ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Motherboard Review

How Much Does It Cost?

The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard is an absolute monster, but strangely, I think it’s pretty fantastic value for money, relatively speaking. The top boards from the likes of AORUS and ASUS are the best and worst part of £1000. While the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero is “only” £688.99, despite delivering equal or greater overall system performance in our benchmarks.

Overview

Why would someone spend another £300-400 for the next model up if you can get performance that’s as good or better at this price range? Connectivity, and I’d say most gamers would be just as happy with the gaming performance spending £200-300 less, if they didn’t need all the connectivity that the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero has to offer.

The flagship boards all have 10Gbps LAN, more Gen 5 M.2 slots, and more ultra-fast USB formats. However, unless you’re really using all that, and I mean REALLY using it, you’re throwing money down the drain. Even this motherboard, which has two PCIe 5.0 slots, and Thunderbolt 4, both of which add significantly to the overall cost as you need more controllers and hardware in general to handle it.

I do like the dual PCIe 5 design on this board though, as ASUS provide you with a usage for it. Obviously, the top slot is perfect for a graphics card. However, you also get their Hyper M.2 PCIe 5.0 ready expansion card included, so in addition to the three M.2 mounts on the motherboard, the card can add another Gen5 drive or two Gen4 drives, to really push your storage and RAID configurations up to the next level (Raid 0, 1, 10, and 5 supported).

Of course, you get a plethora of other goodies too, such as their impressive AURA SYNC RGB integration, the powerful SONIC STUDIO III, which has HRTF-based surround sound for headphones and uses their latest ROG SupremeFX 7.1 HD Audio hardware. There’s fast 2.5 Gbps LAN and WiFi 6E, although both are now pretty much a standard on high-end boards, and that rear I/O should be more than enough for any enthusiast built.

Should I Buy One?

The ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard ticks all the right boxes, delivering some of the fastest gaming and system performance on the market, while also maintaining impressive temperatures despite its slightly higher power draw. If you want flagship speed at 2/3 the price of the top model, then the Hero is hard to beat.