ASUS ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi Motherboard Review

TweakTown Rating: 96%

Our Verdict

Class leading connectivity and expansion potential, and a reasonable price make this ASUS far more than just a board with the word 'creator' slapped on it.

Pros

• Excellent connectivity, including TB5
• Excellent networking
• SSD heatsinks
• Subtle aesthetic

Cons

• VRM cooling is so-so
• More SATA ports would be welcome

Should you buy it?

AvoidConsiderShortlistBuy

Buy at Amazon for $489.99 USD

Buy at Amazon for $674.99 CAD

Buy at Amazon for £644.43

Buy at PC Case Gear for $949 AUD

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

PC Gaming is big business. Just look at the dozens of gaming-focused motherboards offered by every manufacturer. The content creator market is more nascent. Creators do have requirements, especially the serious ones, such as making a living from it. Serious hardware needs serious connectivity, and a motherboard like the ASUS ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi is designed with the connectivity potential to act as a host for the tools and hardware required to produce professional content. And let's not forget, Intel Core Ultra CPUs are excellent at multithreaded tasks.

Users with devices such as video capture cards, NAS, external SSDs, docking stations, or even external graphics cards need bandwidth -and lots of it. The ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi delivers. It's one of the few boards to include Thunderbolt 5, Thunderbolt 4, dual LAN (10G+2.5G), and 320MHz WiFi 7. Short of moving up to expensive flagship-class or workstation hardware, there aren't many options available in the sub-$500 price point that deliver all of that.

The Z890-Creator WiFi is a part of ASUS's expanding ProArt series. ASUS offers ProArt motherboards for AMD and Intel platforms, as well as ProArt graphics cards. I'd expect the range to grow. But, even if you're not cranking out TikTok reels or YouTube videos, the Z890-Creator WiFi is still an appealing motherboard by any other measure. It's not like you can't game with it!

Apart from its connectivity potential, the ProArt Z890-Creator features five M.2 slots, dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, support for 256GB of memory, front USB 20Gbps, and a VRM capable of handling the sustained loads of a Core Ultra 9 285K.

The board looks subtle compared to ASUS ROG models. Its black design with hints of gold gives it a classy look. With the right partnering components, it's a board that would happily serve as the heart of a system that performs and looks good while doing it.

At the time of writing, the ASUS ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi is available for a very reasonable $489.

Further Socket LGA 1851 Reading – Our Latest Reviews

• MSI MEG Z890 Carbon Wi-Fi Motherboard Review - A premium board with a solid feature set
• MSI MEG Z890 Ace Motherboard Review - Flagship features without the flagship price
• ASUS TUF Gaming Z890-Pro Wi-Fi Motherboard Review - Loads of Expansion Potential

Best Deals: ASUS ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi Motherboard

	Today	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$489.99 USD	$489.99 USD	-	Buy
	$674.99 CAD	$674.99 CAD	-	Buy
	£644.43	£644.43	-	Buy
	$489.99 USD	$489.99 USD	-	Buy
	$949 AUD	$949 AUD	-	Buy
* Prices last scanned 11/6/2025 at 2:36 pm CST - prices may be inaccurate. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We earn affiliate commission from any Newegg or PCCG sales.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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The Z890-Creator's box is stylistically simple, relative to others. Intel technologies, including the Thunderbolt logos, are prominently displayed.

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The rear of the box showcases the board's key features, a comprehensive specification rundown, and a view of the rear I/O.

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The Z890-Creator comes with a basic set of accessories. Like all of the ASUS motherboards we've covered from the current Intel and AMD motherboard generations, the WiFi antenna is a real highlight. It's adjustable and well-built. You get two SATA cables, a front-panel 'Q-Connector', some M.2 bits and bobs, a quick setup guide, and a small, velvet-like bag to hold everything.

You also get a license key for ASUS' Control Center Express management software.

Motherboard Overview

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Aesthetics are always in the eye of the beholder, but in my opinion, the ProArt Z890-Creator is a very good looking motherboard. It's hard to go wrong with an all-black design, with just a few splashes of gold. Some motherboards feature excessive amounts of silk-screened angular lines going every which way across the board. The Z890-Creator keeps everything refreshingly simple.

As you'd expect from a board aimed at creators, there's no onboard RGB. However, there are three ARGB headers. I can imagine a system built around a Z890-Creator with some tasteful RGB looking pretty darn good. There are a total of eight fan headers located around the board, which are welcome, especially for those using a pair of compute graphics cards and multiple SSDs, which will produce a lot of heat. Lots of airflow and fans are a must for such systems.

Other noteworthy headers include a TPM, COM, and thermal sensor headers.

The board includes a USB 20Gbps Type-C header and headers for a pair of USB 5Gbps ports and a pair of USB 2.0 ports. When combined with the excellent rear USB/TB complement, the Z890-Creator's USB capabilities are outstanding.

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Apart from a few ICs, the rear of the board is relatively spartan.

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The board comes with four DIMM slots supporting up to 256GB of DDR5 memory. Speeds up to 9066 MT/s are supported. With CUDIMM memory, it shouldn't be too hard to reach that speed. Of course, such speeds are next to impossible with 4x64GB, but the ASUS webpage lists support for 6000 MT/s with 256GB, which is a good sweet spot of density and speed for those working with large data sets.

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Storage-wise, the ProArt Z890-Creator features five M.2 slots. The primary slot supports PCIe 5.0. The second slot, located underneath the primary PCIe slot, supports PCIe 4.0. The other three are wired to the chipset and support PCIe 4.0. Four SATA ports join these. Perhaps an extra pair of SATA ports would be welcome on this class of board, but boards with more than four SATA ports are becoming exceedingly rare.

As expected, the primary slot has its own dedicated cooling block with a very well-designed retention mechanism. It features a large surface area with a thermal pad. The base of the slot also features thermal pads, including support for the less commonly used (in consumer systems) 22110 form factor. There's even a slider to adjust for different form factors.

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A single large plate cools the other four M.2 slots. Unusually, it is a hinged plate that swings outwards from the board. It's secured by a single tool-free locking mechanism. Mechanically, it's one of the best M.2 cooling assemblies I've come across. ASUS clearly put a lot of thought into this part of the board.

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The ProArt Z890-Creator features a robust VRM design with 16+1+2+2 90A stages. Core Ultra 9 series CPUs are not as demanding as the likes of the i9-13900K and i9-14900K under heavy loads, so the Z890-Creator's VRM subsystem won't face any issues powering a Core Ultra 9 285K under sustained, long-term loads.

It's unlikely that many users will overclock, if at all, on this board, but there will be headroom if you really want it.

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The rear I/O and the connectivity it offers are the highlights of the board. To begin, it is one of the very few boards that include Thunderbolt 5 (USB4 2.0 compatible) ports. These two ports support up to 80Gbps symmetric bandwidth, PCIe 4.0 x4, and DP 2.1, making them the best choice for hubs and docks, as well as devices like external graphics cards, SSDs, and video capture cards.

Joining the TB5 ports is a single Type-C 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 port, six 10Gbps ports, and a single USB 2.0 port. If I had to nitpick to the extreme, I'd like to see another couple of USB 2.0 ports so that the basics like a keyboard, mouse, and printer won't needlessly take up high-speed ports. Thankfully, a basic passive four-port USB hub costs peanuts, and there's plenty of USB bandwidth to share.

The networking complement is similarly excellent. 10G and 2.5G LAN are provided by Marvell AQtion and Intel, respectively. The WiFi 7 duties are handled by an Intel BE200 controller with 320MHz support. Very few motherboards can match that, with only the more expensive GIGABYTE AORUS AI TOP models coming to mind with dual 10G LAN.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports, as well as S/PDIF. A Realtek ALC1220P codec drives these.

Finally, we have a BIOS flashback button, HDMI 2.1, and a DP port. Note that the DP port is an input only for use with Type-C supporting monitors. I'm pleased to see an HDMI output. This can be used in systems with dedicated GPUs for compute or AI applications.

Overall, the connectivity and expansion potential of the ProArt Z890-Creator are excellent.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

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Anyone who's owned an ASUS board in recent years will be familiar with the layout of the ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi's UEFI. Though it's a board aimed at content creators, it's still packed with lots of overclocking features and tweaking functionality.

Though I am intimately familiar with ASUS BIOS, I've always found it has a steeper learning curve than some of its competitors. That's only for users navigating the advanced section, though. A general set-and-forget user will find most of what they need on the EZ-Mode page. Such settings include fan controls, boot device priority, and XMP.

Like most ASUS boards, the fan control page is top-notch, while the Q-Dashboard page is helpful for troubleshooting. This page lists the board's headers and ports, which appear green when populated. It's an easy way to troubleshoot a problematic component or peripheral.

I try to avoid installing motherboard manufacturers' complete software suites, but in fairness to ASUS, its Armory Crate software gives you the option to install some potentially useful extras. These include the ASUS ProArt Creator Hub, which offers monitoring and profile settings, as well as color management.

ASUS Control Center Express is a professional-tier remote management and security software suite. I could imagine that being useful for monitoring the status and temperatures of something like a heavy rendering job while away from your desk. I'd rather be enjoying lunch and a sneaky pint than watching a slow-moving progress bar!

Test System

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2024 is a reliable, widely used benchmark that measures both single and multithreaded CPU performance. Note that all our benchmark testing utilizes the latest available Windows updates.

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Even if Arrow Lake CPUs didn't blow the AMD competition out of the water, Cinebench and similar rendering applications are where the architecture shines. The results of 2,489 and 147 in the nT and 1T tests are very competitive.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user might consider a high-core-count CPU. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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The motherboard makes little difference in this test. A few seconds over a seven-minute test is minuscule.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS; higher values indicate the task will take less time to complete.

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A result of 185.9 in this heavily threaded test is enough to put the Z890-Creator WiFi at the top of the timesheet. That's good to see from a board aimed at creators.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory Latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's very sensitive to changes in memory speed and latency, and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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It's another strong showing for the Z890-Creator in this heavily memory-influenced benchmark.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency has been an area where Intel has traditionally held an advantage. Chiplet architectures inevitably add some latency compared to monolithic chips.

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82.3 nanoseconds puts the Z890-Creator near the top. Interestingly, ASUS boards take the top three spots.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs solely for leisure, but some of us have to work too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.

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PCMark results can vary widely, and the Z890-Creator is mid-pack here.

3DMark Storage

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game.

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It's another good result for the Z890-Creator. The large heatsink is likely a contributing factor, as the test SSD remained well within temperature tolerances at all times.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme has lost favor as a graphics benchmark to Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.

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The differences between the boards are relatively minor, with only a few hundred points separating the boards when measured by the CPU score.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when features like ray tracing are disabled, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.

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It's no big surprise to say the motherboard makes little difference in graphically limited scenarios.

Horizon Zero Dawn

When using the 'favor performance' preset, Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards.

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The differences here are negligible in percentage terms. If you're lucky enough to own an RTX 5090, the margins would be a little larger.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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Only a few frames separate all the motherboards in the Metro Exodus test.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. In the case of VRM testing, each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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Interestingly, the Z890-Creator is not among the better-performing boards in this test. My unscientific opinion is that it's due to the smooth upper part of the heatsink. Some fins or channels would increase the surface area in the path of front-to-back case airflow. Anyway, the temperatures are well within operating limits, and any decent case with front and rear fans won't create a problem.

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The Z890-Creator WiFi's primary SSD heatsink is excellent. A temperature of 53 degrees is as good as we've seen on an Intel 800 series motherboard. Content creators are more likely to write large files to an M.2 drive than a typical user or gamer, and ASUS clearly wanted to ensure the board had excellent M.2 cooling.

Final Thoughts

I came away impressed with the ASUS ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi. And, it's not just a garden-variety motherboard with the word 'creator' slapped on it. Serious creators need to connect peripherals that demand fast connectivity and high bandwidth.

With 2.5G and 10G LAN, plus 5.8Gbps WiFi 7-short of dual 10G LAN -it's hard to expect more from a consumer-class motherboard without spending big money. Add to that dual Thunderbolt 5 and another Thunderbolt 4 port, and there won't be consumer boards that meaningfully improve on that for some time to come.

Users can connect to external SSDs and fast NAS, and connect all manner of devices or multiple displays to support their use cases. You could even use both the PCIe slots with graphics cards purely for compute or AI.

At $489. The ProArt Z890-Creator is very reasonably priced compared to ASUS's own ROG Maximus Z890 Hero. And, it compares very favorably to boards like the MSI MEG Z890 Ace or GIGABYTE AORUS Master AI TOP, neither of which includes Thunderbolt 5. And it's half the price of the TB5-equipped ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme.

The VRM is easily capable of powering a Core Ultra 9 285K. But perhaps ASUS should have done something different with the curved and flat-topped VRM heatsink. It's fine, but some fins on the CPU-facing side would surely lower load temperatures by a degree or two or three. VRM cooling on a board expected to endure long-term all-core loads is especially important. It's a bit of a nitpick, though: the board performed well enough, just not amazingly so.

The SSD cooling is a different story. The primary M.2 heatsink and retention mechanism is a work of art. It performs very well, attaches ridiculously easily, and it looks good, too. I did not test the secondary heatsink's cooling, but its hinged design and toolless retention are well-designed.

ASUS also includes a useful software bundle, even including remote management software, and as usual, ASUS UEFI and fan management are top class.

ASUS has produced an excellent motherboard with the ProArt Z890-Creator WiFi. Users looking for a board that excels under multithreaded loads and wish to connect high-bandwidth peripherals and storage should be happy to spend $489 on a board packed with this much connectivity and expansion potential.