ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming (WiFi 6) AMD AM4 (3rd Gen Ryzen ATX Gaming Motherboard (PCIe 4.0, 2.5Gb LAN, BIOS Flashback, HDMI 2.1, Addressable Gen 2 RGB Header and Aura Sync)

Pros:* Fanless VRM has me holding doubts on some overclocking potential, but if that's not your bag, then this is great. Huge heatsink may make up for it.* 2.5gb LAN is a great selling point, but most people won't utilize it. That being said, the WiFi6 is a fantastic addition, and the WiFi antenna is magnetic, so it's easy to hide it away. The magnet was in a weird spot, though. I figured it'd try to run flush instead of jutting out.* 2 M.2 slots, both with heat sinks (1 pci4.0 of course), so that's good. Should be the standard.* Non-standard windows drivers for networking, so be sure to have your usb drive ready on install* 12+2 power stages on a 6-layer PCB. That alone says a lot. Shouuuuuld be a relatively decent overclocker and with reliable performance.* BIOS flashback is great! USB 2.0 for reliability.* The "FlexKey" (reinforced pci-e slot) is great in the age of 5lb graphics cards.* Onboard light indicators for boot errors - saved me some time and googling for what the hell the beeps could mean like on my older boards. Turned out I didn't push my graphics card in all the way, and my instinct was RAM.* Much better design than previous boards. More minimalist and less in your face than other 'gamer' boards.* Thunderbolt 3 header (All modern boards better have this, especially at this price)* Attached IO shield, adds the premium feel. Like you're out of the bush leagues.* My 14CL 3200mhz ram was instant compatible oob, and I've pushed it to 3400mhz with almost no problems. Any further and no post. Probably have to sacrifice the timings a good bit to hit any higher, but mine is rated for 3200 so no complaints.Cons:* Would be nice if the boot error light indicators was replaced with a post-code lcd indicator, though. For $200, that's pretty normal to see an lcd, and is pretty frustrating it's not there. 1st world problem, though.* Sucks that this doesn't have a network option in the bios for updating the bios like the B350-f and b450-f did. Not the most secure method, but certainly convenient to have.* I don't use a speaker system or any analogue headphones, so the marketing material over the built in DAC is pretty irrelevant to me... Can't confirm if it's worth a damn, and most people likely use usb audio (don't @me, audiophiles), so probably could have saved $30+ just keeping that simple. Real audiophiles use high end sound cards to minimize interference coming from the motherboard.... Waste of money and marketing to add that I'd say.* Much better boards just $80-$140 more. This one is just appealing enough to keep me away from the x570s, but lacks some features I envy on the higher end boards.UNFORGIVABLE:THE DAMN THING WAS SHIPPED IN THE ROG STRIX BOX AND JUST LEFT ON MY PORCH EXPOSED TO THE WEATHER AND THE VAGRANTS OF THE WORLD. LOOK AT THE BOX. IT HAS REFLECTIVE HOLOGRAPHIC TEXT AND SAYS FREAKING ****GAMING**** ON IT. WHY SHIP IT IN THAT AND DOOR-DROP?!?! Plus the damn box got dinged to hell and back, and I'm suspicious the board may have been damaged. Thankfully Asus knows how to package their boards, but lord, Amazon. This is the first thing I've ever gotten from you guys without a warning that it'd be shipped in the standard box. I'm a geek. I display my boxes in a tech collection. I don't want my $200+ stuff damaged, at risk of being stolen, or have their boxes covered in shipping label residue just so you can save $0.10 on cardboard and $0.05 on packing fillers. Do yourselves a favor and order it from Newegg. My 3060ti and 5600x came independent of each other from Newegg, but were packed on clouds plucked from Heaven. Not a ding on them anywhere.

Perfect motherboard for AM4, well future proofed with connectivity, speed boosts for over clocking and looks great with RGB. The performance allows for over clocking.

Very nice gaming board, for an entry-level price you will get a lot. The feature that makes me like the board the most is the sound DAC. The sound is great coming from a 180 dollar board. The aura sync working fine, just needed some tweaking. The only downside is no TPM header. The Armoury Crate software is a nice touch to work with the RGB settings. There are quite a few options to customize your RGB experience. For M2 SSD there are small screw adapters in the box to adjust the M2 position. Great motherboard! I thought I purchased the 550 F with the built in WiFi but.No issues worked the first time I boot it up and it runs perfectly fine I'm using a ryzen 9 and an RTX 2080 super and Corsair Ram everything work fine 👍 highly recommend

Great motherboard. Exceptional build quality. I just built my first PC and the instructions included were great (I.e. where to plug in what.)I did have some trouble with my PC. It would crash when I played League of Legends (out of the 4 or 5 game’s I played, this is the only one that it happened on). After countless attempts at trying to figure out what was wrong, I figured it out: The motherboard BIOS was an old version. For some reason, Asus Software (Armoury Crate) said the BIOS was up to date, but the website had a new version that was released a month prior. It should be noted I am using the new AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, so I think this update is needed for all 5000 series CPUs.