Review Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Review: Holding Out for a Price Drop

[Admin]

The Z790 Hero is an attractive and very well-equipped motherboard from the ROG Maximus Family. For a costly $630, you get a PCIe 5.0 M.2 socket, 40 Gbps Type-C ports, overbuilt power delivery, and a flagship-class audio solution.

Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Review: Holding Out for a Price Drop : Read more

 

[Kuricature]

It's a good review, but you're trying a bit too hard for a negative in the price even though Z790 is still better off than X670E, and this board is still cheaper than the MSI ACE which is the closest in features. I understand that a single board with most of the same features exists for cheaper, the ASRock Taichi, but ASRock also has the worst BIOS out of all of them. Gigabyte Master does not have Thunderbolt on top of last gen audio, and a couple small features like high power USB C, gold plated audio ports. Really minor stuff that would probably be worth saving $130 for most people but meh, this board isn't the worst offender. I ended up choosing it for my wife new build because it really did seem like the best option without jumping up to $800 AORUS Xtreme or $1000 Maximus Extreme, both of which only really add full shielding and a 10gb ethernet.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Is there a Bonnie Tyler fan in the house!?

 

[btmedic04]

The ROG tax is getting out of hand

 

[coromonadalix]

Sure does, you have good motherboards in the b650 series, well layed out

 

[TechieTwo]

IMO Asus has always been able to exploit consumers by supplying tweaked mobos to reviewers. A company can only charge what people are willing to pay. If the Asus name means enough to be exploited then it's the mobo for you. If not then there are numerous other brands that offer virtually identical performance even when OC'd so why get hosed?

 

[helper800]

IMO Asus has always been able to exploit consumers by supplying tweaked mobos to reviewers. A company can only charge what people are willing to pay. If the Asus name means enough to be exploited then it's the mobo for you. If not then there are numerous other brands that offer virtually identical performance even when OC'd so why get hosed?

Just because the end result is the same does not say anything of the journey getting there.

 

[Hellmut1956]

The Z790 Hero is an attractive and very well-equipped motherboard from the ROG Maximus Family. For a costly $630, you get a PCIe 5.0 M.2 socket, 40 Gbps Type-C ports, overbuilt power delivery, and a flagship-class audio solution.

Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Review: Holding Out for a Price Drop : Read more

I have purchased an ASUS Maximus XIII Extreme motherboard shortly before Intels 12 Generation CPU was released and that purchase was more expensive, For me to purchase such a motherboard has more to do with a need for a much more powerful power supply and the connectors that fit to a RTX4090 motherboard. This means that any upgrade is basically a new PC purchase.

 

[CSMajor]

The Taichi has the same "specs", but when you load it up the PCIe lanes get used up and you don't actually get the full bandwidth possible from the CPU/Chipset. I've had both (and the MSI Carbon WIFI) and that was a signficant different for those use cases that require bandwidth.

Definitely not a low end board, but it's not true to say they have all the same things...

 

[jaquith]

The Z790 Hero is an attractive and very well-equipped motherboard from the ROG Maximus Family. For a costly $630, you get a PCIe 5.0 M.2 socket, 40 Gbps Type-C ports, overbuilt power delivery, and a flagship-class audio solution.

Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Review: Holding Out for a Price Drop : Read more

For starters I own the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Extreme, and last generation I purchased both the Hero and TUF Z690 variants. So the valid question would be why? People get singularly fixated on irrelevant things like the expense, and I'd point out that both the current Hero and Extreme Z790's are all sold out along with the all the MSRP RTX 4090s. So getting back to the answer, the mere fact of having the core parts of your system not only running smoothly but also prolonging the life of every component connected to it has a huge value. My analogy would be I can buy a half inch stainless steel bolt or a plated pot metal bolt .. How are both going to hold up after a time in the elements? Fine tuned power delivery, extreme options and next generation components are key.

In my case, I was able to take two matching DDR5 kits because there are no fast "quad kits" and easily achieved DDR5-6200 and faster in 4 x 16GB configuration and 6GHz and faster on an i9-13900K was incredibly easy and in both cases rock solid. I should add, that unless you're going to put top notch and components and overclock then obviously ASUS ROG motherboards aren't a good choice. Instead, they're meant for the hobbyist extremist.

My only real complaint of Z790s in general are the poor use of the PCIe 5 M.2 .. the manuals are extremely vague, but you'll quickly discover that populating the PCIe 5 M.2 slot retards the top PCIe 5 slot (GPU Slot) to x8 versus x16, and there is no conservation of bandwidth of PCIe types 4 vs 5. In my case, I have 3x M.2 SSDs and I'm faced with having to move one of them to the higher latency M.2 slots or cut my RTX 4090s PCIe x16 to x8 .. and in my case spending over $1,000, I don't like to have to make compromise choices that didn't present themselves in the prior Z690s. IMO a major Z790 PCIe 5 x16 vs x8 flaw.

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