ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming (WiFi 6) AMD AM4 Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 & 3rd Gen Ryzen ATX Gaming Motherboard (PCIe 4.0, 2.5Gb LAN, BIOS Flashback, HDMI 2.1, Addressable Gen 2 RGB Header and Aura Sync)

Pros: * Fanless VRM has me holding doubts on some overclocking potential, but if that's not your bag, then this is great. Huge heatsink may make up for it. * 2.5gb LAN is a great selling point, but most people won't utilize it. That being said, the WiFi6 is a fantastic addition, and the WiFi antenna is magnetic, so it's easy to hide it away. The magnet was in a weird spot, though. I figured it'd try to run flush instead of jutting out. * 2 M.2 slots, both with heat sinks (1 pci4.0 of course), so that's good. Should be the standard. * Non-standard windows drivers for networking, so be sure to have your usb drive ready on install * 12+2 power stages on a 6-layer PCB. That alone says a lot. Shouuuuuld be a relatively decent overclocker and with reliable performance. * BIOS flashback is great! USB 2.0 for reliability. * The "FlexKey" (reinforced pci-e slot) is great in the age of 5lb graphics cards. * Onboard light indicators for boot errors - saved me some time and googling for what the hell the beeps could mean like on my older boards. Turned out I didn't push my graphics card in all the way, and my instinct was RAM. * Much better design than previous boards. More minimalist and less in your face than other 'gamer' boards. * Thunderbolt 3 header (All modern boards better have this, especially at this price) * Attached IO shield, adds the premium feel. Like you're out of the bush leagues. * My 14CL 3200mhz ram was instant compatible oob, and I've pushed it to 3400mhz with almost no problems. Any further and no post. Probably have to sacrifice the timings a good bit to hit any higher, but mine is rated for 3200 so no complaints. Cons: * Would be nice if the boot error light indicators was replaced with a post-code lcd indicator, though. For $200, that's pretty normal to see an lcd, and is pretty frustrating it's not there. 1st world problem, though. * Sucks that this doesn't have a network option in the bios for updating the bios like the B350-f and b450-f did. Not the most secure method, but certainly convenient to have. * I don't use a speaker system or any analogue headphones, so the marketing material over the built in DAC is pretty irrelevant to me... Can't confirm if it's worth a damn, and most people likely use usb audio (don't @me, audiophiles), so probably could have saved $30+ just keeping that simple. Real audiophiles use high end sound cards to minimize interference coming from the motherboard.... Waste of money and marketing to add that I'd say. * Much better boards just $80-$140 more. This one is just appealing enough to keep me away from the x570s, but lacks some features I envy on the higher end boards. UNFORGIVABLE: THE DAMN THING WAS SHIPPED IN THE ROG STRIX BOX AND JUST LEFT ON MY PORCH EXPOSED TO THE WEATHER AND THE VAGRANTS OF THE WORLD. LOOK AT THE BOX. IT HAS REFLECTIVE HOLOGRAPHIC TEXT AND SAYS FREAKING ****GAMING**** ON IT. WHY SHIP IT IN THAT AND DOOR-DROP?!?! Plus the damn box got dinged to hell and back, and I'm suspicious the board may have been damaged. Thankfully Asus knows how to package their boards, but lord, Amazon. This is the first thing I've ever gotten from you guys without a warning that it'd be shipped in the standard box. I'm a geek. I display my boxes in a tech collection. I don't want my $200+ stuff damaged, at risk of being stolen, or have their boxes covered in shipping label residue just so you can save $0.10 on cardboard and $0.05 on packing fillers. Do yourselves a favor and order it from Newegg. My 3060ti and 5600x came independent of each other from Newegg, but were packed on clouds plucked from Heaven. Not a ding on them anywhere.

When I read that somehow ASUS was slipstreaming their Armoury Crate utility into fresh W10 installations on ROG boards I was a bit skeptical about motherboard software bloat. To this day I have no idea how they've managed it. But it actually made my life incredibly simple when getting this new box up and running. On first boot I was prompted to click a button to install Armoury Crate and the LAN driver straight from some repository on the mobo itself. On second boot I was presented with a list of all the other drivers and utilities I would have otherwise had to hunt down on the ASUS site or download ahead of time. No more digging through terrible manufacturer web portals, I guess. It just worked and it took zero time to get the basic installations up and running. The board itself is also decent. It has plenty of VRM heatsink performance, enough USB options. Two m.2 slots is fine for B550 I think, and the m.2 heatsinks are pretty nice. No onboard chipset fan is a positive. The wifi was picking up my network signal before I even screwed in the antenna. The built-in backplate is super solid and was useful as a grip when installing the board. I wish there was maybe one more chassis fan connector (there's only 3 for the chassis, everything else is for pumps and CPU stuff) but I don't think it's a huge deal since you're not buying a B550 board for a 9-fan case...and if you are it probably comes with a fan controller anyway. The software is okay-ish. AI Suite is the same as it's always been. I don't like the Realtek software or the virtual mixer that comes with it, but it sounds fine enough for onboard. Armoury Crate is the star of the show, and that alone is worth the 5th star.

Very nice gaming board, for an entry-level price you will get a lot. The feature that makes me like the board the most is the sound DAC. The sound is great coming from a 180 dollar board. The aura sync working fine, just needed some tweaking. The only downside is no TPM header. The Armoury Crate software is a nice touch to work with the RGB settings. There are quite a few options to customize your RGB experience. For M2 SSD there are small screw adapters in the box to adjust the M2 position. Great motherboard! I thought I purchased the 550 F with the built in WiFi but.No issues worked the first time I boot it up and it runs perfectly fine I'm using a ryzen 9 and an RTX 2080 super and Corsair Ram everything work fine 👍 highly recommend

Install was the same as any other motherboard, I was using the B-450 variant for a long time and found this on sale via Amazon Warehouse deals. It has built in wifi and bluetooth as well. ROG products are usually of higher quality and this B-550 doesn't disappoint. Just remember if you are having the issue where windows keeps booting you back to the bios, make sure you go into your bios settings under advanced and boot options, and ENABLE CSM. I had an issue where it would not detect my sata SSD's and once I did that, it finally worked.

Overall, this board is fairly high quality. VRMs aren't the absolute best and there is a slight premium for the 'ROG Strix' branding which I'm not a huge fan of. With that said, $200 for a solid board with (mostly) everything you could want along with Ryzen 5000 series support out the box is an overall great deal. Connections are fairly standard, everything is where it typically is on other boards and nothing strange and unnecessary was changed about that. I can't speak on fan headers as I used a fan hub for my current build. I also did not make use of the ARGB header that is supplied, opting for Corsair's method of RGB via USB2.0 header instead. Regardless, this is surely a nice inclusion for someone out there. A small compliment but the last time I built a PC, the i/o shields were almost never preinstalled. This was a nice touch and my fingers thank the industry for moving in this direction. :) Asus BIOS is 'fine'. I haven't overclocked my CPU as of now and I'm not even sure if my current workload would really benefit from this in any meaningful way, so that's probably not a huge concern for me in the current time. Plenty of extras included in the box such as SATA data cables, m.2 rubber pad, etc. While this isn't necessarily 'extra' anymore, it's still important to note the usual still comes with this product. The m.2 standoff and screw weren't in the mobo for me, but rather in a bag in the box, so if you're missing that check the extras first. Manual was fairly concise and clear. Didn't really need it as everything is labeled clearly on the motherboard pretty well, but if I need a manual to reference this one does the job pretty well. My only complaint is a lack of USB-C header. At this price I feel this should be a standard at this point. A lot of similarly priced, and even cheaper motherboards, include a USB-C header. Not sure why Asus didn't include one here. Oddly enough, the B550-I has a USB-C header, and it's only $20 more expensive. The only ATX options that Asus has that provides this header are an additional $300, which feels like a huge gap to me considering a lot of more budget cases these days are providing USB-C on the front i/o. Otherwise, a solid motherboard and worthwhile purchase for cheaper mid-range builds.

My first PC build in 10 years, I looked at a lot of You-tube reviews and comparisons and this Motherboard is one of the best for a gamer PC. I paired it with the Ryzen 5600X. The BIOS feature allows you to update the BIOS without even installing the CPU. I have decent WiFi in my home, so having built-in WiFi is great, and it works great. Some minor things ...USB C has one on the back, but wished it had another on the board for connecting to the front panel of the case I used. The WiFi "stand" is light plastic, and will fall over pretty easily, add some velcro to fix. All of this is to say it supports those way over priced GPU's we have to deal with - I went with an RTX 3060. This mother board does it's job no issues so far.

now yes this is easy to set up but not to those who knows nothing bout computers so lets talk about hardrives the legacy and the new its not possible when buying to know which you have curently the bios is set to dectect newer models hardrives mostly the high price ones so if you have them and have windows on it you are good but those of you that says you could not get this board to work well its because you have legacy hardrives so how to fix? boot into bios after logo comes up press f2 once in bios go to advance change the boot options secure boot change it to disable and change cms to enable make sure all options is set to legacy exit saving then go back into bios go to advance and boot order make sure your hardrive with your windows is there you dont need it to be pluged into sata slot one any ports will work you just have to know your hardrive info selet it as first boot exit saveing go back into bios and do again if its not the first boot drive it may take a few trys but after that it will work.the bois comes updated ready for win 11 and cpu ryzan 7 500 series

Bought this motherboard for my first gaming pc and I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is the best motherboard for the price. I paired it with a 3060 ti tuf and a ryzen 5 5600x the only bad thing about it is the ethernet adapter which doesn't work sometimes and the wifi just goes out so just use wifi with the included antenna.