ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Hero + Intel Core Ultra 9 285K Review

The new ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Hero board is here with full support for Intel’s new Core Ultra 200 Series CPUs. Packed with advanced features for AI tools and Intel’s new CUDIMM tech, the board promises a beefy upgrade. Especially considering that Intel’s new chips require a new socket so there’s no way to get a chip and keep an old board or keep the old board and get a new chip.

Watch the ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Hero review 

While always getting a new board for a new Intel CPU is a pain and costly experience, the ASUS ROG Maximus Z890 Hero does come with some notable upgrades that perhaps make the investment a bit more worth it. Its 24+1+2+2 power stages can handle various currents and high frequencies and the CUDIMM RAM support makes the board compatible with faster RAM kits expected in the future.

ASUS has also carried over its NitroPath DRAM design from its X870E board. So this board promises the same RAM enhancements thanks to the shorter pins that make more contact with the RAM sticks.

There’s also Thunderbolt 4 which is a next-gen port that supports up to 80Gbps bi-directional bandwidth and can be boosted up to 120Gbps for displays using Bandwidth Boost. Of course, there’s also Wi-Fi 7 for those 4 people watching who have compatible modems and fast enough network speeds to warrant the feature.

Before I get into the exact ports and headers on this board, let’s unbox it. ASUS sent over the ROG Maximus Z890 Hero in a cool media kit alongside an ROG Ryjun III. The motherboard box includes the board, another bottle cap opener and a load of extras. These extras include connectors, wires, header cables, the Wi-Fi 7 antenna and some paperwork.

The ROG Ryjujin III 360 ARGB Extreme was included in this kit too. This new all-in-one cooler is designed specifically to combat the heat zones on the new Intel Core Ultra processors. I am not going to get into too much detail on this cooler but it does come with a new Asetek Emma Gen8 V2 pump with improved cooling and voltage regulation.

The cooler also includes the daisy-chained 30mm ARGB fans that are magnetically connected to one another for a cleaner setup. The display on the cooler has also been improved. It now includes a 3.5-inch 640 x 480 LCD panel. An improvement over the non-extreme 240p display.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 chip, for those who care about what it looks like, still comes with its rectangular shape. The chip requires a new LGA 1851 processor socket which is found on the newer motherboards such as this one. While the socket size is essentially the same at 37.5mm x 45mm, there are 151 new pins on these boards and repositioned plastic notches on the chip which prevents you from putting the wrong chips in the wrong place.

The issue with these new Intel chips being the same size is they are likely prone to warp. This was an issue in past-generation 1700 chips. Due to how the clamp closed down on the chip and applied pressure on both sides, they would warp over time. Intel says the new improved sockets, called the Reduced Load ILM will help with that issue.

Essentially, the company has added a washer underneath the hinge of the clamp. So when you close down the CPU, it isn’t as tight as before. This means less pressure on the chips and hopefully, no warp. It isn’t the best solution in the world to fix the issue. Surely Intel could add more pressure points to the top and bottom of the clamp to spread out the load? Maybe next-generation? We’ll see.

You also won’t be able to use your existing contact frames on the board because there are slight changes to the CPU bracket now. Holes have been moved up and there is a notch in the way. But I am sure you’ll be able to pick up a new LGA 1851 contact frame somewhere down the line.

The new socket might not support existing contact frames but most coolers should mount onto the boards without hassle. You’ll just use the LGA 1700 brackets to install your cooler.

The new Intel Core chip comes with 20 PCI-E 5.0 lanes. 16 are used for the GPU and 4 are used for a Gen 5 SSD.  This is a first for Intel. Up to now, Intel chips forced GPUs into x8 mode when using a PCIe 5.0 M.2 Slot. Thankfully, there are enough lanes here to use both your GPU and SSD.

From a spec point of view, the ROG Maximus Z890 Hero supports up to 192GB of DDR5 RAM with promises of up to 8800MTs and beyond. There is one PCIE 5.0 16 slot, 1 PCIE 4 x1 slot and 1 PCIE 4 x 16 slot. There are six M.2 slots on this board. Yes, six of them. One of them is a 22110 PCIE 5 slot. There are two 2280 PCIE 5 slots and 3 2280 PCIE 4 slots.

The one M.2 slot is accessed easily using the M.2 Q-Release to quickly remove the large heatsink, install your SSD and put the heatsink back. There’s also a large heatsink over the chipset and around the CPU socket VRM section.

The board includes 5 thermal sensors, 4 fan headers and one AIO pump header. It also has an extra 8-pin PCIE power connector on the inside of the board alongside the usual 24-pin connector and double 8-pin CPU connectors. This new 8-pin connector has been added due to the new lanes on the board.

The back IO then includes 11 ports in total. There are 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports, 5 USB 10Gbps ports, 4 being type-A and 1 is USB-C. There are also an additional 5 USB Type-A 5Gbps ports. You’ll also find the HDMI port, Wi-Fi connector, 2.5Gb and 5Gb ethernet ports, 2 audio jacks, optical S/PDIF out ports, BIOS flashback button and CMOS button.

I do need to mention the board’s design because it is quite cool-looking. It does bear a similar style to the AMD counterpart. There’s a 3D ROG eye on the M.2 heatsink and the IO packs an awesome ROG graphic that is customizable in Armoury Crate. The full black design is what you would expect from the board.

Setting it up was simple. I did use my new bench to test the board so it doesn’t look as fancy as it would in a case but this is much easier considering I have to take it all apart and send the board and everything else back. I connected the Ryjun III Extreme fans to the radiator, installed the LGA 1700 mount onto the board, applied the ASUS ROG thermal paste and mounted the pump.

I installed the SSD, which was super easy thanks to the Q-Latch, by the way, and booted it all up. There was no BIOS update at the time of testing so I went ahead and installed Windows 11, downloaded all the ASUS drivers and programs, updated Windows 11 and restarted the build to ensure I had the most stable testing environment.

There are some important tools ASUS has included in this board to get the most out of your hardware. The new AEMP III tech comes with Intel’s CUDIMM support. This essentially ramps up the speed of your RAM to higher frequencies and you can select the preset that suits your build. AEMP isn’t new but this third-generation version now supports CUDIMM.

Thankfully, I had a set of Kingston Renegade DDR5 CUDIMM sticks with me that ASUS sent over. Each stick was 24GB totalling 48GB of RAM.

DIMM Fit is also another feature you can use. This setting sees the board perform an algorithm on the memory and register subtimings and optimize stability for each RAM kit. This setting is for those who really want to overclock their kits. Scanning and running these tests take up to 7 hours but provide increased speeds.

Apart from this, the BIOS has enough on offer to make all those PC enthusiasts happy. But for this review, I wanted to test out the Intel Core Ultra 9 first and equally as important, put this CUDIMM RAM to the test. I also ran some AI tests because these new Intel chips come with NPUs that are important for that stuff. If you care about AI, of course.

I also ran some of these tests with ASUS AI Overclocking tools enabled. I have listed these as “Tuned” on the graphs. This is with the most basic and accessible overclocking tools enabled.  Along with the AI Advanced OC profile, I also removed all limits on the CPU, added a level 3 NPU boost and selected XMP Tweaked level 3.

Power use during these untweaked benchmarks reached 243W during the CPU-Z stress test but idled at 227W. Max temperature peaked at 79C and idled at 77C on the CPU sensor with a 55C reading on the VRM. The board remained fairly cool at 38C.

Efficiency cores maxed out at 5.7GHz but dropped down to 4.8GHz and idled around that mark when temperatures peaked at over 75C. 4.8GHz seems to be the safe spot for thermals and out-of-the-box performance.

After I enabled overclocking and removed power limits, the CPU power increased slightly to 245W. I ran CPU-Z stress test again for 10 minutes. Power remained at 245W, core frequency saw a 100MHz boost to 4.9GHz. Temperatures on the CPU reached 79C and the VRM was at 55C. The board measured 38C. So there wasn’t a drastic change here even with the extra 20W of power. Scores also didn’t drastically increase. Sure, there was a clear jump but you can likely squeeze a lot more out of this board and chip.

The big jump in scores which you’ll see in the graphs came after I enabled Intel Extreme Tuning. I just set this to automatic. As a result, the core frequency increased to 4966MHz, power consumption idled at 270W and the CPU temperature peaked at 81C. This idled at 79C during a 10-minute stress test. The VRM reached 54C and stayed there. The board temperature hit 38C.

These overclocked scores show how much power the Intel Core Ultra 200 Series chips pack. These were slight tweaks to the core clocks too. The result was a power-hungry CPU that got incredibly hot.

Testing out the RAM was also interesting. This new 8800MTs RAM lives up to its speed. Once I enabled the EXPO mode in the BIOS, I was able to reach a full 4400MHz on these RAM sticks which is the full 8800MT/s. Of course, this new RAM offers a lot of room for overclocking and performance tweaks too. There also also larger, faster sticks in the works which will be available next year. ASUS DIMM Fit also helps deliver slightly improved performance on the RAM. Here are the scores I got.

Overall, my experience with the ROG Maximus Z890 Hero was as I expected – fairly decent. The board handles its thermals well and comes with a plethora of settings you can dive into to tweak your build. If you ask me, the sheer amount of tweaks on offer here is a little overwhelming which definitely makes this board for enthusiasts.

The Intel Core Ultra 9 285K is also a beast when it comes to its performance. These numbers are simply the start of the experience this chip will offer. Windows has yet to optimize its speed and performance so give it time and you’ll get even more from this tech.

You do need to keep in mind that this is a power-hungry CPU that gets very hot. I personally believe it may be overkill for the majority of users out there. I am a gamer and will likely still stick to AMD for my PC build. The cost of electricity and thermals Intel is asking for here puts me off using this product. It is cool, don’t get me wrong. But you’ll need to go into this chip knowing what you’re getting and don’t buy this simply because it can perform on these levels. Do you need these levels? That’s the question you need to ask yourself.

The same goes for CUDIMM RAM. These speeds are next-level impressive. Faster and larger sticks are also on the way which most people don’t need. It is great to have all this tech but if you’re spending money on performance that isn’t making your life easier, that’s when you’re just throwing money away. In my opinion anyway.

This review is based on a kit sent to us for testing. Visit the official ASUS website here to find out more about the board.