ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero Motherboard Review

Lighting

ASUS has definitely toned down their RGB lighting on this board. The only thing that lights up on this board is the rear I/O cover. ASUS calls the lighting here Polymo Lighting. Basically it switches between saying “ROG” and “HERO” with an ROG logo. You can cycle through three different basic effects.

ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero Motherboard ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero Motherboard

Software

By default when you install Windows you will be prompted to install ASUS’s Armoury Crate software. I would highly recommend this as it makes it really easy to download all of your needed drivers, etc. The first tab of the software is “Dashboard” where you give a live view of the stats of your system, and the ability to easily change Aura sync and fan speed moves.

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The next tab is “Device” which has all of the specific settings for our motherboard. Here we can configure what happens when we shut down our PC, the ARGB and RGB headers on the board, audio settings, see disk info, and set the Polymo lighting on the rear I/O.

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If you are looking for true motherboard companion software that allows you to tune your system that is still done with Ai Suite III. At this point the software seems a bit dated, but it allows you to do all of your system tuning, overclocking, etc.

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