ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero

Nachdem wir mit MSIs und EKWBs MPG Z590 CARBON EK X das erste Z590-Mainboard begutachtet haben, geht es nun mit einem beliebten Modell weiter. Denn egal, ob es sich um eine Intel- oder AMD-Plattform handelt, die ROG-Oberklasse- und High-End-Mainboards stehen bei vielen Interessenten hoch im Kurs. So steht ein Test des neuen ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero natürlich fix auf unserem Programm.

Honestly, if you asked me on the spot what I would buy, the Z490 HERO or the Z590 HERO ... I would not know the answer immediately. Personally, I have little use for Thunderbolt, and the Z490 model does offer a 5 GigE LAN jack (2.5GigE on the Z590), as well as you now miss out on the small OLED screen. The differences otherwise are trivial at best. With a price tag hovering in the 450~500 USD range, this board is out of my comfort zone. It does offer four M2 slots, six SATA3 slots, AX WIFI6E, and a duo of 2.5 GigE LAN jacks. We would have liked to see the latter replaced by a 5 or 10 GigE jack at this price level. Of course, we should not forget to mention the motherboard has Thunderbolt 4. Armed with a Rocket Lake proc, Intel brings the platform much-desired PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes, of which four you can utilize for a super-fast NVMe SSD. Aside from double DMI link bandwidth and USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (SuperSpeed USB 20Gbps), there is little gain from Z590 overall. A multitude of Z490 motherboards will even support PCIe Gen 4.0 after a BIOS update (Gen 11 proc mandatory). How important the rest is to you is for you to decide. VRM wise we can't complain at all, you can tweak as far as your proc can go, but with the power signature of Rocket-lake and the corresponding thermals, you'll likely reach something close to 5200~5300 MHz on all cores but will need to arm yourself with a kilowatt PSU and really proper cooling. In the end, the new HERO isn't a HERO, but more of the same at a high price level. It has some delightful BIOS features, though, and is a pleasure to work with. We had no stability issues or anything weird whatsoever. The board is feature-packed has good aesthetics, proper performance, and overclocking options. But this all comes delivered at a hefty price tag. If you find it worth the price tag, recommended, of course.

The ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero is an exemplary high-end Z590 board. With WiFi 6E, Dual 2.5 Gb/s LAN, and an integrated I/O shield, as well as four M.2 slots and lots of storage connectivity, all the feature boxes are checked. When it comes to looks, the ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero is classically ASUS by featuring an excellent RGB implementation and a design that is neutral enough to make for easy parts matching—all while looking interesting enough to still catch the eye.