Skip to main content

A typo is ruining this $700 Asus motherboard — but there’s a fix

A typo on the Asus ROG Maximus Z790 motherboard.
Asus

Everyone makes mistakes, but some are more costly than others. Asus is finding itself with a mistake on its hands, as its expensive ROG Maximus Z790 Hero EVA-02 motherboard features an embarrassing spelling mistake.

On the left side of the board is a screen, and the font along it reads “evangenlion,” not “evangelion.” Several users have discovered the error after receiving the $700 limited edition motherboard, which is the second design Asus has created in collaboration with the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. The first EVA-01 design had “evangelion” spelled correctly. It also seems the problem goes much deeper than a couple of motherboards.

@ASUS_ROG EVANGENLION? (Maximus Z790) pic.twitter.com/9MSUunjxGu

— Hal Rafael (@halrafael) November 12, 2023

You can spot the typo on Asus’ product page for the motherboard. And although news of it is breaking now, it’s not a new problem. A month ago, YouTuber CEHunter uploaded an unboxing video of the motherboard where you can also spot the typo.

There’s a good chance Asus only created a limited number of these motherboards given its high pricing. The motherboard retails for $700, but you can’t buy it directly from Asus now. You can only find it secondhand, with prices ranging from $1,000 to over $1,500.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

It appears that the only instance of the typo is on the left side of the motherboard. The Z790 board is adorned with Evangelion logos all around, each of which are spelled correctly. It seems these are static logos, while the bit where there’s a typo was an extra added by Asus.

As careless as it is for a typo to appear on such an expensive motherboard, it could rise to the level of collector infamy. In a Reddit thread that pointed out the error, one user said “it’s kind of endearing.”

Although the typo ruins the design of the EVA-02 motherboard, it’s still Asus’ flagship motherboard. This is an ROG Maximus Z790 Hero motherboard underneath all of the Evangelion branding, which is still a $700 motherboard on its own. It features a 20 + 1 + 2 VRM design, support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs, Wi-Fi 7, and more USB ports than you’ll know what to do with. It’s one of the best motherboards you can buy — just skip the EVA-02 design.

Thankfully, Asus is addressing the problem. The company posted a statement, promising to provide users with a replacement part with the correct spelling. Asus is also extending the warranty by one year, allowing users with the original motherboard to get it fixed up.

Editors' Recommendations

Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
No, Intel isn’t blaming motherboard makers for instability issues
Intel's 14900K CPU socketed in a motherboard.

Over the past few days, there's been a firestorm online regarding a statement Intel made on the wave of instability issues facing high-end Intel CPUs. The original statement, which was shared with Igor's Lab and others, appears like Intel wiping its hands clean of the problem and placing blame on motherboard vendors, and several media outlets have ran with that exact story. That's not exactly what's going on.

In statements shared with both Tom's Hardware and AnandTech, Intel specifically says it doesn't intended to "ascribe blame to Intel's partners." Currently, it seems that some BIOS adjustments can fix the instability problems on high-end Intel CPUs, but the investigation with Intel and its motherboard partners is still ongoing. Here's the statement in full:

Read more
The Asus ROG Ally just got a game-changing update
Asus ROG Ally handhelds side by side.

Asus' ROG Ally is one of the best handheld gaming PCs you can buy, and now it's getting even better. Asus is updating the handheld with AMD's Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF). This is a driver-level feature that adds frame generation to the majority of DirectX 11 and 12 games, which should vastly improve performance.

We've seen AFMF in action on AMD graphics cards previously. The feature launched late last year for desktop and mobile AMD graphics cards, but the ROG Ally oddly didn't support the feature. Asus' handheld uses the Ryzen Z1 chipset, which includes both an AMD processor and graphics card, but it uses its own specialized driver. Because of that, it didn't receive AFMF support right away.

Read more
Some Intel CPUs lost 9% of their performance almost overnight
Someone holding the Core i9-12900KS processor.

Over the past few weeks, we've seen an increasing number of reports of instability on high-end Intel CPUs like the Core i9-14900K. Asus has released a BIOS update for its Z790 motherboards aimed at addressing the problem, but it carries a performance loss of upwards of 9% in some workloads.

The most recent BIOS update from Asus includes the Intel Baseline Profile. This profile disables various optimizations that are automatically applied on Asus Z790 motherboards and runs high-end Intel chips within Intel's specific limits. Hardwareluxx tested the new profile with the Core i9-14900K and found that the CPU ran around 9% slower in multiple tests.

Read more