ASUS ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi

[Combatus]

AMD's B850 chipset is here and the first board we're looking at costs $300, but still includes PCIe Gen 5 support for SSDs and graphics cards while maintaining great VRM cooling and plenty of features. However, how does it stack up against cheaper B650 or slightly pricier X870 options?

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[FreedomEclipse]

This was a very nice touch but so unnecessary as nobody will be able to see it once everything is strapped in.

 

[Chaitanya]

• Lack of USB4 might reduce future proofing for some

For the asking price of this Shitsus RoGarbage not even surprising to find feature castration so overall just skip over for better competing options from MSI and Gigabyte and Asrock at cheaper prices.

This was a very nice touch but so unnecessary as nobody will be able to see it once everything is strapped in.

View attachment 378650

Thats where the extra money is being wasted for what should be a sub $200 motherboard.

 

[thefabgar]

So hear me out, now motherboards manufacturers believes that you take out your nvme out more often than, let's say, your GPU?

Nobody does that, PCI-E Easy Release should've stayed. No reason to replace it with a non sense new nvme easy release system.

They released that feature less than two chipsets ago and Asus is deprecating that already? Even in high end motherboards?

I swear to you that the ratio of how many times you take your GPU out vs your NVME is 1 million to 1.

Unbelievable.

 

[freeagent]

What a little beast. Like my little Strix XE.

 

[_roman_]

page 1

BIOS Flashback button
Clear CMOS button
1x 2.5 Gbps Ethernet
1x HDMI port
1x DisplayPort
1x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20 Gbps (Type-C)
1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 10 Gbps (Type-C)
2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 10 Gbps (Type-A)
4x USB 3.0 (Type-A)
4x USB 2.0 (Type-A)
2x Wi-Fi antenna connectors
2x Audio jacks
1x Optical S/PDIF Out port

I think it should be written like this. I prefer complete statements. (I assumed these numbers below)

4x USB 3.0 5 Gbps (Type-A)
4x USB 2.0 480 Mbps (Type-A)

1x Intel 2.5 Gbps Ethernet
1x Wi-Fi 7

Which one? the defective intel ones? My previous mainboard had a defective intel wlan MSI B550 Gaming edge wifi. My current intel wlan ax210 wlan crashes the hole operating system randomly.

Please add the manufacturer / chip type / revision type.

--

It seems no more SATA. Harddrive manufacturers should slowly think about adapting the m2 connector or some other means. 2 SATA Ports are showing the connector vanishes from mainboards.

--

ASUS: For those who dare
.. to buy a ASUS product with high quality and good customer support.

--

Last Page

Of course, we also have B650 to consider. The likes of the ASUS ROG Strix B650E-F Gaming Wi-Fi are still readily available and could potentially save you $50-60.

B650E, right?

 

[sLowEnd]

Just another overpriced ROG product

 

[dartuil]

This was a very nice touch but so unnecessary as nobody will be able to see it once everything is strapped in.

View attachment 378650

I have a big space behind for this in my case depending where this is.
EDIT : You right its useless

 

[Cheeseball]

@Combatus A little correction needed on the first page:


Other than that, great review.

$300 for a B850 which is essentially a B650E is... just no. VRM cooling is great, but price puts this close to X870 boards which have the same amount of ports and similar cooling.

 

[Pepamami]

The teamed VRMs are made up of 16 phases for the CPU, two for SOC and two for MISC. These are all 80 A Vishay SIC629, so a bit of a climb down from the 110 A stages on the Crosshair X870E Hero for example, but still perfectly capable of handling a Zen 5 16-core CPU.

80A Vishay has a better "peak" efficiency, than 110A Vishay. This "max current" label is just a marketing stuff.

Also it would be nice to see too see a map of USB Root Hosts, which usb port goes where, since stinky mobo makers always hide this info, and u have to probe it urself with HWINFO64.

 

[Readlight]

Where 7.1 sound, SATA 6

 

[Combatus]

@Combatus A little correction needed on the first page:
View attachment 378746

Other than that, great review.

$300 for a B850 which is essentially a B650E is... just no. VRM cooling is great, but price puts this close to X870 boards which have the same amount of ports and similar cooling.

Fixed, thanks!

 

[kapone32]

What a little beast. Like my little Strix XE.

The E is like our XE.

 

[Combatus]

page 1



I think it should be written like this. I prefer complete statements. (I assumed these numbers below)

4x USB 3.0 5 Gbps (Type-A)
4x USB 2.0 480 Mbps (Type-A)



Which one? the defective intel ones? My previous mainboard had a defective intel wlan MSI B550 Gaming edge wifi. My current intel wlan ax210 wlan crashes the hole operating system randomly.

Please add the manufacturer / chip type / revision type.

--

It seems no more SATA. Harddrive manufacturers should slowly think about adapting the m2 connector or some other means. 2 SATA Ports are showing the connector vanishes from mainboards.

--

ASUS: For those who dare
.. to buy a ASUS product with high quality and good customer support.

--

Last Page



B650E, right?

Fixed these. Typically we'll go into more detail on the component analysis page but I'll get in the habit of adding the manuf/chip/revision in the specs too. Was slightly hampered this time as the board arrived with no review guide or manual so had nothing to go on while writing the first page.

For USB specs, I do see your point but we've not included speeds below 10 Gbps for a while as data speeds below that are largely irrelevant as you're not going to want to connect anything speed-dependant too them. And all boards have something faster now unless its something we wouldn't feel worthy of reviewing. Just adds clutter to the specs table for the sake of it. It was more for clarity given the USB 3.1/3.2.gen2x2 fustercluck confusing people so 10/20/40 Gbps helps to clarify the differences and more importantly, where to plug in external SSDs and the like. I feel most people know that USB 3.0 and 2.0 are just for peripherals or slow flash drives. Plus I think less tech-savvy peeps may and mistakenly misread bigger numbers being faster - 480, which in this case it isn't.

 

[Cadasiso]

Classic 1300A VRM for CPUs that don't pull more than 250A and components that have their peak efficiency at 30% load, this feels so corny

 

[Pepamami]

Classic 1300A VRM for CPUs that don't pull more than 250A and components that have their peak efficiency at 30% load, this feels so corny

its just a marketing number in VRM, because some 60A rated dr.mos can outperform some other 110A dr.mos, just by having a better effiency on 20-50% load.

 

[GO DAWGS!]

@Combatus isn't this a piece of plastic peel over the audio housing? I remember when I built my system with the B650E-F motherboard I peeled a piece of plastic off, but it wasn't easy to do. It was stuck on there pretty good. I've had no issues, but I wondered if it was supposed to be removed. Just curious. As for the sound quality of the Realtek ALC4080 codec, it sounds great to me. Impressive sound quality from on-board sound for music and when gaming. Enjoyed the review!

 

[Gmr_Chick]

This was a very nice touch but so unnecessary as nobody will be able to see it once everything is strapped in.

View attachment 378650

As someone who hates ASUS overuse of the tacky "gamer" aesthetic, I see this as a good thing -- keep all that crap behind the board so I don't have to look at it.

This is coming from someone with an X670-A board. It's got stuff like the above printed on the back of the board, completely unnecessary.

 

[Chaitanya]

Turns out Gigabyte has B850 AI TOP board for $350(B&H listing) and that board comes with 2x 10Gbps NIC and 16x PCIe slot that can be bifurcated into 2x 8x slots or you can get B850 Elite for $230 and have similar features and connectivity to this overpriced Shitsus RoGarbage board. There also are X870 boards that cost less than this board.

 

[phxrider]

Looks pretty good - I have the B650E-F board, the predecessor to this, so no surprises. Based on my experience with the B650E-F, this is highly recommended if you don't have a fast Wi-Fi 7 router. If you do, I would move up to the -E model that has 320Mhz Wi-Fi 7, otherwise to get the best Wi-Fi 7 performance you'll either be disassembling the VRM heatsinks and swapping out the M.2 card, or spending ~$60 on a PCIe card and using a slot, and either way you're at or near the price of the -E model.

They do the same thing with the 6E module in the B650E-F, they put an 80Mhz MT7921 instead of the 160Mhz MT7922, that comes in the -E and -I models and higher. This time around, -F and -I and lower get the 160Mhz MT7925 while the -E and higher get the 320Mhz MT7927 module, (Kind of disappointing to me, as the B650E-I used the higher MediaTek module of its generation, and they cheapened it this generation.... and the only way to fix that on ITX is the surgical method.)

My previous Wi-Fi 6 router topped out around 600-700Mbits and was fine with the lower module Wi-Fi 6E - my Wi-Fi 7 router (TP-Link BE800) definitely benefits from 320Mhz. I have tested this out with a MT7525 in my laptop and a PCIe MT7927-based adapter in my desktop PC.

This whole thing with cheaper Wi-Fi modules on lower models is disappointing. MSI uses the Qualcomm 320Mhz module on ALL of its Wi-Fi 7 motherboards at all price points.

 

[danc]

• Lack of USB4 might reduce future proofing for some

To some, it is a plus.
USB4 implementation on X800 is poor. It takes up the CPU Gen5 PCIEx4 when a Gen4 PCIEx4 is enough.
The USB4 cannot work with TB devices in security mode either.

Without forced USB4, this B850-F can let you do Gen5 PCEIx16 + Gen5 PCIEx4 + Gen5 PCEIx4, full bandwidth. Cant say the same for most X800 boards.

Turns out Gigabyte has B850 AI TOP board for $350(B&H listing) and that board comes with 2x 10Gbps NIC and 16x PCIe slot that can be bifurcated into 2x 8x slots or you can get B850 Elite for $230 and have similar features and connectivity to this overpriced Shitsus RoGarbage board. There also are X870 boards that cost less than this board.

B850 Elite do not have same features as B850-F. It is a worse off in hardware.

As for the B850 AI TOP, we can throw back the question ask if dual-10G is worth the extra $50 over B850-F.
The dual-10G also takes PCIE bandwidth.

B850 AI TOP GPU and NVME composition = Gen5 PCEIx16 + Gen5 PCIEx4 + Gen5 PCEIx4 + Gen4 PCIEx2

B850-F GPU and NVME composition = Gen5 PCEIx16 + Gen5 PCIEx4 + Gen5 PCEIx4 + Gen4 PCIEx4

B850-F has external clear cmos with TOP do not have. This button is essential for DDR5 tweaking.

 

[_roman_]

Many X670 mainboard have add in cards for that USB 4. 90-100€ additional costs is the same as that surplus x870 mainboards asks for.
If you really want USB 4 in let's say 3 years you can upgrade.

In 3 years my x670 mainboard will have been 5 years in use. Than I will most likely "sell it" if it's still work and buy another processor and mainboard.
ASUS was very lazy with firmware updates for my previous laptops, android tablets. I doubt I'd like to keep that asus mainboard without firmware updates. I also doubt AMD will provide any security fixes for X670 than.

USB 20 gbps ,USB 4, thunderbolt 3, thunderbolt 4, thunderbolt 5 devices are also unaffordable.
the usb 10 gbps device has cost me also a premium in the past. SATA based usb cases costs a third of those usb nvme ones.

USB 4 is just costly stuff. Without cheap usb 4 devices I do not really care if my mainboard has it or not.

 

[phints]

Need to show Windows 11 boot times. Early DDR5 boards had horrible boot times we need to know if this is still a problem and for what boards.