I've been sitting on this i7-13700K for a couple weeks now and I really want to get it built before the end of the month. I'm coming from an old 9th gen build so I'm a bit out of the loop on the newer Z790 boards but I know I want to push this chip pretty hard. I've got a massive 420mm radiator ready to go so cooling the CPU shouldn't be the bottleneck.

Right now I'm stuck between the ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero and the MSI MEG Z790 ACE. The Hero looks great and I've always used ASUS bios in the past so I'm comfortable there but that ACE board has a ridiculous power phase setup that seems better for stable overclocks? I was also looking at the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master since it’s a bit cheaper and seems to have solid reviews but I’ve heard their software is a nightmare to deal with.

My budget is roughly $650 for the board and I'm buying everything here in Chicago next week. I mostly do heavy video editing and some competitive gaming at 1440p so stability is huge for me. I don't want to spend $700 just for flashy lights if the actual overclocking performance isnt there. Which one of these is actually going to handle high voltage the best without thermal throttling the VRMs?