[Hardware] Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Formula Review: Hybrid cooling and high-end hardware

[GL HERO SHIMA]

Asus’ ROG Maximus Z790 Formula combines a “Moonlight White” aesthetic and hybrid VRM cooling, making it one of the more unique boards we’ve covered in a while. With a price of $724.99 (Newegg), it’s a high-end board, but don’t fret. Its specifications and convenience features are top-notch, so you’re getting a lot for the money. You get integrated Wi-Fi 7 and 5 GbE, an informative OLED screen, comprehensive PCIe 5.0 support (including M.2 socket and PCIe slots), flagship-class audio, a DIY-friendly design, and a premium appearance are just some of its features.

We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Asus’ other Raptor Lake refresh motherboards. If you need 14th-gen support out of the box, there’s the Z790 Dark Hero ($649.99), our Z790 Formula ($749.99), Z790 Apex Encore for overclockers ($649.99) (we’ll cover this one soon), and some mid-range offerings like the ROG Strix Z790-E Gaming Wi-Fi II ($499.99) and Z790-F Gaming Wi-Fi II ($429.99). None of the MicroATX or ITX-size boards seem to get updates. However, several have the BIOS Flashback feature and could already be using a BIOS with support for the new processors.

Performance on the ROG Maximus Z790 Formula was average to above average in most of our tests. Any results that were slower than the average would be tough to pick out without benchmarking and reading the data. As you’ll see later in the VRM tests, by default, the board lets the processor peak much higher than Intel’s defaults, for a while, then reaches a steady state of around 253W for the remainder of testing. Results in our gaming tests were average to above average as well. The only thing you need to worry about regarding performance is keeping the processor temperatures in line.

Below, we’ll dig into the details of the board and see how it performs with the new Intel Core i9-14900K processor and against a few other refreshed Z790 motherboards. While it won’t make the best motherboards list, it’s still easy to recommend for users looking to water-cool their power delivery and don’t want the hassle of looking for compatible blocks. But before we get into those details, we’ll start by listing the specifications from Asus.

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/motherboards/asus-rog-maximus-z790-formula-review