ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero review - Introduction

ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero (Wi-Fi) review
ROG Z490, we can all be heroes

We turn back to the ASUS where we review the ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero. A board in the Maximus series that is slightly more affordable yet offers some of the best premium features this platform has got to offer.  This motherboard is separated into two different SKUs one with WIFI, the other lacking that, so please be carefully selecting the right SKU in your purchasing options.

ROG Maximus XII Hero (Wi-Fi) can accommodate up to three NVMe storage devices, all cooled with heatsinks. This board features an Intel WiFi 6 adapter and two Ethernet ports, where the Extreme model does 10 Gbps, this one has a max of up to 5 Gbps and yes, that's how motherboard manufacturers segment the market these days. The fantastically dark looking and themed motherboard can be customized LEDs wise with Aura Sync and the onboard Gen 2 addressable RGB LED headers. ASUS once again applies that familiar dark shielded design, optimized for cooling and armed with a proper feature set to build around 16 (14+2) power stages and has a nice OLED dash displaying essential CPU information and post status codes. The motherboard offers your typical x16 PCI-Express slots, extensive rear IO, and power LED configurable options. ASUS kept some stuff relatively simple, ye ol' Realtek S1220 CODEC back again. Next to 1 Gbps (Intel), there is 5 Gbps ethernet from Aquantia present, there is also WIFI6 in the form of AX(optional SKU). 

With the new Comet Lake-S you can expect a handful of K model processors predominantly become popular in demand for the PC gamer, as each and every one of the processors will offer proper gaming performance if your graphics card is fast enough. Intel is able to boost the Turbo frequencies towards that 5.3 GHz domain for the flagship processor, the Core i9 10900K. Intel is releasing these series processors initially with a spread of CPU core choices:

• Core i5-10500K (4 Core / 8 Threads)
• Core i5-10600K (6 Core / 12 Threads)
• Core i7-10700K (8 Core / 16 Threads)
• Core i9-10900K (10 Core / 20 Threads)