Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero Motherboard Review: Dark Knight Rises for 14th Gen

Firmware

Asus’ BIOS on the Dark Hero is the same as the regular Hero before it. The BIOS sports the familiar black, red, and yellow ROG theme that’s easy to read. Asus starts in an Easy Mode that displays high-level information, including CPU and memory clock speeds, temperatures, fan speeds, storage information, etc. Advanced Mode has several headers across the top that drop down additional options. The BIOS is one of my favorites, as almost everything you need isn’t buried deep within menus.

Image 1 of 34

Software

Asus’ software suite for the Dark Hero is the same as other ROG-based boards and sticks with the ROG-inspired theme. Several applications exist for various functions, ranging from RGB lighting control, audio, system monitoring, overclocking, etc. We’ve captured several screenshots of the applications below. Here’s a look at Ai Suite 3, Armoury Crate, Sonic Studio and the Realtek Audio application.

ProArt series boards also offer access to advanced security management functions through Asus Control Center Express. The software allows users to lock USB ports, remotely disable the registry editor on remote devices and provides a software blacklist to prevent using high-risk applications.

Image 1 of 21

Test System / Comparison Products

We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied as of mid-October 2023. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms, but have updated the driver to the latest, keeping our games, F1 22 and Far Cry 6, the same. Unless otherwise noted, we use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public using ‘optimized default’ settings, except for the memory (XMP). The hardware and drivers we used are as follows:

Test System Components

Benchmark Settings

MORE: Best Motherboards

MORE: How To Choose A Motherboard

MORE: All Motherboard Content