ASUS RoG Maximus XI Hero WiFi Z390 Motherboard Review

Peter Donnell / 6 years ago

Final Thoughts

How Much Does it Cost?

The ASUS RoG Maximus XI Hero is launching today. At the time of writing, it was available on Amazon as pre-order for £264.05, but that can always change on launch day. It’s not cheap, but for the level of features and performance, it’s very competitive. It performed fairly close to the Formula, and that’s almost £400, so you do the maths.

Overview

There are a lot of awesome Z390 motherboards hitting the market today, and the Hero can hold its head up high among the crowd. At a little over £250, it’s certainly on the high-end of most peoples budgets. However, ASUS has really gone out of their way to make an impressive product that should have pretty broad appeal.

Build Quality

It’s built to be robust, not only for performance, but also longevity, reliability, and style. The motherboard looks great, and there’s armour, or shrouds, and a boatload of RGB in all the right places. The black PCB and the dark grey highlights look super slick and stealthy too and provide a nice backdrop for any RGB lighting or a clean look for those who keep the RGB turned off. The inclusion of a rear I/O shield that’s pre-installed, armoured PCIe slots, reinforced DIMM slots, and more, all add value too.

Performance

Most of the Z390 boards perform about the same, but for the most part, the Hero was in the upper end of that. The real value in performance here comes from added features. Fantastic audio performance from the SupremeFX chipset, and the audio capacitors with low SNR. There’s both built-in LAN and 802.11n WiFi, meaning you’ll have no issues with networking. Storage, no problem, with dual M.2 for RAID or Optane setups, and six SATA drives, and a tonne of USB Gen 2 thrown in.

Should I Buy One?

The RoG range has proven to be a big hit for many years. With the Hero, you’re getting pretty much what we’ve come to expect. A few tasty tweaks to the BIOS, improved overclocking features, improved stability, and more certainly help though. If you’re after a feature packed, great looking, and very well made motherboard, you’ll be very happy with what the Hero has to offer. Plus, it’s price is less intimidating than that of the XI Formula, so that’s a bonus.