ASUS Maximus VII Hero vs ASUS Z97-A

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max23pwnz0r

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I'm looking to build a PC. My budget is $2000. I'm looking for a mobo that will fit the budget. With the Z97-A it is $1875, while with the VII Hero, it is about $1955. Is it worth the extra $80? I will mainly use this PC for school and gaming on dual 1080p displays. My color scheme will be red and black, and I'm also hearing these amazing reviews about the quality of the VII Hero. I can't choose anymore.
 
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Tradesman1
I went with the Hero, and wouldn't change it, have built on a number of Z97 boards and have yet to find one I'd prefer. The Asus Z97-A is a good model also (have done an even dozen builds on the A and all the clients are thrilled with them). Could also look at the Z97 Pro Gamer (a newer model Asus released) which is another very good mobo. Doing what you've mentioned you can't really go wrong with any of these three. 😉
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I'd go elsewhere....

The Z97-A and Hero both get their tails kicked by many other MoBos.... they run about 8 - 10 % slower fps than competing boards...and ones that are a helluva lot cheaper, with same feature sets and equal or better componentry.

17093640150l.jpg


Looking at the Z97-A reviews on newegg ....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132118

we see that 27% of peeps who own that board gave it an extremely negative 1 egg rating. The Hero does a bit better at 19%.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132125

The $125 MSI Gaming 5 which comes in 2nd in the gaming performance tests, has just 10% negative (1 egg) reviews ,... about half the Hero and a third of the comparably priced Z97-A

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681313077

I have done multiple Hero builds and my own rig is a Maximus Formula water cooled.... I would not own another from the Z97 / Z87 line tho the Z170 is looking like a drastic improvement performance wise .... we'll have to see how well it holds up with users.
 
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Sorry max, I intended to expand to the full featured edit and posted early by mistake .... I had since finished what I intended in above post but you already responded :)

So scroll back for links to performance and user satisfaction on both boards.

 
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The Asus boards also have 2x the reviews which would naturally increase the amount off possible negative reviews. One guy gave it a 1 egg because the onboard sound did not have a EQ yet he says he loves sound. If so then why would he not buy a sound card? Or better yet use a receiver?

The first board I purchased didn't fit my case. The screw holes were in the wrong place. I RMAd it. The second board fit perfectly, but went into a boot loop. I RMAd it. The third board worked great... for three weeks. Then it started going into a boot loop. I RMAd it. I just got the same worthless piece of garbage back saying they found nothing wrong with it. This was the most recommended motherboard I could find. I cannot fathom why. The board and ASUS are utter garbage.
Click to expand...

This one makes me laugh. The first boards screw holes were in the wrong place? I have built and dealt with easily a thousand boards and never run into that.

It is hard to trust Newegg reviews. Hell some tech site reviews are hard to trust. I found one that stated a con was the color scheme.

And the review you posted, I wonder how they are testing it. Are they testing the system at stock or the best overclock the board can produce? That matters because some people will be OCing to 4.5GHz and others want the best possible OC. I have never seen boards have so much disparity between gaming performance unless they are running overclocks,
 
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So I see you guys are in favor of the Maximus? I just want confirmation and advice/suggestions. Thanks JackNaylorPE. I have one question for you. If you believe it is lacking compared to other boards, why did you get it?

Also I will be running games such as GTA V modded, GTA IV heavily modded, CS:GO, CoD 4, and other demanding simulation games at 1080p 144hz, highest settings possible, and on a 980ti with an i7 4790k. Is the maximus right for me?
 
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Jack has the Formula, I also have it but the Maximus VI Formula (Z87 chipset). It is a better board than the Hero but also costs more and is more for those who want to run a custom water loop setup.

Right for you is only for you to decide. I like Asus boards. Haven't had a bad one in over 10 years of using them. Not to say the others are bad but I have just not had a bad Asus and I have grown accustomed to their UEFI BIOS, which I like better than others I have used.
 
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I have all three of the Hero models now, the Z87, Z97 and jusrt put together the Z170 Hero last weekend, have also done numerous client builds with both the 1150 mobos, and obviously they are hard to beat. Using the NewEgg examples provided above also show that the 1150 Heros rec'd the most reviews on Z87 and Z97 and were the top rated mobos with any real number of reviews. As was also pointed out, many negative reviews came from nit-picking and lack of knowledgeable users - which happens with all manufacturers.

Somewhat of a late comer to the Z97 line was the Asus Z97 Pro Gamer which is a very good mobo also 😉

Further testing on singular board can provide some results, but that can also very by whoever is doing the testing and by the individual mobo itself, like most every computer component out there, CPUs, DRAM, GPUs, etc - you can 10 of the same model of any of them and find drastic differences in performance even when paired with the same exact items in each build except for the tested component
 
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1. I don't have time for more than a short math lesson but a % is completely independent of the number of reviews. If 27% of board owners state that they are extremely unhappy, that means:

27 outta 100 are unhappy (27%)
54 outta 200 are unhappy (27%)
81 outta 300 are unhappy (27%)

Tripling the number doesn't change the %. Who's the better hitter in baseball ?

The guy with a .375 average w/ 100 at bats
The guy with a .125 average w/ 200 at bats

So, no ... the number of reviews has no impact on the % of unhappy people as long as the sampling size is adequate. And while accuracy increases with sample size, 270 (Asus ) or 130 MSI reviews is way more than adequate to get an accurate picture....at least according to standard statistical analysis.

http://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html

Following the directions for the bottom 2 boxes....

For the Asus Z97-A, we see that we can have a 95% confidence level in our survey being accurate to within 6%. The math tells us we need a sample size of 264 people and we have 270 reviews. So we can be 95% sure that the 27% figure is accurate to within plus or minus 6 %.... (1.6%) .... in essence, we are 95% sure that the extremely unhappy people are between 25.4 % and 28.4% of board owners.

For the MSI Gaming 5, we see that we can have a 95% confidence level in our survey being accurate to within 8.6%. The math tells us we need a sample size of 130 people and we have 130 reviews. So we can be 95% sure that the 10% figure is accurate to within plus or minus 8.6 %. (1.6%) .... in essence, we are 95% sure that the extremely unhappy people are between 9.1 % and 10.9% of board owners.

2. If you want to know the test conditions, simply visit the site and read them. However, since all boards were tested under identical conditions by the same guy, on essentially the same exact hardware, what different users do with their systems is not really relevant. Same CPU, RAM, same GFX card, all had AX series PSUs for every board.... the Z97-A had a H100i, the Gaming 5 and Hero had a much less capable H105.... so if anything the test conditions favored the Z97-A....and yet despite that advantage, it was 10% behind.
http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/msi_z97_gaming_6_review/10

3. Are you suggesting that if one board overclocks better that "to make things fair", one should purposely reduce its performance so the lower performing board can compete better ? Should Usain Bolt have to wear 5 pound ankle weights at next year's world track championships ? The Z97-A reached 5.0 Ghz, perhaps due to the more robust cooler, But despite the extra 0.1 Ghz and better cooler, it still was 10% behind in fps. If the OP including participating in OC competitions, ya would have to give the nod to the Z97-A (with some reservation due to the better cooler), but that was not listed among the intended uses.

Here's how they stack up for gaming ... with the highest fps total set at 100% and all the others totals as a % of that.

MSI Z97 Gaming 9 - 100.00%
MSI Z97 Gaming 5 - 99.86%
MSI Z97A Gaming 6 - 98.96%
Asus Z97 TUF Sabranco - 96.13%
Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 5 - 95.00%
Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force - 94.95%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Hero - 93.67%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Formula - 93.58%
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Gene - 91.69%
Asus Z97-A - 89.57%
MSI Z97 Mpower MAX AC - 88.20%
MSI Z97S Krait SLI - 71.01%


Here's how they stack up in the dissatisfied users department...again these are % of unhappy users .... the 1st two I don't have confidence in statistically as they only have 25 and 38 reviews.

MSI Z97 Mpower MAX AC - 4% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130765
Asus Z97 TUF Sabranco* - 5% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132414
MSI Z97 Gaming 5* - 10% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130770
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Gene - 11% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132136
MSI Z97A Gaming 6 - 12% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128709
Gigabyte Z97X Gaming 5* - 14% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128709
MSI Z97S Krait SLI 19% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130801
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Hero* - 19% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132125
Asus Z97 Maximus VII Formula* - 26% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132247
Asus Z97-A - 27% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132118
MSI Z97 Gaming 9 - 28% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130808
Gigabyte Z97X SOC Force* - 29% http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128704

If it's me, I want something from the top of those lists. (BTW, we have direct personal experience with all asterisked boards above).

The is simply no logical argument that can be made that when you have well over 100 reviews that one group is somehow more uneducated or biased. Both would will be equally represented in any sampling of that magnitude, hence the 95% mathematical confidence level.

The approach is akin to arguing that GFX card A is just as good as GFX card B cause A can be overclocked to B's performance level..... and leaving out the very obvious fact that B can be overclocked too. Most reviews ? More people ate at McDonalds than at Wolfgang Puck's restaurant or at In and Out Burger or anywhere else so is it an unescapable conclusion that McDonalds makes the best meal among those or even on the planet ? Who's the better hitter in baseball ?

The guy with a .375 average w/ 100 at bats
The guy with a .125 average w/ 200 at bats

The sampling size between the two boards in questions tells us, with a 95% confidence level that the accuracy of the % of 1 egg reviews, means ONLY that the number for the Z97-A is only 2% more accurate than the Gaming 5.... and no way that a 2% difference can account the difference between 10 and 27% .
 
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I completely understand that. But it also means that if we had the same number of reviews it is possible the negative reviews for other boards could go up. You can't just look at the %. If the board only had 10 reviews with 1 negative review yet the other had 1000 with 200 negative reviews would you honestly say a board with less reviews is a better product?

And you completely missed my point of having to actually go and read the bad reviews to know if they are legitimate reviews or just people being picky. I just stated it is harder to trust Newegg reviews because of this fact, especially when people post negative reviews because they don't like the sound card (which is normally the same one most boards use).

As for the performance I just find it interesting. And they should do stock clocks and overclocks. Not just one which shows what they want you to see. And an interesting note is the fact that somehow MSI is at the top and the bottom with the same chipset. I understand other parts change and can change performance but 28% between the top and lowest MSI board? Seems a bit odd.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/motherboards/2014/05/15/asus-maximus-vii-hero-review/5

This is a bit better review because they show the stock performance plus the overclocked performance. Not as many MSI boards yet the MSI Gaming 7 (probably around the Gaming 6 performance) shows what I normally see between boards, 1-2% which is within normal limits. Only when there is a overclock advantage in CPU and RAM do we normally see such a large disparity in numbers for performance.
 
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Jimmy

it's a no win here, you are just asking that yet another book/chapter be written in response. It is a bit humorous that back with the Z87 mobos, we were being told that you can't get anything of value from NewEgg reviews by this same person. Would also question why one would even do 'multiple Hero builds' on a mobo they have no faith in, and Jack has been trashing the Hero mobos since the Z87 (the original Hero) was released. Just doesn't make sense to use components you have no faith in.
 
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I went with the Hero, and wouldn't change it, have built on a number of Z97 boards and have yet to find one I'd prefer. The Asus Z97-A is a good model also (have done an even dozen builds on the A and all the clients are thrilled with them). Could also look at the Z97 Pro Gamer (a newer model Asus released) which is another very good mobo. Doing what you've mentioned you can't really go wrong with any of these three. 😉
 
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