Review: ASUS STRIX B650E-F WIFI Gaming

Nice review! This is the one I've had my eyes on, and that's still the case now. Any issues with stability or boot times (after the initial one) ? Those topics seem to be the ones that keep coming up with Zen 4.

 

This board looks very nice and it`s on my shortlist for a Ryzen build but the problem is that the damn thing starts at 300€ here in Portugal... It should be 250€ max.

There`s another ROG B650 board available, B650-A Gaming WIFI, but is no as good as this one and it still costs around 270€...

I love ASUS boards but their prices are getting out of hand...

great review as always!!!

 

the B-650E is a special case mobo

the TUF/ROG B-650 (non-E) are a far better deal, esp the B-650M (matx) which my greedy little paws have just snatched up over the holidays - TUF B-650 at just over $200

 

Interesting.

So, in your opinion this board is not worth the premium over other cheaper boards from Asus?

And what do you thing about this one, the ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WIFI?

 

the advantages of the AM5 "E" boards are for extreme overclocking or for superior connectivity. if you don't need to do either all they offer is "bling".
and for the connectivity one could go for vanilla X670 for the same price as B650E.

the TUF B650 has a 12 stage vrm which allows me plenty of PBO range with a custom loop (like where it's going to). and even does with an aio. and it was $225 xmas eve
ROG/Strix B650 is $50 more for basically bling, but does have more m.2 storage. otherwise the same guts as TUF

 

In the case of the 650 boards, the "E" also means a PCIE 5.0 slot. As of today that doesn't matter at all, but it could if this is a long haul purchase you plan to keep for 3-4 years.

 

true.
but pcie 5.0 devices have yet to be released and won't be for two years and then the GPU/ add-in cards have to adopt the standard. as we've already seen pcie 5.0 is such a massive increase in bandwidth that active cooling is required in ssd's.

so...
if you plan on keeping the mobo above five years Domingo is absolutely correct.

however the rate of advancement (CPU/GPU) may be above the rate of satisfaction to the enthusiast.

 

Extreme overclocking i know i don`t need. Superior connectivity is highly questionable, i only use a GPU and a fast NVM2 SSD.

But i do care about a good audio solution, and the ROG versions seem better on that aspect.

So maybe the ROG Strix 650 is better suited for my case although i prever this one reviewed by Hilbert.

 

i'm an audiophile (who uses an external dac). but mobo sound is better than ever. you do have a completely isolated signal path on both boards and i think (w/o checking) they may have the same codecs.

 

I've been running this board with a 7950X3D for the last month and I've been extremely happy with it. No stability issues whatsoever and EXPO/XMP works fine. Boot times are longer than what I'm used to (around 30 seconds vs. 10-15) and I do truly despise that you have to disable Armory Crate from the BIOS or it keeps trying to re-install itself. On the hardware end of things, I don't care for the upward alignment of the USB3 plug. The boards with the plug facing to the right side are much easier to work with. Those are relatively small gripes, though. Everything else works fine. BIOS updates have been regular, too. I'd definitely recommend this board to other users and if it were to go kaput, I'd probably just buy another one.

 

I'm also thinking about a new pc and I want this motherboard, if I may ask how the Lan is behaving, is everything okay with it, the connection is stable?
Because many people complained about the Intel I225 Ethernet Controller in the past! Is it fixed with the latest bios?
And how long have you been using it, what are your impressions? No crash, blue or black screen? Or other anomalies?

 

Honestly, no issues at all. Never had any problems with the ethernet whatsoever. No issue with stability of any sort. No crashdumps files, either.

 

That's great to hear!
Thank you for your answer, I'm slowly starting to assemble my PC and then I think I'll stick with this motherboard.

 

About the same price in North America, ASUS is never at the cheap end of things.

That said, I never had a problem with anything ASUS, money well spent and all that..

 

In the end i managed to get this board for 235€ but only because it was a return from other person.

But it was brand new anyway, the only thing missing is the NVME2 cooler for the first slot, the one with PCIE5.

 

For what it's worth, the TUF Gaming X670E-Plus WiFi is similarly good to this board...although obviously is an X670E model instead. Depending on where you are, the pricing is rather similar, too. For a few bucks more, the Prime X670E-Pro WiFi is identical to that one, but with more RGB lighting options and a board-surface power button. If you're going ASUS for socket AM5, those 3 are all floating around a similar price range and are boards I've used sans any issues.