Thursday, December 30th 2021

Some ASUS B660 and H610 mATX Motherboard Pricing Leaks

With less than a week to the expected announcement for the rest of Intel's Alder Lake family of CPUs, as well as accompanying motherboards, pricing has leaked on a few ASUS B660 and H610 motherboards from a somewhat more unusual location, namely Ecuador. Courtesy of @harukaze5719, who tends to leak all sorts of things on Twitter, we now have a rough idea of what some of ASUS' upcoming motherboards will cost.

The models leaked are the Prime B660M-A WIFI D4, Prime B660M-A D4 and Prime H610M-E D4, all of which are fairly basic models and maybe the most noteworthy thing about them is how little you get for your money. The Prime B660M-A WIFI D4 is listed for US$191.11, which includes 12 percent VAT, although the official currency in Ecuador is US dollars. That said, electronics are normally more pricey in Ecuador than the US, so this should also be taken into account here.
Going without WiFi brings down the Prime B660M-A D4 to US$165.56, which suggests the cost of products with WiFi are higher in Ecuador than in most other countries. Finally we have the Prime H610M-E D4, a board that doesn't deserve to have the word prime in its model name, which is listed at US$121.11. It's possibly the most basic motherboard we've seen in a while and we'd be surprised if it would allow the higher-end Alder Lake CPUs to boost to their full potential.

The Prime H610M-E D4 lacks PCIe 5.0 support and apart from the x16 PCIe 4.0 slot for the GPU, there's a single PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. The lack of slots is not due to a wealth of M.2 slots either, although the board does at least have two of those, but we can't make out if they're PCIe 4.0 or 3.0 from the silk screening on the motherboard. Furthermore we're looking at two DIMM slots, four SATA ports and a whopping two rear USB 3.0 ports, with a further two from a front panel header. At least the board has both DP and HDMI display outputs, as well as a VGA connector, so this board could be ok for a basic office PC.

The Prime B660M-A boards also lack PCIe 5.0 support from what we can tell and aren't all that much more well equipped. The boards have two additional, physical x16 slots, but they appear to be x1 and x4 electrically and at least the top one is only PCIe 3.0. At least one of the two M.2 slots come with a heatsink here and it's pretty clear that that slot is PCIe 4.0. Again, we spot four SATA ports, but here we get a full set of four DIMM slots. In the USB department things aren't much better here, but around the back there are at least two USB 3.2 10 Gbps ports, with a front header for a further two, plus a single header for USB 3.2 20 Gbps port. Two HDMI ports and a DP port rounds off the feature set.
Sources: TecnoMega Store, via @harukaze5719
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30 Comments on Some ASUS B660 and H610 mATX Motherboard Pricing Leaks

#26
Crackong
bugIt's actually not bad. You don't need WiFi on a desktop*, so you can shave off $20-30 on that. Buy anything other than Asus and shave another $20-30. And you get a pretty good price. Not cheap overall, but great bang for what you're paying.

*most of the time. But even if you need it, chances are you already have a WiFi adapter, so you can still forego wireless on your new mobo.
Personally I treated WIFI module a MUST for every desktop machines I had, both work and gaming.
The WIFI part is a useful backup & diagnosis method when the LAN connection goes funcky.
The included Bluetooth is a necessary component for many gadgets , for example: Gamepads , multi device keyboard/mice.

Adaptors occupies additional USB ports /PCI-E slot, which is a huge waste
I would avoid any non-WIFI equipped motherboards unless I am building a server, which don't need any gadget connections, and has multiple LAN ports for monitoring /diagnosing.
Posted on Reply
#27
milewski1015
TheLostSwedeIt's not related to temperatures, but rather some bus stability issues which makes USB unreliable at really high clock speeds.
Good to know, thanks for clarifying
Posted on Reply
#28
TheLostSwede
News Editor
milewski1015Good to know, thanks for clarifying
Nothing you'd experience unless you're doing LN2 overclocking anyhow, so unlikely most people would ever bump into those issues.
Posted on Reply
#29
bug
TheLostSwedeNothing you'd experience unless you're doing LN2 overclocking anyhow, so unlikely most people would ever bump into those issues.
Plus, if USB becomes unreliable, it's not like there's much you can do with the system anyway. Good to know, nonetheless.
Posted on Reply
#30
TheLostSwede
News Editor
bugPlus, if USB becomes unreliable, it's not like there's much you can do with the system anyway. Good to know, nonetheless.
Unless you got an old PS/2 keyboard and matching port, but then again, you can't exactly hot swap PS/2 peripherals...
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