ROG M.2 PowerBoost, a new feature that enables as many as seven M.2 drives to be attached to a single motherboard, is one of the key features that can be found on select ROG Z890 motherboards for Intel Core Ultra 200S series processors, ASUS has announced. ASUS shared the news in a blog post last week, explaining that while the new Z890 platform already offers additional PCIe lanes, there was still the question of power to reckon with—something that has evidently been addressed by PowerBoost. A list of ASUS ROG’s Z890 motherboards and the total number of M.2 slots that they feature can be found below.
| Motherboard Model | Total M.2 Slots | PCIe 5.0 M.2 Slots | PCIe 4.0 Slots | Add-in Card Slots |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme | 6 | 3 | 1 | ROG Q-DIMM.2 (2) |
| ROG Maximus Z890 Apex | 6 | 3 | 1 | ROG DIMM.2 (2) |
| ROG Maximus Z890 Hero | 6 | 3 | 3 | N/A |
| ROG Strix Z890-E Gaming WiFi | 7 | 3 | 4 | N/A |
| ROG Strix Z890-F Gaming WiFi | 5 | 1 | 4 | N/A |
| ROG Strix Z890-A Gaming WiFi | 5 | 1 | 4 | N/A |
| ROG Strix Z890-I Gaming WiFi | 2 | 2 | 0 | N/A |
On traditional motherboards, all M.2 SSDs draw power from the +3V rail, which can only provide a limited current. This design puts a hard limit on how many drives you could install without overloading. In extreme cases, a PC with many M.2 SSDs installed could experience instability or performance drops under storage-intensive workloads due to power shortages.
ROG M.2 PowerBoost sidesteps these limitations by with an onboard 12V to 3.3V converter that redirects power to the PCIe 5.0 slots, allowing the most demanding drives to pull from a stable pool of power. With this design, ROG motherboards with ROG M.2 PowerBoost can support up to seven M.2 drives running at peak performance without power limitations.