My wd 850 nvme drive comes with a heatsink already attached. Would I have to keep the m.2 cover plates off the motherboard because of this or would I reattach them like you did? And I'm guessing I wouldn't need the motherboard thermal pads on it
Yes. 13 gen Intel CPUs aren't recognized out of the box on this motherboard. This is not a problem with Z790 motherboards but fortunately doing a FlashBack is easy. Look for the ASUS RU-vid video called "How to Use USB BIOS FlashBack." I did it a few months ago. It's easy.