Introduction

Having an X870 chipset motherboard sitting at just over $200, cheaper than quite a few B850 motherboards we've looked at recently, probably seems like ASUS has got a little lost in its product lineup, and we'd understand if causes a little confusion to those of you looking for a new Socket AM5 motherboard too. The ASUS Prime X870-P Wi-Fi sticks to the chipset's rules of offering USB4, a PCIe Gen 5 x16 slot and four general purpose PCIe Gen 4 lanes as a baseline, whereas lesser chipsets often, but not always, see one or other of those features culled to lower the price.

The trouble is, that in order to meet those standards as well as include modern features such as Wi-Fi 7, cuts often need to be made in other areas, so it definitely pays to pay close attention to the details. Features such as audio, useful PCB options such as LED POST code displays, power and reset buttons, tool-free features and cooling are often axed to the extent that B850 boards offer a more balanced feature set. In short, X870 doesn't always mean better than B850, depending on your particular needs.



That said, it's great to see PCIe Gen 5 M.2 and GPU support along with USB4 and Wi-Fi 7 on a Socket AM5 board for just over $200, especially as AMD has the most attractive line-up of CPUs right now with its Zen 5 X3D models, the latest additions being the Ryzen 9 9900X3D and 9950X3D. Whether the latest budget-conscious Prime board from ASUS can cope with a 16-core CPU, though, is another matter, but we'll be putting it through our usual suite of tests to see if it can keep up with the big boys.

Specifications

Packaging and Contents

Accessories are pretty thin at the best of times these days and that's not always a bad thing as they do add to the price tag. Here you get the bare essentials, including a quick-start guide, SATA cables, an EZ-Plug compatible Wi-Fi antenna and additional screws for M.2 SSDs.


The full list of accessories includes:

• 1x Quick start guide
• 1x Wi-Fi Antenna
• 2x SATA cables
• M.2 screw and rubber packages