ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Review

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The Maximus Z790 Hero is comfortably one of the most reflective motherboards we’ve ever seen. If you want something that will really bounce the light from your RGB fans or LED strips then this is most definitely something that will do that for you. It reminds us of lowriders. Shiny.

  

We’ll be covering all the details in a moment, but for now just bask in the enormity of the VRM heatsinks. Four levels, all cut through for maximum surface area and ventilation. It’s a serious piece of kit.

  

The bottom half has a giant ROG Eye logo working in conjunction with additional heat spreaders to keep both the chipset and any M.2 drives you have installed nice and cool.

  

As always we’ll go clockwise around the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero, and we begin with the steel armoured 8+8 12V power inputs squeezed in the midst of those VRM heatsinks.

  

There are plenty of fan/pump headers at the top right, ready and waiting to keep your new 13th Generation Intel Core CPU nice and cool with whatever cooling solution you opt for. Onboard power, retry and Flex buttons are there for those initial configuration times. We hope pressing the Flex Key turns us into a crossfit superstar.

  

Below the regular 24pin ATX is an additional 6 pin power input. These used to be found at the bottom edge of motherboards, but placing it here makes perfect sense. We’ve also got the Type-C front panel USB, and the supremely useful PCI Express latch button that stops us having to poke lollypop sticks down the side of our graphics card to remove it.

  

There are two Type-A USB front panel connectors bracketing the six SATA ports. That’s all for this side. Like an eager proctologist, let’s take a closer look at the bottom.