ASUS ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi 6E LGA 1700 (Intel®13th&12th Gen)mini-ITX gaming motherboard(PCIe5.0,DDR5,10+1 power stages,Thunderbolt 4,2.5GbLAN,USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 front panel Type-C,2x M.2/NVMe SSD)

It's the second time I bought this motherboard. The first time it didn't come with one of the required pieces (the rog-fps II card) and amazon encouraged me to return it and get a refund. I bought it again and once again there was a missing piece, but it was one that was not required (the m.2 heatsink top, since there's two slots I used the bottom most). But anyway I couldn't make the PC boot yet, for some reason. And I'm still investigating if the motherboard is dead or if it's something else... But the likelyhood is big due to these manufacturing problems.

I wanted to love this motherboard, and I did. Right up until I inserted a Gigabyte Aorus PCIE5 10000, PCIe 5.0 SSD and got 3.0 speeds. Changing a BIOS bifurcation setting allows 4.0 but we got this board specifically for testing 5.0 SSDs and it doesn't work. Returned the first and got a second. Same deal.I've had to amend this review because I finally got to a top-level tech who told me about a switch on the riser board with the front panel connections that comes set to PCIe 3.0. That needs to be set to Auto to provide PCIe 5.0.Previously, three interactions with tech support mentioned nothing about this switch and one told me to return the board. I feel bad about that but...Now I love the board. It's compact, has Thunderbolt 4 and USB 3.2x2 (20GBps) on board and is perfect for our testing.

Works great with i9-13900k with 64gb Dominator Platinum 5600MHz. I've not noticed any DDR5 issue, everything works perfectly fine. The only con is the price, $500 after tax is a little overpriced.

I was wating so badly for this motherboard. Starting preparing it, i quicky realised that is was used when taking off the ssd heatsink.sticker was off and the ssd emplacement was allready prepared for à 1 face ssd and thetiny latch to hold it down was missing. Returning it right away. I did not pay for à used motherboard. Who knows what the prévious owner did with it.

Overall I'm pleased with this purchase. I'm running a 13600k , 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5, and a Samsung 1TB 980 NVMe SSD. Has been rock solid since boot up the first time with no issues at all. I'm running in XMPP mode also with no issues and letting the UEFI BIOS handle any auto overclocking at the moment, though I have not really pushed it super hard even though I could.Here are a few things to know:- The Z height on this board could be a problem for some. From encroaching into areas in SFF cases to issues with super large fan coolers or water blocks, the CPU socket it like building on a lot where a previously imploded building was in a skyscraper city. Doable, but also can be limiting.- Part of that Z height issue is the double stacked NVMe slots create a lot of height on a side of the board that sometimes doesn't have any. The manual is also not clear about which slots are PCI 3 and 4.- The same for the 'optional' daughter card on the front for extra USB headers, etc. but you also need it for the base connectors.- Overall it's fine to boot. A little annoying that every time I update the UEFI it seems to reset a lot of parameters (especially ones related to the pump/fan headers) wish I wish it didn't do.I haven't had a reason to test ThunderBolt yet, but everything else works as expected so far. Would have liked to have seen a slightly cheaper version maybe without the exterior audio/USB module since I don't use that for much in my present configuration so it's largely a waste.Overall its a good board, though a bit on the pricey side.