ASUS ROG Z390 Maximus XI Hero Review
Introduction and Technical Specifications
Published: 26th October 2018 | Source: ASUS | Price: |
Introduction
The Maximus XI Hero is the entry level model in the Maximus range. The Formula and Extreme are above it, but just because it is relatively affordable doesn't mean that it's stripped bare of features. After all, it's still a ROG model, still with the full-fat Z390 chipset, still part of the Maximus XI range.
To this end the design team at ASUS have acknowledged its market positioning and taken the opportunity to provide potential purchasers with lots of helpful features and information that might be pertinent to those dipping their toes into the ocean of knowledge required to build your own PC. The primary DIMM and PCI Express slots have been highlighted on the PCB for easy reference. There are onboard power and reset buttons for quick overclocking testing whilst the AI overclocking has been refined to give you a great starting point from which to perform your own feats of high clock brilliance. If you push things too far the Mem OK II has been updated to support more modules and quickly recover your system if you have pushed the limits a bit too far.
Refinements to the pathways also help by providing more accurate monitoring of CPU VCore voltage - the one area most likely to cause an overclock to fail - whilst also improving DDR4 support all the way up to 4266 MHz, even if all four sockets are populated. Your cooling needs are met with plentiful Pump and Fan headers whilst those of you with custom water cooling loops will be pleased to know that flow and temperature monitoring is built into the Maximus XI Hero, freeing you up from the need to purchase an external monitor.
Technical Specifications
Although the Hero is the entry level model of the Maximus XI range it's still a part of the ROG line up and the selection of features are fulsome enough to pique the interest of anyone who wants to be part of the Republic of Gamers ownership but hasn't the funds to go for the flagship Extreme model. With so much connectivity being part of the Z390 chipset the difference between the top range models and the more affordable options are really about the sides, as the meat of the dish remains the same.
Most Recent Comments
I'm trying to figure out if the Hero will be as good as the other two for me....Quote
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Originally Posted by Jake-From-State-Farm
I wanted the Extreme or the Formula, but have to admit I am sick of waiting for them to appear in the retail pipeline.
I'm trying to figure out if the Hero will be as good as the other two for me.... |
I am new at this forum but wanted to share some knowledge.
When looking at your Blender and x265 benchmarks, all the Z390 Asus boards are clearly limited (power/current/otherwise) compared to the MSI Z390 ACE, when comparing the non-OC results using i9-9900K.
I know the MSI Z390 ACE (and GODLIKE) have no power/current limits (only CPU thermal limit default is limited to 100C but you can change that in the bios up to 115C).
If you want to know the power/current limits of your motherboard you can simply run the latest Intel XTU tool on your board and it will tell you if you are limited on:
Power Limit 1 (Long Power Limit),
Power Limit 2 (Short Power Limit),
Short Limit Duration:
IccMax (Max current draw allowed)
(AVX offset)
BTW x265 and Blender are both AVX loads (so AVX offset could also cause this performance difference).
In XTU you can even change those parameters on-the-fly in Windows if you want to test how it affects your benchmarks/programs.
XTU should work on any recent Intel motherboard.
I guess every brand will limit their low tier S1151 motherboards, to protect the CPU and the motherboard (like H310/B360).
Which is to be expected (nothing new).
But those lower-end boards usually don't end up at the reviewers.
So far we have only seen Asus limit their bios at least on the high-end models in reviews, like this M11 Hero (at least if you say "no" to the Asus recommended settings when entering the Asus bios)
I was just wondering what settings Asus is using for the limits.
I personally think the PL2 should be somewhere around 160W on every board, just to get rid of those ridiculuos power draws (over 200W CPU Package Power) in Prime95 v27.x or later (SmallFFTs/12K).
Any normal application (AVX or non-AVX) should run close to or within that 160W power limit and reach its all-core Turbo of 4.7GHz.
(Normal application excludes, any linpack (AVX) loads (e.g. OCCT, XTU, LinX), Prime95 v27.x or later (Small FFTs/12K), AIDA64 Stress Test (AVX), etc.)
I personally don't like the AVX offset method to limit the power draw because, it will hurt the performance of realworld applications like x264/x265/Blender.
These applications use AVX but don't have an extreme power draw (~150W on 9900K @ 4.7GHz all-core Turbo). So why penalize all AVX loads when only a few stresstests run with extreme power draw.
I have also seen boards limiting by IccMax but it's harder to predict at what point/load the cpu will be limited.
Please note that if you remove limits (power/current/thermal), you should check especially if your thermals are OK.
Especially VRM temperatures can get hot quickly (more and more boards show VRM/MOS temperatures in HWInfo64 Sensors but if your board doesn't, you should use other means to monitor).
BTW XTU can also be used to monitor which of the limits (Thermal, Power, Current or MB VR Thermal) is tripped during benchmarks/stresstests. (HWInfo64 can also monitor Thermal, Power and VR alerts but not Current limits).
If you find any limits on your Z390 motherboard and want to share them, please post your Power/Current limits in this thread
(just make sure you are running bios defaults and state the motherboard model, the bios version and the PL1/PL2/Duration/IccMax/AVX offset)
Usually the power/current limits are the same for any cpu, so ther is no need to have a 9900K.Quote
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Its so easy to export bios setting nowadays..
Also how high are you getting your memory ?
Any chance you can try with a 16gb mobules as they are coming down in price rapidly ?Quote