ASUS ProArt Z790-Creator WiFi 6E motherboard: features, specs and who it suits

The ASUS ProArt Z790-Creator WiFi 6E is an ATX motherboard for Intel's LGA 1700 socket, aimed at people who edit video, render 3D scenes or move large files for a living. Its selling points are fast networking, plenty of storage slots and Thunderbolt 4 on the board itself. Here is what those specs mean in practice.

Processor and memory support

The board uses the LGA 1700 socket and, according to ASUS, supports 14th, 13th and 12th Generation Intel Core processors. It is built around DDR5 memory, which is not interchangeable with older DDR4 modules, so anyone upgrading from an older system should expect to buy new RAM as well. ASUS also describes the board as ready for Windows 11 out of the box.

Power delivery and cooling

Creative workloads such as long renders keep a processor busy for hours, so the power circuitry matters. ASUS lists 16 plus 1 power stages, a ProCool II power connector, alloy chokes and durable capacitors. In general, more power stages share the electrical load across more components, which helps the processor receive steady voltage under sustained load.

For heat, the board has a large VRM heatsink, a double-sided heatsink and aluminium heatsinks over the M.2 slots. Fast SSDs can slow themselves down when they get hot, so heatsinks on the drive slots are a useful detail.

Storage and expansion

Four M.2 slots let you fit several NVMe SSDs without adding cards, which suits separate drives for the system, active projects and scratch space. The listing also mentions PCIe 5.0. That is the newest generation of the expansion bus, offering roughly double the bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 per lane, and it is backward compatible with older cards.

Networking and ports

Connectivity is the headline feature:

• Two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, typically used for fast external storage, docks and high-resolution displays.
• 10 Gb and 2.5 Gb Ethernet. The 10 Gb port is useful when working from a network-attached storage device, but only if the rest of your network (switch and cabling) also supports that speed.
• WiFi 6E, which adds the 6 GHz band for wireless connections.
• A front-panel USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C connector, rated at up to 20 Gbps in general, with support for 60W fast charging according to the listing.

Audio is rated at 120 dB signal-to-noise ratio for stereo playback output and 113 dB for line-in recording.

Management and security tools

ASUS Control Center Express lets administrators manage USB ports, apply software blacklisting and switch registry-editor access on or off. That is mainly of interest to studios and offices that manage several machines.

What to check before you buy

• Confirm your processor is on ASUS's supported list for this board, and check whether a BIOS update is needed for newer chips.
• Make sure you are buying DDR5 memory, not DDR4.
• Check that your case takes a full ATX board and that your power supply has the connectors the board needs.
• Decide whether you will use 10 Gb Ethernet and Thunderbolt 4; if not, a simpler board may do.
• Confirm your CPU cooler fits the LGA 1700 socket.
• Remember that display outputs depend on the processor, so you may need a graphics card.

The short version

• ATX board for Intel LGA 1700 with DDR5 and PCIe 5.0.
• Two Thunderbolt 4 ports, 10 Gb and 2.5 Gb Ethernet, and WiFi 6E.
• Four M.2 slots with heatsinks, and a front USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C connector.
• 16 plus 1 power stages and large heatsinks for sustained workloads.
• Matched to creative and workstation-style builds that use the extra connectivity.

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