ASUS ROG Strix Z590-I Gaming WIFI (Intel 1200)

The ASUS ROG STRIX Z590-I Gaming WiFi is an exemplary premium ITX Z590 board. With WiFi 6E, 2.5 Gb/s LAN, and an integrated I/O shield, as well as both M.2 slots cleverly located on the front of the board and lots of storage connectivity, all the feature boxes are checked. When it comes to looks, the ASUS ROG STRIX Z590-I Gaming WiFi is classically ASUS by featuring an excellent RGB implementation and a design that is neutral enough to make for easy parts matching.

Pricing sees the Strix Z590-I in the middle of the pack, and that's to be expected considering how much has to be trimmed to squeeze all the Z590 features on to a PCB that would fit in the palm of your hand. What is surprising, beyond the performance, is how much of the new feature set the Strix ITX manages to have. PCI Express 4.0 slot, PCIe 4.0 M.2 NVMe support and even Thunderbolt 4 is all present and correct. It runs our Core i9-11900K - a CPU that is absolute overkill for a motherboard in this format - as quick as any other and, surprisingly, cooler than most too. Maybe paradoxically the reduced power phases meant that the Rocket Lake flagship processor ran a little cooler and thus the Adaptive Boost Technology could keep it running faster for longer. Whatever the case if you're worried that the ITX format is going to cripple the performance of your new system then fear not, the ROG Strix Z590-I is a beast. Clearly you have to make some connectivity concessions to achieve an ITX footprint, and the Strix Z590-I Gaming WiFi is no exception. However, like the TUF it has all the headline features present and correct, so you're getting enough to run a blazing gaming system should you so choose. The ASUS ROG Strix Z590-I Gaming WiFi is an affordable, high performance, total surprise packet and puts a smile on our face every time we think of it. It wins the OC3D Performance Award.

The main thing to think of here is are a couple of extra features worth the almost £70 extra over the Gigabyte Z590I AORUS ULTRA? Or, do you just have to have a ROG ITX board? Well, if you can justify the price I would have absolutely no problem recommending this board as it looks amazing and offers some of the best performance we have seen so far from Z590!