though that was a challenge and it took a very long time to acquire requisite parts. The results are good at least. To really get better cooling I ended up going with high performance thermal pads and tooled around a bit to get reasonably good contact with all major heat producing components.

Of course this board already has fairly decent air cooling, but you know why have the south bridge run at 50C when it can run at 27C and VRMs running cooler than the CPU is pretty cool, right? Now just to hope the water loop never springs a leak.

(Fingers crossed. ).

I got this board after my Rampage V Extreme had a RAM slot break. I originally wanted this but was out of stock at the time. Compared to the Rampage V Extreme, this board is the way the ROG motherboard should have been.

This system seems to startup smoother and faster. All the PCIe slots are x16 size and look rather aesthetically nice. Some are X8 pinout however. Overall this board has a sleek professional look to it.

Its also interesting this MB has 2x 8 pin power connectors for the CPU and the Asus ROG/Rampage V Extreme only has 8 and 4 pin connectors. Xeon and ECC RAM support is also a bonus whenever I get to that.

Installed is: i7 5930K GTX 980ti 32GB Corsair 8 sticks 4GB each Intel 400GB PCIe SSD 4x HDD.

Used this board in a Fractal Node 202 build and it’s a nice board, easy setup (after getting RAM seated); really like the Aura effects. My only complaint is the manual is meager with no explanation of the BIOS/hardware setup.

Also, I was surprised on the minimal cable/screws/card extras included. Very minimal, but I guess enough for the build, but an extra ARGB header cable would be appreciated – they give one for two included headers.

Not really related to the board per se, but the ARGB headers are a really poor design. 3-pins but no way to lock the header cable in place. Asus does include one ARGB header that is decent quality but most other manufacturers include (I had Silverstone ARGB case fans) headers that are garbage.

Mine kept falling off the header (tried both headers, same thing), until I used Asus’. Used Intel i-7-10700 CPU, Gskill Aegis 32GB RAM, Inland 2 TB M2 NVMe SSD, Noctua Chromax CPU Cooler, EVGA RTX 2060 card in a Fractal Node 202.

Pros: Probably not the fastest motherboard, but it is pulling very well. Loads of expansion slots on I/O panel Cons: Not a negative, just an observation. M2 heatsink does not cool enough (Samsung 970)! Had to get one somewhere else.

Sound is distorted via the USB-C sound output (might be a driver issue). Does not bother me as I am using external DAC.

For an Intel box, this motherboard provides everything you may need at a fair price. No need to mess with discrete components other than a GPU if you need one. Add a power supply, a CPU and some cooling and you’re off to the races.

Great compatibility, I tested it in both Linux and Windows and it all just works.

I have a lot of cons listed that are nit-picky, but overall, I believe this to be in the top 2 MATX X99 boards. I have tried them all and settled on this one for my desktop system. I’m running the latest Broadwell-E processor after a very easy USB BIOS Flashback Procedure.

I was worried I would have to find a CPU to do the flash, but WELL DONE ASUS! Although the Samsung 950 runs fine in the X2 M. 2 slot, I really wish it was X4. I could live with most of the nit-picky stuff, but I’d really like to have the X4 M.

2. 64GB of Vengeance DDR4 2800 jumped into XMP mode without issue. You certainly cannot go wrong with Asus build quality and reliability. Just to be clear for those who are wondering, I followed the instructions from Asus for a 3003 bios flash, stuck the big Broadwell-E in, and it booted without hesitation – no RAM, no CPU, just the 24 pin and 8 pin CPU connectors and the USB stick for the flash.

I highly recommend this to any person looking to build a high end workstation PC / low end Server. I have owned this board for about a year, and as my needs have changed this board has been able to accommodate.

It started off as a high end gaming / workstation, then into a virtualization server, then into a test bench for different virtualization technologies (KVM, Hyper V, Xen) and now its back to being a server.

I virtualize my personal AD, File Server, Plex, Web Server and more on here. I bought the board originally because it was a brand I trust, and I was/am not disappointed. Once again, I highly recommend this.

Normally, I like ASUS products, and have over the years highly recommended their components. This motherboard’s default functionality appears to be faulty, or at a bare-minimum the SATA3 ports can’t identify brand-new Western Digital SATA3 HDD drives.

It’s obvious to me that ASUS is investing heavily in UEFI, and all their default settings are tailored to the UEFI standard; I wish they tested their products by buying WD drives at Best Buy and trying to set them up as most folks would.

One of the advantages of the E Gaming over some other Asus Z490 motherboards is the onboard Intel AX201 Wifi 6 (802. 11ax) and Bluetooth 5. 1. It is very useful to be able to simply attach the antenna and connect to the network without the restrictions of a LAN cable.

Wifi performance is excellent. The same is true for the Bluetooth. There are other conveniences – the full array of USB ports of all current varieties including Type C, the excellent onboard sound, BIOS flashback and the integral I/O shield.

And yes, there are RGB headers including the Gen 2 addressable variety which can be configured with the AURA Sync software. Like all ROG Strix boards the real purpose of this board is to extract as much performance as possible from the Intel CPU.

To do this a variety of BIOS options are available. On one level the whole process can be fully automatic, with a choice of the Intel defaults or the performance enhancing Asus settings. Asus also provides a significant degree of automatic overclocking of the processor and/or memory.

Alternatively the manual controls are there to replace the automation or fine-tune the auto-generated settings. All of this is backed up with high quality power supply components and extensive heatsinking of the components involved.

The E Gaming is not entirely without flaws. The automatic overclocking tends to set the CPU voltage at too high a level leading to excessive processor temperatures. A good AIO cooler could be the answer but in practice it may be better to resort to manual tweaking to rectify this.

Although only a minor issue, it would also have been nice if the Wifi antenna had a magnetic base to hold it in place on the top of the case. These points aside, be in no doubt that this board offers a formidable array of capabilities and absolutely top-notch performance.

In short, Gaming by name, Gaming by nature.

Had this MB for less than two months and one day my computer would not boot. Did all the usual troubleshooting starting with power supply, then memory, then MB & processor. Discovered both MB and processor were bad.

I design and build low voltage control systems for oilfield equipment, so I’m an experienced electrician. After going through the motherboard with a meter, I discovered the VRM’s were bad. Intel promptly replaced the processor.

Now that is outstanding customer service. Asus, however is trying to say that the bad VRM’s were “customer induced damage” and want to charge me to fix the MB. If you search the web, this seems to be very common of Asus.

I will never buy another Asus product again. I am going to only purchase products from a reputable company who actually honors their warranty, like EVGA.

This mobo would be solid if the ethernet ports worked. I upgraded to this board about a year ago and straight out of the box the ethernet ports didn’t work. I spent hours of research, reading forums, updating drivers, updating bios, trying new cables, everything and couldn’t get them to work.

I even tried to get the included wifi adapter to work but to no avail. Eventually rma’d the board and reordered a second one. The second board had the same issue. No ethernet connection. But the wifi adapter card worked for that one.

I didnt want to RMA the board a second time so I ended up ordering a separate ethernet card because I dont want to use wifi and that worked. So yeah been using the board for about a year with no issues other than the whole ethernet thing.

Hopefully they have got that sorted out.

Got this wonderful little slice of PCB near the end of the life cycle of 9th gen Intel processors. Picked it up in a combo with a 9700K to upgrade from the 6th gen stuff I was running at the time. The design is pretty decent, though I am not a HUGE fan of the design for the RGB on this.

It reminds me of a holographic watermark. It is a little stingy on the SATA connections with only 6. This will become an issue if you use lots of storage or try to run anything as PCI through the two M.

2 slots (you lose 2 SATA channels for PCI M. 2 use. none for NVMe though!). Another downside is no Thunderbolt connections. C’est le vie. BIOS for this is decent. Worked with my existing DDR4, no problems.

Pretty solid board overall. Micro Center is running a killer deal on this right now, too. They are selling it for half the price that anywhere else is selling it for.

Pros: It has an easy to use manual that will take you through every step of the way and makes it easy for first time builder’s. There are a tonne of added extras to make life simple from installation to warning lights to give you a visual representation of what could be going on if you come across any issues.

It also looks really good and will go with most other hardware. Especially since you can programme the RGB lighting built into the motherboard. Cons: Maybe a few more instructions for first time builder’s wouldn’t go a miss.

In terms of what everything is for but it was my first build and it booted up and worked perfectly first time.

I use to buy all Asus products but due to this problem i went with a gigabyte MB and its works flawless till this day. Bad customer service i know this review is late but i never did get around to writing it.

I feel like since we are just consumers the diagnostic “experts” at these big companies just take our trouble shooting experience with a grain of salt. They forget we build these as a passion and we do know what we are doing when it comes to computers.

Go with another company that cares about customers.

I would recommend this board in a heartbeat but as per Newegg, I am done, there are other etailors now that offer the same or even less expensive comparison to Newegg. Too many times and too many people I know now that have experienced this unscrupulous business practice.

Its a fantastic board, tiny but packed with everything you could need. Best feature is dual m.2 slots and incredible overclocking potential

In conclusion; *** BIG TIME ISSUE with BIOS updates! so be aware of this problem. When I updated the bios the board would not boot past the AMI logo. It was hitting the Memory Check and stopping. I was COMPLETELY freaked out because I just flashed my bios and thought it was a bad flash.

Well a day later I figured out it was the memory losing the settings in bios, but the issue is the board would not even detect the memory with a bios reset. So if this happens to you, on the motherboard below the power button is a tiny button for memory compatibility mode.

After turning on the power to the board press that button and your bios should load!! For those of you on the fence as to whether you should upgrade? My system seemed top notch for the things that I do, but I really wanted to try out RYZEN to see if they can actually get it together.

The funny thing about this whole new build, is that I have a primo MSI Aorus 1080TI and since I come from an old ASUS X79 platform with every bell and whistles, with A I7 3820 Extreme 6 core that I bought used for the same price as the AMD 2700 a year ago.

This new system is probably about 25% faster overall and I was able to achieve some high O/C benchmarking results. But was it worth spending all this money, for the performance? I would say yes, Because I gained a 25% improvement overall.

There is a small bonus with this platform that is easily overlooked and until you actually try it, you maybe skeptical. That is the Store MI technology, it really works fantastic and quite honestly for the price of FREE AMD really put another shot over Intel’s bow! But here is something important to know, if you haven’t bought this yet.

Got to AMD’s site and download the FREE version of Store MI, do not go to Enmotus and buy the $19. 99 version it is less powerful for $$. If you are a X370 owner and do not want to update motherboard yet, I wholeheartedly recommend the Enmotus’ FuzeDrive software but there is one issue with it that is being fixed as we speak.

It does not have a good un-installer!! So, whatever version you install (AMD or Enmotus) you need to stay with it because they will cancel out the registration of each other’s software and will cause great issues getting it working again.

I will also say this, if you use either of these software, YOU MUST be able to make reliable backups of that information. Just incase something goofy ever happens! I will say this when you use memory, a fast sata SSD, and an SSHD hard drive, this Store MI or FuzeDrive technology is no gimmick and gives me read speeds faster than my nVme drive (non-raided), yes, it is true! (and due to fast system memory) My final words to ASUS, you guys need to start backing up the hype.

I watched your Newegg video about overclocking on this board. My experience tells me it was a very controlled situation, because there is no reason that my chip should not have been able to auto overclock to 3.

8 to 4. 0GHz but the auto-tune could barely get it to 3. 6GHZ over a 3. 4 base clock C’mon!a 9% overclock??? when I can easily do a 25% Do I recommend this product? Yes, but with a major deduction in eggs, I do but only because I was able to overcome the issues by MANUALLY by making changes to the settings to get my system stable.

If you are a newb, I suggest looking at an easier motherboard, because it is complicated. If I had it to do all over again, I might have waited until the ASROCK Taiichi came out and bought that like I was originally planning on doing? Hopefully ASUS will fix these issues soon, but to the other reviewers that just do not put the effort into a good review, please do all of us a favor and do not just keep making 5 egg reviews, because this board has issues.

I may just go to an Asrock TAICHI! When RYZEN2 comes out to see how far Asrock has come…So Asus take heed, you are on notice and losing ground to your competition because of your poor software execution, overhyping of products, Signing onto GPP and terrible RMA support.

BTW, I no longer will buy any Logitech product because of their lack of customer support! And I will do that with any product that does not support their products after the fact and I am starting to wonder about ASUS, because they do not update their Motherboard drivers and software for long enough of a time after purchase, after all isn’t that why we pay a premium for these motherboards! I have been left high and dry on my older platforms with Window 10 support and I have had nothing but issues with Win 10 on the older platforms.

Eventually, we all want to upgrade, but I get peeved when I am forced to due to lack of software or driver support for an older platform! I am sure this is not an accident on ASUS’s pat. I get the whole cost-effective thing on how long you should support a platform, but it is pretty dang important when a new windows comes out!!.

Pros: Good board layout with really good aesthetics with plenty of fan/RGB headers. Overkill VRM for overclocking. Asus Aura by far the best of all MB OEM RGB control solutions. Tons of USB input support for those that love their peripherals.

I would say almost all of x470’s options have been unlocked for the user in this boards BIOS. Should make for a great overclocker/tweaker. Cons: Biggest con by far is the random hard shutdowns I’ve had since I’ve built this system.

Updated BIOS to 0804, swapped with other known working hardware, and uninstalled every single app that may or may not try and read system temperatures to no avail. I’m currently in the process of RMA’ing the board after finally getting through ASUS’s horrible support (i highly recommend ASUS if you love filling out the same system build report 4 different times).

I don’t have much faith that RMA’ing the board is going to resolve the issue as its been known since the 04/2018 and they have yet to fix it through 4 BIOS updates. All of ASUS’s software has been buggy for me.

AI Suite keeps reverting to defaults and keeps fighting for control of the fan’s (TT Riing+’s). Live Update keeps trying to update the LAN driver after already updating it. Sonic fights with windows over what device is default.

Minor con is the placement of the chipset heatsink/RGB lighting and the M. 2 slots. I have a sapphire vega 64, and at 2. 5 slots thick 300mm long, it covers the entire heatsink. Also, the 1st M. 2 slot is right above where the GPU dumps hot air.

Even with the included heatsink, i could watch SSD temps rise while gaming. ASUS does a better job with ‘hiding’ it behind the PCI slot (MSI puts it right behind the GPU heatsink) but it still picks up heat.

I put mine in the second (bottom) M. 2 slot and its free of hot air and thankfully not restricted in speed like some other boards.

If you’re having problems getting advertised RAMs speeds (or C5 qcode boot issue with RAM timings), do this until Asus fixes their BIOS firmware (2x 8GB G-Skill Trident-Z 3200MHz CL14). I took this from Reddit: First, I loaded the optimized defaults – Disabled Core Performance Boost and set PBO from “Auto” to “Disabled” – Overclocking mode to D.

O. C. P (XMP equivalent) – Dram settings –> Gear Down Mode from “Auto” to “Disabled” (Extreme tweaker -> Digi+ something settings -> scroll down) – Set the DRAM VBoot Voltage to 1. 35V (if you leave it on auto, it will always be set to 1.

2V and the System will either fail to post or boot with 2111MHz DRAM frequency) NOTE: The setting only says “Auto” without the drop-down option to enter a manual value. Just select “Dram VBoot Voltage”, type 1.

35 and press enter. You will find the setting under extreme tweaker -> External Digi+ Settings. – Set the FCLK frequency to 1600Mhz manually (half your RAM Speed, I use 3200MHz RAM ) – Save this to a profile in BIOS.

Using the “Clear CMOS” button won’t delete these profiles in case you need to use it. – Further, disable fast boot in Windows so it’s actually a reboot/shut down You can change your fan curves easier by going to the “monitor” section in bios and scroll to the bottom of the page there’s the fan setup page there where you can input values instead of using the q-fan curve graphs.

Having chosen on a computer system centered on a Ryzen 7 5700G, I purchased this particular board based on the impression given by other reviews here and elsewhere that it was well built. I was fully aware that there was a better than even chance it would need a BIOS flash before it would even recognize my CPU well enough to even boot into BIOS.

So I tried to do the Q-flash routine on an empty board as seen on various YouTube videos. It did not seem to work, but the only way I could be sure was to assemble and try to boot. No luck. But I had read that although Q-Flash was supposed to be done without components, I also read that hey, that’s the way it’s SUPPOSED to work, but sometimes it doesn’t.

so I installed the board in the case and added the following: (2) Intel 670p Series M. 2 2280 1TB PCIe NVMe 3. 0 x4 QLC SDSDs (4) G. SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Modules A Seasonic PRIME FANLESS PX-450, 450W 80+ Platinum, Full Modular, ATX12V & EPS12V, True Fanless Power Supply Ryzen 7 5700G CPU Guess what? I still couldn’t q-flash.

or Q-Flash either. It seemed that the process would start but not finish; fans would spool up, LEDs would light up, etc. So I pulled the components out again. I read, in several online forums (fora?) that I should try a variety of USB drives.

and that formatting with Windows XP was the magic cure, or to use a 16Kb allocation size rather than default, or a smaller capacity older drive, etc. I tried naming the BIOS file GIGABYTE. BIN, GIGABYTE.

bin, gigabyte. bin (but not “gigabyte. BIN”), using USB 2 and USB 3 sticks I had lying about formatted (all in FAT32, of course) using Linux, Windows 10 and Windows XP, all to no avail. I didn’t really do this in a very orderly fashion, so I’m sure I missed some or many possible combinations drives, formatting, and filename.

It worked the same every time – the q-flash LED would flash quickly for a while, then stop briefly before flashing 10 times slowly and then just stopping. The board wouldn’t completely shut down and even waiting a half an hour did nothing.

Then I gave up on this process and reinstalled just the processor and two sticks of RAM. Somehow this allowed me to boot into BIOS, which I couldn’t do with the board all populated with other stuff. Then I could do the q-flash from there, although it was necessary to highlight the filename on the list of USB files and hitting the “enter” key rather than just selecting “next” or “continue” or whatever the choice was.

After that I completed the assembly process, and from then on things have worked well. I mention all of this because as good as this board seems to be, the ability to q-flash the BIOS was kind of a sine qua non necessity for my usage.

If I knew anyone from whom I could borrow a processor supported by the F11 BIOS it would have been an inconvenience but not insurmountable. But I’m not in any gaming or other computer geek circles so I needed something I could get to function on my own.

Other than that significant issue, I would think the board is worth recommending.

I’m a video editor and was looking to make some upgrades to my system. Due to editing raw video codecs I decided to stick AMD for the blunt power of many cores; but I won’t be jumping to AM5 until the platforms matures a little first to avoid any instability issues.

I needed a motherboard that offered at least two extra PCIe slots each with 4x lanes or greater for my extra cards – which is surprisingly difficult to find. Plus some m. 2 slots for fast storage. Threadripper was beyond what I could afford.

This is one of the few AM4 motherboards that allows you to fully populate all of the M. 2 slots and PCIe slots. Many others that offer 4x M. 2 slots and extra PCIe slots won’t allow you to use them all at once due to the limitations of the chipset; such as populating all m.

2 slots will turn off a PCIe slot and so on, so you have to do some careful research into the what can and cannot be used at the same time. So while this board doesn’t offer 4x M. 2 slots, it does mean that all 3x of them can be used at the same time as all the PCIe slots.

Incase you’re curious the board has been populated with a graphics card, Blackmagic Decklink 4k Monitor Card, a 10Gbe ethernet card, NVMe boot drive, NVMe scratch disk, and SATA SSD file storage. I’m hoping that someday someone will make a motherboard with heaps of bifurcated PCIe expansion to give users like me more expandability without the need to jump up to threadripper; but until then this will fit my requirements perfectly.

I have been using this motherboard for a couple of weeks now and it performs well. There are a couple of niggles but nothing that really affects the performance and suitability for me. 1. the USB-C port doesn’t provide sufficient power to charge a smartphone even though it identifies itself as a fast charger to the phone.

It provides sufficient power to the phone to keep it running for transferring data but don’t expect to be able to charge from it. 2. The lighting isn’t anything special. If you want to light up your box (not something that interests me really) then the, frankly rather pathetic, yellow led lighting is a waste of effort.

3. Linux users should be aware that, although the on board sound system works in Linux, you get an infuriating pop every 30 seconds or so and when browsing web pages that contain video content, regardless of whether it’s muted.

I have installed an old sound card of similar quality to prevent this problem. Despite this, I would recommend this motherboard for the purpose (medium to high end non gaming programming) as, at this price point, it out performs other boards of a similar price.

I was after a replacement motherboard/processor combi to replace my 15 year old ASUS/Athlon combi which had finally resisted my attempts to keep it going. Fearing the new technology was beyond me I checked out Scan following reviews on Google.

I had nothing to fear, finding an almost required package I found it easy to swap the mb for one I wanted. The order was quickly filled and arrived on schedule very well packed. The good documentation provided a straightforward fitting and everything was soon up and running.

The minor query I had was soon settled (thanks Will) and I was back to normality albeit much faster and easier. I would have no hesitation recommending Scan should anybody ask.

Okay now for an interesting story. Last year I purchased an Asus PRIME X399-A motherboard, 12 core 1920x Threadripper cpu, and 3000mHz G. Skill DDR4 quad channel ram. I have been using and loving this setup.

Powerful and fast. Zoom! 🙂 So last month when the 3rd gen Threadrippers came out and I looked at the price of the 3960x with mobo. Well after regaining consciousness and getting back to my feet, I looked at the much lower prices of the second gen hardware.

So, I decided this time to go for the 16 core 2950x Threadripper cpu and ASUS ROG STRIX X399-E mobo to be paired with my existing quad 3000mHz G. Skill ram. But after putting together the new parts and upgrading the Bios, it failed to post with four ram sticks.

After trial and error it would work with three or less but not four. 🙁 But now the strange part. I put my old 1920x into the new X399-E and tada, it works no problem with the quad 3000mHz. Also, the new 2950x works in the old X399-A with the quad ram.

There you have it. All’s well that ends well. I would recommend the Asus PRIME X399-A over the Asus ROG STRIX X399-E for ram compatability. p. s. I have been using the Noctua NH-U14S TR4-SP3 and Noctua NH-U12S TR4-SP3 cpu coolers on my 2950x and 1920x.

The are effective quiet and simple. Happy ‘puting all! ;).

Superbe Carte mais une énorme galère pour installer l’OS sur cette CM. En effet, le mode UEFI, rend très difficile l’installation de W10. Il aura fallut plusieurs heures pour enfin empecher W10 de sans arrêt rebooter son installation.

Bien penser à formater son SSD avec l’outil inclus ds le BIOS, Erase Data+++, qui permettra à la CM de bien reconnaître votre SSD.

Superbe carte mere avec toutes les connectivites requises pour pouvoir exploiter votre carte mère de manière optimum dans le gaming. Je ma recommande fortement.

SUPER CARTE MAIS AVEC I7 11700KF DÉFAUT LED DRAM IL FAUT MET UN PROCESSEUR 10TH GEN PUIS FLASHER LE BIOS AVEC LA DERNIÈRE VERSION CHEZ MSI. SI NON SUPER CARTE 🙂