ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING WI-FI, AMD And ThunderBolt
Full Sized, Fully Featured, But At A Cost
Motherboards, like the chips we plug in, are getting more expensive overall. The B series of motherboards tend to be less expensive than the X series of motherboards and while they still are, that does mean that $190 for the ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING WI-FI counts as less expensive. Then again, there are some nice features on the board which help justify the cost, the biggest one being the Thunderbolt port, but the inclusion of several USB 3.2 Gen2 ports and 2.5Gbps LAN should not be overlooked.
Storage includes two NVMe drives, one PCIe 4.0 and one PCIe 3.0 along with a half dozen SATA ports which should keep most users happy. The VRMs and power stages are somewhat of a mystery, though buried in the PR is the statement that it’s “12+2 power stages combine high-side and low-side MOSFETs”. The FPS Review stressed them in their overclocking tests and saw no thermal issues, running their Ryzen 3700X at 4.4GHz.
Check out the entire review to learn more about the audio, iGPU support and USB performance, among the many other tests The FPS Review tested.
The ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F GAMING WI-FI that I have today is based on the AMD B550 chipset and like all others, in this series of chipsets, this board features the design in terms of CPU, RAM, and PCI-Express support and reliability. With the AMD B550 chipset, it includes PCIe 4.0 support as well as the new AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors.
