Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
The Maximus IX Hero is a bit more price attractive, but still is at that 269 USD/Euro. it is a lot of money that you have to pay for a motherboard these days. However if you are into the design, ASUS might have a very attractive product for you here. The motherboard is very feature rich, offers all tweaking options you need, has two M2 slots and furthermore offers everything you'd need for a proper Z270 platform, including Gigabit Intel LAN. Next to that is has very interesting looks. The reality is also that this product will tweaks just as well as a as any 400/500 USD motherboard. With a 7600K you will be able to reach 5 GHz (if the processors is capable) with just two changes in the BIOS. Realistically though, this is the same for pretty much any Z270 motherboard in any price class. ASUS however has a very well designed UEFI BIOS that is easy to use. Combined with the ease of use with XMP memory rocks. For our 5 Ghz CPU tweak and 3867 MHz DDR4 memory clock frequency we enabled XMP, changed CPU turbo multipliers and added 1.35 Volts on the CPu. That was all that is required for a pretty massive tweak.
Reality also remains that if you have upgraded in the last year or two to a new PC, well, the upgrade remains a hard sell. This motherboard does have aesthetic improvements as well as your platform will be upgraded towards full compatibility with USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) as well as two M.2 slots and sure, a bit of LED bling (albeit little), we do like the ASUS Aura SYNC initiative. Previously, the software was only able to control individual computer hardware such as LED lighting on motherboard and additional RGB LED within the PC case connected to the motherboard. With the new synchronization capabilities, various hardware components' RGB lighting control can be controlled via a single AURA software interface.
Performance & Tweaking
The overall performance for this Maximus IX Hero motherboard with a Core i5 7600K I'd rate as "very good" for the results as tested with a Core i5 7600K. Temps remain very acceptable (depending on choice of cooling) and temperatures when the CPU is overclocked with added voltage definitely seem to be a notch better opposed to Haswell and Skylake. We have been able to reach 5.0 GHz stable enough on liquid cooling. At that level you are looking at up-to 1.35V needed on that CPU core. Mind you that ALL, seriously ALL Z270 motherboards we have tested reach exactly 5 Ghz on the Core i5 7600K. Meaning the processor and cooling are the decisive factor when it comes to generic overclocking and tweaking, not your motherboard so much.
Power Consumption
If we step back and take the Intel reference board with a Sandy Bridge processor (2600K) without a dedicated graphics card, that platform idled at roughly 50 Watts. Once we stress the processor 100% on that platform we'd see ~120 Watts power consumption. With Kaby Lake (7600K) we noticed roughly 40 Watts in idle and 100 Watts with processor load at 100%. Things again remain relative.
The Bottom Line
I think this was the 12th Z270 motherboard we have tested ? In hindsight there are a few that jump out. Features wise honestly it's all mostly the same int terms of M2, SATA3 and USB 3.1. The ease of tweaking shines in the ROG series and serves the Maximus IX Hero well. Next to that we think that this Maximus IX Hero looks pretty terrific as well. Love or hate the LED bling, you are going to get it in such a manner that you can disable it as well with the AURA SYNC software. We again do however sorely miss AC WIFI and hey gain and og gosh we would like to see native 5 or 10 GBit Ethernet jacks get implemented. These two lacking features are a bit of a missed opportunity IMHO. The motherboard otherwise is stable thanks to a really quality build with proper components used, it is mature and comes with a very nice UEFI BIOS as well. I so love my PUMP FAN header (most people these days have some sort of liquid cooling going on). In closing, when you think your system is outdated and you would like to benefit from features such as USB 3.1, proper fast SATA3 ports, nice audio and some LEDs, hey - that's where Kaby Lake with a Z270 motherboard can make sense. Realistically, if you have upgraded of the past year or 2-3 already, you might want to sit and wait for an actual generational improvement or perhaps something from the competition (AMD) that is launching some good stuff in Q1 2017. In the end ASUS offers an excellent motherboard that is up-to snuff features, performance and aesthetics wise. The price-tag at 269 USD/Euro is a bit steep, however you guys either buy the product or not as in the end you guys get to decide whether or not the money is worth the investment. The ASUS ROG Maximus IX Hero I can definitely recommend if you like tho be outside that mainstream norm and go for that extra mile in hardware and features.
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