Asus’ highest-end consumer motherboard offerings come from its Republic of Gamers (ROG) Maximus series. The Maximus Z690 Hero is the entry-level model, supporting Intel’s “Alder Lake” 12th generation Core processors, DDR5 memory, and the main reason we’re looking at it, dual PCIe x16 Gen4 slots for high-end GPU, storage and networking options. Many boards in this space include x16 physical slots, but the additional slots are only connected x8 electrical. This board also includes a PCIe Gen5 expansion card that supports yet-to-be-released PCIe Gen5 storage drives.