ROG MAXIMUS Z690 HERO

Just got my Z690 Hero this morning. Opened the box to check for the inverted chip above the ram dimms. Everything okay! But once I inspected the entire board I noticed there are 2 bent capacitors near the CPU socket. Closed the box and sent back immediately to azon for refund and purchased another Z690 Hero. Edit:. 3/23 Got my replacement board on Feb 23. It's been already a month since putting this board together with my 13900k, Noctua NH-D15s cooler and Gskill trident 16gbx2 rgb ram 6000. All working perfectly. Happy with my setup. Next target is a 4070ti or a 4080, but will use my EVGA rtx 3080ti ftw3 ultra for awhile.

I read all the reviews on Amazon talking about horror stories, opening up and finding damaged components. I got lucky and got a flawless board. Since 14th gen wasn't much of an upgrade, and I was tired of waiting, got this bad boy at a pretty hefty discount when they dropped it. Its going to need a Firmware Update if you want to put in 13th or 14th gen processors, very simple to do via USB stick. Its running rather flawlessly.

Been using Asus boards and products since 2002, and they never failed me. Last two Asus MBs lasted 12 years without a hiccup. Never had an issue with Asus products. Bought this MB when it was released Nov 22, 2021 and waited for DDR5 to become available. Finished the build in January 2022 not knowing about the fire hazard thing. Board worked great until July 2022 when it died. Literally will not boot or do anything. Electricity was getting there because the RGB lights on the board were on, but nothing else worked. No error codes, no response. Started looking online and found all the chatter about it being a fire hazard and recalled. Mine was actually one of the recalled ones. Called Asus and they issued an RMA and they paid for shipping both ways. “New” board arrives about a week later. Set everything up again and problems started with some USB ports getting signal noise. The USB webcam would not work correctly (worked fine on the earlier “defective” board). The monitor started getting signal noise too, with horizontal red lines when I connect it to the board’s HDMI port (I use the on-board CPU graphics 12700K). Again, it worked fine on the "defective" board. Do I have time to camp out at Asus offices waiting for RMAs? No, I don't. Is it a solid board? It is heavy and I think I can crack roasted chestnuts with it. Is it expensive? $600 for a board is not cheap. What happened to Asus quality control? It left the building. Do I recommend you buy this board? NO. No I don’t.

Altogether it’s awesome. Perfect for my i9-12900k. Looks amazing and like a high end board. Bios is very easy to use and it even has mounts for lga1200 AIO coolers. I didn’t know DDR5 ram slots are not backwards compatible with DDR4 sticks which I wish was more spelled out but that’s my fault. Plenty of M.2 SSD slots and an awesome PCIe adaptor for more, but make sure your using the right generation SSD with the correct SSD port. Only other review here is by someone who bombs all reviews and doesn’t know what he’s doing apparently.

The VRM's are the same as the z790 version. Even the z690 chipset is nearly identical to the z790 chipset. About the only difference between this board and the z790 version is the official chipset and a couple USB ports on the back. The BIOS flashhack is easy to perform in case you get a 14th Gen processor. The board I got came with the BIOS version 1720 that supports 13th Gen processors. However, I had to use the BIOS flashback tool because I used a 48GB kit when I initially booted the board.

This board came with 1720 BIOS. I have updated the BIOS to 2802 with a breeze. No stability issues found so far. As far as wrong polarity SMD capacitor near DIMM slot issue, it doesn't happen to this board batch. I consider this board is a great buy compared to z790 hero during sales . Temperatures of the components in this board is within good range however the I/O shield is a bit warm to touch since the VRM heat sink connected.

Compared to other z690 boards, the flexibility with allocating PCI gen 4 and 5 lanes is awesome. USB 5/Thunderbolt 4 is great for future use but really nothing uses now. AI overclocking and fan control overcome the massive increase in complexity overclocking Alder Lake CPUs, solve the problem where changes in room temp or cooling capability (dusty fan grill etc) could cause overheating without adjustments and keeping fan usage to a minimum while keeping temps low without a ton of hassle. This WAS all great but I experienced a hardware issue with the sound chip: the DAC would randomly emit full volume digital noise and sometime require a reboot to fix. I believe there may be a firmware update for the sound solution now, but I cannot try it as I have already returned it. Great board, hopefully the sound issue doesn't become widespread.

Okay, get ready for a mouthful, but DEFINITELY READ THIS IF YOU ARE CONSIDERING BUYING THIS MOTHERBOARD. I got this motherboard to run my i9-13900k. Which for anyone reading this who’s inexperienced, I’d suggest not doing. If you don’t trust yourself to flash your BIOS with a flash drive, either get a 12th gen cpu or grab a Z790 board instead so you don’t accidentally brick your board. None of that was an issue for me however and I was able to flash the board no problem and has no issues in that regard. The issues for me started with the board physically the minute I opened the box. One of the two USB 3.2 ports had its pins COMPLETELY bent. I attached the photos of what I saw after I took it out of the box. I immediately called ASUS support to try and get this fixed. After providing them my serial number and name, they informed me that while I was within my warranty for the board bent pins are not covered under warranty. I explained again that I had just taken it out of the box, and they were already bent. They said the most they could do would be to have me send them the motherboard for a free diagnostic test (whatever that means) and after that I would need to pay them to fix the board and have it sent back to me… this process would take 7-10 days as well. I need my computer to work full time from home so that was not an option and I wasn’t about to pay to fix something that was broken on arrival. At this point I decided the best course of action would be for me to order this board again, and after it arrives I can pack this one up and return it for a refund. Yesterday the replacement board arrived and I opened it up to find that the pins on the same USB gen 3.2 port were bent AGAIN. Luckily for me this time only 2 of them were bent and I was able to bend them back into position and the port works fine now. But definitely buyer beware, I don’t know if their stock of these boards all have this issue or if I got extremely unlucky, but they didn’t make it easy for me to fix this problem and in the end I really had to fix it myself. Something of note is that it was the same lower USB 3.2 port on both boards that had bent pins, which makes me thing it might be a manufacturing thing or something, but definitely be careful when buying and be aware you could get broken pins, if you only need one 3.2 header you should be fine to still use it as there’s a second 3.2 header that was fine on both boards I got. But if you ever plan to resell this board it will lose a significant chunk of value due to that. Other than that the board looks amazing and now that I have one with both ports working I love it. But the bad service and the two faulty boards makes me never want to go asus for my boards again. Which is a shame because I feel like they make a lot of the best looking high end boards on the market. Most likely moving forward I’ll be going with a different brand till asus can get their QC under control