by Carl Rogel Inocentes
If you’re on a tight budget and looking for a gaming motherboard, then look no further. The Maximus VI Hero is one of the newcomers in the ASUS’ Republic of Gamers brand of gaming peripherals and components and is aimed at budget-conscious gamers. To check if it lives up to its name and brand, we here at the Techlab had one tested for review.
Black and Red
The Hero sports the usual ROG colors of black and red. Unlike its more renowned siblings, the Extreme and Formula, the Hero has less component clutter. It does away with the more imposing components to chop-off some price whilst maintaining its ATX form. It doesn’t look as imposing as its two siblings, yet it still remains as an ROG motherboard in its own way.
Tests
Performance and durability are two things that come into mind when using ROG motherboards, and both are present in the Hero. The Hero runs using the latest 4th generation Intel® Core™ with the LGA 1150 sockets. The new processors are a bit hotter when it comes to overclocking so we decided to restrain ourselves a little.
We did a few tests as to what the Hero can do. For overclocking, we did a bit of minor tweaking to see how accurate and simple the task was using the board. It handled the temperature well and ran stably even with intense programs. As this is a gaming motherboard, we tried playing Crysis 3 with it while overclocked. The motherboard’s overall temperature was manageable and the component can still handle further overclocking. The experience was made easier through the use of the ROG UEFI BIOS.The Bios setting has an easy to read and understand settings which non-hardcore overclockers can understand.
We also had the time to dwell in the gaming features of the board.The SupremeFX is the on-board audio card in found in the Hero and also other Maximus VI boards. For a built-in audio, the SupremeFXperformed well, trumping other discrete audio cards in terms of sound quality. For gamers, the Hero also has the SonicRadar, a feature which can be used to determine the origin of sounds inside games especially in First-Person Shooters. Though it can give an unfair advantage in terms of multiplayer games, the feature proved to be an accurate tool in determining the source of footsteps or gunshots.
The Verdict
Overall, the Maximus VI Hero is an excellent board. The overclocking features are comparable as to that of boards specifically made for that task. In terms of gaming, the features and the audio that come with the motherboard justify the price. The only downside however, is the absence of some sockets and ports. For its price, the Hero trumps other boards in terms of features, performance, and durability. It’s really not a “budget” board in a sense, but if you’re willing to dish out additional dough to jump into the ROG bandwagon, and experience the features, performance, and durability, then why not?