THE TUF Z390-PRO GAMING

The TUF Z390-Pro Gaming is a full sized ATX motherboard painted black, yellow and silver.

Two heatsinks are located just over the digital phases on the top left of the motherboard while another heatsink is placed on the lower right just over the Z390 chipset (these are not connected however - an RGB LED is located on the right of the lower heatsink).

ASUS may not have used reinforced DDR4 RAM slots but these can hold up to 128GB with speeds all the way up to 4266MHz.

Moving to the PCIe 3.0 slots we see that just the top x16 slot is reinforced.

The first M.2 slot is located just under the CPU socket and can accommodate 2242/2260/2280 long drives whereas the second M.2 slot is located on the lower left, can accommodate M.2 2242/2260/2280/22110 long drives and features a long heat spreader.

For the TUF Z390-Pro Gaming ASUS chose the Realtek S1200A audio card which they paired with Japanese capacitors.

As expected from a low/mid-end model the TUF Z390-Pro Gaming motherboard doesn't feature a backplate.

The rear I/O includes a PS/2 combo port, four USB 3.0 Type-A ports (5Gbps), DisplayPort v1.2 and HDMI v1.4b outputs, two USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports (10Gbps), RJ45 LAN port, optical S/PDIF output and 3.5mm surround sound outputs.

As with previous models we'll be using an Intel Core I9-9900K paired with a G. SKILL Trident Z Royal DDR4 16GB 4000MHZ CL17 kit.