The Asus Z97-AR is a good board on a budget. It supports anything you can stick into an LGA1150 (z97 CPU) socket, 4 DIMMs at up to DDR3-3200, dual Crossfire/SLI video if you ever want to upgrade to that, lots of SATA and USB ports, overclocking (with some special features) if you want to, and decent onboard 8-channel audio (can be configured for 7.1 all the way down to basic stereo, i.e.: headphones/headsets). Unless you specifically need something that the Maximus VII Hero has, this board will give you much more bang for your buck. It also has the exact same rating (4 eggs out of 5) as the Hero on Newegg.
$160 on newegg:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132118