Asus ROG Maximus X Hero (Z370) Motherboard Review

The Box and Packaging

I love ROG gaming motherboards, especially the Maximus, Rampage and Crosshair series. They always come with great looking packaging. Inside the box you loads of extra including coasters, stickers, a nice ROG badge, tons of cables, drivers disc and of course your usual users manual.

The Motherboard Itself

This motherboard looks almost identical to its predecessor – the ROG Maximus IX Hero (Z270), except of course the ROG Maximus X Hero now uses the much newer Z370 chipset instead. It also uses very similar looking heatsinks and I/O hood covers.

Like I mentioned before, Z370 chipset based motherboards, do not support and is currently not compatible with older 6th or 7th Gen Intel Core processors (Skylake/Kaby Lake which all uses the same LGA1151 socket). If you missed my recent rant about Intel, you can read it again!

A Closer Look

There are 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots allowing up to DDR4-4133(O.C.). The motherboard supports 2-way SLI or 3-way Crossfire multi-GPU configuration, as well as XMP memory profiles and one-click easy overclocking. You also get diagnostic LEDs, Mem-OK, ClrCMOS, Power-on and reset buttons… a sign of a GOOD motherboard!

SupremeFX HD audio is standard with all of Asus’s high-end ROG motherboards, For storage, you get dual M.2 connectors with one included ROG M.2 Heatsink, and 6 x SATA3 ports and of course support for Intel Optane memory.

For connectivity, the back panel I/O features reset and clear CMOS, 1 x DisplayPort, 1 x HDMI, Keybot and BIOS USB port, 4 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 3.1 (Type-A and C), Gigabit LAN port, SPDIF optical out, and an array of HD audio connectors.