ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z690 HERO Motherboard Review

Packaging & Accessories

The box is very stylish, there’s no photo on the front of the box, but we can see the major features are listed; DDR5, LGA 1700, PCIe 5.0, etc. It’s a very heavy box and feels very durable too, so I am confident the board is well protected.

Around the back, you get your first look at the motherboard design, with a few smaller closeup shots showing off things like the VMR and the additional PCIe M.2 card that comes bundled with it. There’s a more detailed list of specifications here, and a handy QR code to take you to their product page (not available at the time of writing).

In the box, you’ll find those lovely stickers and all the usual documentation. However, I love that ASUS include that handsome little USB drive too, much nicer than a CD-ROM that hardly anyone has a drive for these days.

In the box, you get this rather sexy ROG Hyper M.2 Card. It features a lovely shroud/heatsink combo, and it’s actually quite large, so it should really help with the overall protection and cooling of your drives.

It has two full-size M.2 drive mounts, but as you can see, it will support shorter drives too. If you want an ultra-fast RAID setup, this is a fantastic way of doing it.

Also, you get a huge bundle of fittings, cables, ties, and a WiFi antenna. There’s even a GPU anti-sag bracket included!