Asus Z390 PRIME or Hero XI for non overclocked 9700k pure gaming setup?

Arct1c0n · December 10, 2018

I'm looking into building a new 9700k gaming rig since my 4790k Haswell rigs motherboard died and this might be my last one for a good while as I've got a new lady from Japan in life and I may be very busy starting a new life with her next year which is gonna cost some money as well, so this may be the last chance in a long while I get to build a new gaming PC.

I likely won't bother overclocking the 9700k as all I do is game at 1440p at 60 hertz, so it's kinda pointless to push it harder and I don't wanna fry any equipment like I did with my devils canyon and my Asus Hero VII that died last week from overclocking possibly. I'm also reusing my Thermalright True Spirt 140 Power HSF, so no water cooling.

I'm still an asus man, I hate Gigabyte with a passion and the AsRock boards look like complete ass in the looks dept so I don't care how good they are, they are not going in my case, so don't suggest a non Asus mobo please. I do is game at 1440p/60 hertz. No encoding, no benchmarking, no compressing, no streaming, no video compiling, ect...ect... So don't suggest an AMD build.

Since I'm aware of the VRM quality issue with Asus vs other mobo makers but won't be overclocking, so any real tangible benfit to paying extra for the HERO XI model compared to the PRIME other then the ROG Bios and the totally useless onboard Wifi? Or just save some money and get the better looking PRIME board for my needs?

LukeSavenije · December 10, 2018

well, the z390 asus boards aren't that great this time around. I would get a gigabyte aorus rather than a crosshair (that bad it is this time)

Arct1c0n · December 10, 2018

I'm not spending the money on a Aorus. Period.

fogSource · January 4, 2019

I have the same question as the OP actually. What do I get for my money on the Hero that the prime does not have? As far as I can tell, just ROG bios, better VRM, built in wifi, 2 extra addressable LED headers, more connections for fans/watercool, better heatsink. All I can think of.

Also OP, here is the VRM rankings for Z390 boards, so you can see where the Prime is.

Even tho Gigabyte has improved a lot, especially with Z390. I still hear about people having literally the same quirky issues on their Z390 Aurous boards that I had on my old AM3 board. Nothing crippling, just annoying or weird sometimes.

I'm getting Asus honestly, but there's pros and cons to both.