Motherboards based mostly on AMD’s B550 chipset have exploded onto the scene. Despite B550 being a cost-down model of X570 for the price range market, motherboard producers have gone a bit overboard in providing over 50 completely different fashions to consumers, ranging in worth between $120 and $300+. The normal battleground for a very good stable motherboard is within the $200 vary, which ought to allow one thing with the usual options however a little bit of high quality thrown in as effectively. For $210 with Wi-Fi 6 or $190 with out, the ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming straddles that fashionable worth level. Today we’re reviewing what the B550-F Gaming has to supply.
B for Budget, F for Fine Balance
The B550 chipset brings to the desk a staple of what future motherboards want: PCIe 4.0. In most fashions we get it with a single x16 PCIe slot in addition to an M.2 NVMe storage slot, with B550 having the angle to improve to newer Zen Three processors when they’re launched later this 12 months. As with any motherboard design, it may be finished as low-cost as doable, making certain naked minimal compliance with specs, or it may be overengineered to the hilt, simply in case you wish to go for 9000 MHz in sub-zero situations. The B550-F Gaming goals to strike a finer stability, combining classical ROG aesthetics with some enhanced cooling and extra premium controller assist.
Some of the primary options of the B550-F Gaming embody 2.5 gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6 (on the Wi-Fi mannequin), a menagerie of USB 3.2 Gen 2 assist, and upgraded audio although ASUS’ customized SupremeFX S1200A HD audio codec with further audio tweaks. In classical ASUS type, there may be additionally some buffed energy supply, which is ready to assist overclocking on even probably the most demanding processors.
For our multi-page overview, we scruitinize the appears to be like, the bundle, the efficiency and the thermals.
In our benchmarking suite, the ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming performs fantastically in our system checks, with large wins in our non-UEFI POST time check and DPC latency out of the field. Its efficiency in our energy checks additionally places the B550-F in a optimistic mild, with aggressive efficiency in our CPU and recreation testing too. More element contained in the overview.
Our expertise when overclocking was additionally aggressive – it is simply pretty much as good because the costlier X570 fashions now we have examined. Despite the dearth of an built-in VRM temperature sensor, the B550-F Gaming carried out very effectively in our VRM thermal testing with a recorded temperature of between 50 and 52 levels Celsius on our two calibrated Ok-type probes. Using our FLIR thermal imaging digital camera, we measured 54.9 levels celsius on the most popular a part of the CPU socket space and energy supply, which is cooler than most.
Competition
Perhaps as a consequence of motherboard vendor ‘eagerness’, the variety of B550 motherboards within the sub-$200 worth vary is probably decrease than anticipated, particularly as we glance again at earlier B-series motherboard costs. The added expense is because of a few issues, primarily by way of what it takes to create official assist for PCIe 4.0, and for this technology most distributors have added significantly higher networking assist, much more so than some X570 fashions at related worth factors. This makes B550 enticing to the mid-range in that $200 phase, with extra price range B550 fashions ranging from $150 vary beginning to come to market.
The ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi has an MSRP of $210, with the non-Wi-Fi 6 model out there for $190. On paper this makes each fashions stable contenders for anybody trying to construct a stable B550 based mostly gaming system. The competitors on the worth level consists of the B550 Gaming Carbon Wifi ($220) which features a very related characteristic set with a Realtek based mostly 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller as a substitute of an Intel one, and there are additionally plenty of GIGABYTE…
