ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase 

The HERO is based on a 14-phase power delivery to the CPU covered by 60 A power stages teamed up (ASP1405I PWM controller running at 7+2 ). The two Ethernet ports are based on an Aquantia AQC111C 5 Gbps and one Intel I219-V Gigabit controller. The motherboard is located in the ROG high-end range of the desktop processor product stack. The I/O back panel reveals 3.1/3.0/2.0 ports. The audio unit has special noise-reducing capacitors and shielding on top of that Realtek chip (rebadged as ROG SupremeFX 8-Channel High Definition Audio CODEC S1220).  

The motherboard comes with a duo of ATX 4/8 pin connector. You'll get four DIMM slots that can be used for dual-channel memory. Up-to 4700 MHz supported in OC mode. Please do check compatible memory and thus the QVL (Qualified Vendors Lists). The Z490 motherboard will get you eight SATA 6 Gb/s storage ports. Combined in here is are M.2 PCI Express slots using x4 PCIe lanes, thus 32 GB/sec of performance.  You can see the audio implementation, underneath is an ASUS branded Realtek ALC 1220 codec housed for your audio.  The overall looks have improved quite a lot though, look at the heatsink design. The VRM area is totally covered as well.