ASUS ROG Strix Z490-E Gaming (Intel 1200)

I've been writing a lot about the price level of Z490 boards, 299 USD is still a lot of money for a motherboard I think it's safe to say that for the Z490 STRIX this is a reasonable sum of money at best. You get that nice power delivery, awesome looks, and 90% of the features that a premium board offers. Platform wise you'll get added features like AX Wifi and an Ethernet configuration on the form of 2.5, but not 10 Gbit ethernet jacks. Connectivity-wise in terms of your PCIe slots for your graphics subsystem you are looking at a full x16 Gen 3 lanes for one graphics card. While the platform is PCIe Gen 4.0 ready the reality remains that Z490 will only survive two generation s of processors, so Rocket Lake-S is the next series that will finally bring PCIe Gen 4.0. Going from Z390 to Z490 is not going to bring you massive differences platform wise other than a new series processor. We really do doubt that the upgrade from Coffee lake to Comet lake is worth this kind of money really, coming from older generations that might be different. But platform wise you'll get some added features like AX Wifi and a more luxurious Ethernet configuration on the form of that 2.5 ethernet jack. The ROG STRIX Z490-E Gaming offering 90% of the features of what the premium 400~500 USD boards offer. You get one 2.5 Gbps Ethernet jack but do still get AX WIFI6. Recommended? Sure, if you find it worth the pricetag of course.

While ASUS may have a lot of appeal in the enthusiast market with their mighty MAXIMUS and HERO boards, the STRIX boards are still firmly focused on the gamers. Make no mistake though, this is still a pretty serious motherboard, with a more advanced feature set and a bit more expensive vs their TUF series, but certainly not as expensive as its bigger brothers in the HERO and MAXIMUS series either. You still get big VRM heatsinks, a 14+2 Digital Power Stage, and a good chunk of armoured hardware overall, so it’s already ticking all the right boxes for us.

The ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-E Gaming is a great all-around board. It provides a rich feature set that includes WiFi 6, 2.5 Gb/s LAN, and an integrated I/O shield, as well as SLI support. When it comes to looks, the ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-E Gaming is quintessentially ASUS by featuring an excellent RGB implementation as well as a design that is neutral enough to make for easy parts matching—all while looking interesting enough to still catch the eye.