Asus launches budget-friendly overclocking motherboard — Z790-AYW WIFI W debuts with DDR5-8000+ support

Asus has announced a new entry in its Z790 motherboard lineup, the Z790-AYW WIFI W. Designed for 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh processors and older, the new ATX form factor mainboard supports overclocking that might rival MSI’s MPower lineup. Asus has a dual-DIMM version, the Z790-AYW OC WIFI, in the works as well.

The Z790-AYW features an LGA1700 socket supporting Intel processors from the Pentium Gold and Celeron series, including the 14th-generation Intel Core CPUs. It also features the latest Intel Z90 chipset. For power delivery, there’s a 12+1 phase subsystem. VRM heatsinks and thermal pads help ensure smooth and stable operation even when pushing your clock speeds beyond recommended.

The quartet of DIMM slots is compatible with DDR5-8000+ and lower, down to DDR5-4800 non-ECC, unbuffered memory. On the other hand, the Z790-AYW OC WIFI offers support up to DDR5-8400+. If you use DDR5-5800 or faster DIMMs, you can use the motherboard’s overclocking support. Thanks to the four DDR5 memory slots, the Z790-AYW supports a maximum of 192GB of memory.

A single HDMI port supports the on-board graphics capabilities up to 4K at 60 Hz. The motherboard has a single PCIe 4.0 x16 SafeSlot Core+ slot, two standard PCIe 4.0 x16 slots, and two PCIe 4.0 x1 slots for expansion cards.

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The motherboard has 3 M.2 slots for storage. One is a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot supporting M.2 22110, and one is for M.2 2280 storage devices. The third is an M.2 22110 slot supporting PCIe 4.0 x4 or SATA modes. Three M.2 heatsinks help keep everything cool. The board also offers 4 SATA 6 Gbps ports for solid-state and rotational drives.

This motherboard seems slightly more modest in terms of connectivity. It supports Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.3 and includes a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port for wired networks.

The board’s back I/O plate has a total of eight USB ports:

• 2 x USB 10Gbps ports (1 x Type-A and 1 x Type-C)
• 2 x USB Type-A 5Gbps ports
• 4 x USB 2.0 Type-A ports

The rear panel also provides three audio jacks, with on-board support for Realtek 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio.

The motherboard includes headers and connectors for up to nine front USB ports:

• 1 x USB 10Gbps connector (supports USB Type-C)
• 2 x USB 5Gbps headers support 4 additional USB 5Gbps ports
• 2 x USB 2.0 headers support four additional USB 2.0 ports
• USB_E1 port, USB_E2 port, and USB_E6 port share the bandwidth.
• USB_E3 port, USB_E4 port, USB_E7 port, and USB_E8 port share the bandwidth.

Pricing and availability for the Asus Z790-AYW WIFI W motherboard have yet to be announced. However, we expect the pricing to be under $250, which would compete with the recently announced MSI MPower Z790 motherboard.