ASUS ROG Strix B550-A Gaming AMD AM4 Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 & 3rd Gen Ryzen ATX Gaming Motherboard (PCIe 4.0, 2.5Gb LAN, BIOS Flashback, Dual M.2 with heatsinks, Addressable Gen 2 RGB Header and Aura Sync

Had a minor with instillation, but Asus phone assisantce solved problem quickly. Runs Linux Mint 22 nicely, also very cool-no heating issues. I expect it will do as well with windows if you still use microsoft. This is a nice board. I like it. I'm very happy with it. This is the 4th computer I've built. One for windows and then three after I moved up Linux. This is the nicest board yet. I wonder what boards will lbe like when we all have to upgrade to 128 bit.

Got this mobo at circa $180 and it was a pretty awesome deal especially since this model isn't available in Sri Lanka. The board is very stable, no issues whatsoever and provides excellent connectivity. The fact that it has Wifi 6 is even better. I like this antenna unlike the triangular one from the usual TUF series. The only issue though is that despite the ROG branding, it doesn't have a usb-c header for the front panel so be mindful of that. It also has a single ARGB header so if you need more devices to connect with Aura Sync, you'll need a hub. I loved the 2 M.2 heatsinks for the drives since my previous TUF board only had 1. The IO shield fixed as a single unit at the back is great and saved me a lot of pain (yes, fixing an IO shield is a nightmare on some cases!). One callout though is that the Wifi device was not recognized by Windows 11 via a fresh install so I had to connect it via Ethernet, update the drivers from the Asus site and then got it to work. Excellent all-round board to wrap up the AM4 line-up.

This is a really nice motherboard and was an upgrade over my older & much cheaper B450 that I, by a tragic mistake, dropped (literally) and accidentally broke. Visually, this ASUS motherboard I’ve replaced it with is stunning, much nicer than my last motherboard with larger & better looking heatsinks.For clarification, I bought the WiFi II version of this motherboard. Software-wise, well, I couldn’t get the WiFi or Bluetooth to work right away, but I found the required drivers included on a DVD. After inserting the DVD, there’s clearly marked drivers for the WiFi & Bluetooth. Unfortunately for me, the files didn’t seem to work in Windows 10 for Bluetooth, but it did for WiF, which was more important to me. Windows Troubleshooter couldn’t get the Bluetooth to work, and the drivers I tried from the ASUS website didn’t work either in getting Bluetooth to work. Anyway, it’s not worth returning over or going to great lengths to troubleshoot outside of the windows Bluetooth troubleshooter, as I had a cheap Bluetooth adapter I bought for $5 years ago, which I just plugged in and it worked right away. One of the first things I did also was disable the “armoury crate” auto-download in the BIOS. I thought that for a nearly $200 motherboard, it was strange there were even such bloatware options in the BIOS on top of included Bluetooth I couldn’t seem to get connected to anything. That was something I more expected out of a motherboard in the barely-over-$100 price range.It’s still a 5 (or maybe 4 1/2) star motherboard to me because despite the two little complaints I have about the motherboard, it still functions very well, handling a Ryzen 7 3800X with my H100i cooler quite well while also looking great. The RGB lighting on the motherboard looks great. WiFi works very fast with the included drivers on a DVD. (Although, in 2024, I’d like to maybe see drivers located on a cool USB) I had more fan headers on the motherboard than I had fans, which was nice.

This board replaced a dying X470 Asus Crosshair VII Hero motherboard. I would have liked to buy an X570 chipset board, but they are out of stock everywhere, overpriced, or used and as a personal rule a motherboard is the only part of a build I won't purchase used.With a 5950x the board out of the box with PBO enabled ran TDC-156, EDC-190, PPT-230. The VRMs were warm but not out of spec or concerning so this board can handle any AM4 CPU you throw at it. It can't match the raw power output of my Hero VII board but unless you have the ultimate golden sample 5950x with a custom loop you should be able to get the clock speeds you want without burning up the VRMs assuming you have solid airflow in your case.I run custom PBO settings that have been thoroughly tested on my old board, I put my old settings in the BIOS on this board and all benchmark scores were matched or slightly improved.One big benefit with going to a B550 chipset from X470 is now I can run my memory at 3600MHz without any stability issues. My old board didn't like anything faster than 3200MHz. Also jumping to PCIe 4.0 for M.2 and GPU is great to have. I moved a 2TB Samsung 980Pro from my old board to this one and while the raw speed difference isn't noticeable the latency is.I saw a lot of complaints about the onboard LAN controller and so far, I haven't had any connection drops or speed issues. I have multiple mapped network drives connected to my PC and move a large number of files back and forth daily and I haven't picked up any dropped packets while monitoring the connection. Asus and Intel just released a new driver in late September 2024 so maybe that resolved some of the issues, but I will update my review if any problems occur. The Wifi and Bluetooth seem fine with my light testing. I have the antenna on my desk in a large open room with a Unifi AP about 25ft and 1 wall away so signal is not an issue. I always use a hard-line connection over Wifi but it is nice to have anyway.As of now my only complaint is the onboard audio, it is a step down from my Hero VII, while they share the same codec, but the Hero VII had an ESS ES9023P chip, and this board it seems does not. I'm in the process of replacing my old external DAC so that issue with resolve itself.I got this board on sale and so far, am very happy with it. I will update my review if any issues pop up. For the price (on sale) it is very hard to beat.Good luck with your builds!