Asus TUF GAMING Z690-PLUS (90MB1AV0-M0EAY0)

Perfectly balanced, full-format motherboard for gamers (and not only) from Asus. Belongs to the upper price segment, is part of the popular Asus The Ultimate Force series of components for gamers, made with an emphasis on quality and durability. Unlike most of its counterparts in the TUF series, this model is based on the flagship Intel Z690 chipset and a powerful 15-phase power subsystem, which makes it similar to the top solutions for gamers from the Asus ROG Strix lines.

Equipped with Intel LGA 1700 processor socket, designed for installation of 12th generation and 13th generation Intel Core/Pentium/Celeron processors (Alder Lake and Raptor Lake families). However, taking into account the high status of the device, the most far-sighted solution would be to use it in tandem with powerful components of the level of at least Core i7 and GeForce 3070/3080.

More modest processors and video cards will not physically be able to reveal its full potential. When creating the Asus TUF GAMING Z690-PLUS, a compacted six-layer PCB textolite and a high-quality element base (solid electrolyte capacitors, low-resistance MOSFET assemblies, silent case ferrite chokes, etc.) were used. In addition, the manufacturer equipped all critical areas with additional cooling, covered the M.2 ports with auxiliary radiators, reinforced the PCI-E slots with steel fiber, and equipped the RAM slots with special SafeDIMM latches.

The equipment includes an Intel LAN controller with a built-in Wi-Fi receiver, 6 slots for connecting drives (4 SATA3 + 2 M.2 with PCI-E 4.0 bus support) and 4 standard slots for RAM. According to the manufacturer, the board is ready to take on board up to 4 DDR4 sticks with a high maximum speed (6000 MHz) and an impressive total capacity (128 GB). The kit also comes with proprietary hardware and software solutions for overclocking memory (OptiMem) and optimizing case cooling (Fan Xpert), and the UEFI BIOS has 2 operating modes (standard and advanced). Naturally, there are additional connectors for LED strips and free zones for placing a water pump on board.