ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero Review: Everything for Rocket Lake

Board Features

The ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero is a premium ATX motherboard that sits as the entry point to the premium Republic of Gamers options series. Designed primarily for gamers, content creators, and all-round users, it includes plenty of premium specifications, including four memory slots with support for up to 128 GB of DDR4-5333 memory, as well as a premium audio solution consisting of a Supreme (Realtek) ALC4082 HD audio codec and ESS Sabre ESS9018Q2C DAC.

ASUS includes plenty of PCIe 4.0 support in conjunction with Rocket Lake, including two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots operating at x16 and x8/x8, with a third full-length slot electronically locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4 and one smaller PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. For storage, there's a total of four M.2 slots, including one PCIe 4.0 x4, one PCIe 3.0 x4, and two PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA M.2 slots. Looking at SATA support, ASUS includes six SATA ports which are all controlled by the chipset, and as such, include support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays.

Cooling options consist of eight 4-pin headers, which include two for CPU fans, one for an AIO pump, one for a water pump, and three for chassis fans (all can be used for chassis fans, however).

Other inclusions include a pair of premium and high-spec Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports on the rear panel, which support DisplayPort video input too for users with compatible monitors. ASUS also decks out the rear panel with six USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports, with options for expanding on this with one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C (one port), two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A (four ports), and two USB 2.0 (four ports) front panel headers.

Networking options are also premium and consist of dual Intel I225-V 2.5 Gb Ethernet, as well as Intel's AX210 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi which also adds support for BT 5.2 connectivity. Users looking to use Intel's integrated UHD graphics can do so via a single HDMI 2.0 video output. There is also a pair of buttons, with one for clearing the CMOS, and one for using BIOS Flashback.

Test Bed

With some of the nuances with Intel's Rocket Lake processors, our policy is to see if the system gives an automatic option to increase the power limits of the processor. If it does, we select the liquid cooling option. If it does not, we do not change the defaults. Adaptive Boost Technology is disabled by default.

We must also thank the following:

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