Review and Testing of ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi Motherboard
In our review, we present to you the ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi Motherboard, courtesy of ASUS.
| APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS |
This subsection of our review reveals the main aspects of the ASUS ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi, such as appearance and hardware configuration.
| APPEARANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS |
The motherboard comes in a rather beautiful and compact package, nothing superfluous in our opinion:
The motherboard kit is quite standard for all motherboards:
ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi Motherboard is equipped with massive VRM, chipset and M.2 heatsinks to ensure optimum thermal performance and maximum performance for Ryzen processors and system components.
ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi includes 4 DIMM DDR5 modules with a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB and a frequency of up to 6400 MHz. For the file subsystem, the motherboard supports 3x M.2 PCIe 5.0/4.0 x4 slots and 4x SATA 6Gb/s ports.
We can put only one video card here, since we have only one full-fledged PCI-E:
ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi features newfangled AMD Socket AM5 for AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors:
ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi is equipped with a highly reliable power supply system with 12 power modules designed to work with powerful multi-threaded AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors.
ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi offers a wide range of rear USB ports, including HDMI, Display Port, and USB4 Type-C with 40Gbps bandwidth and 8K display support. Wi-Fi 6E and 2.5G Ethernet interfaces are responsible for the high data transfer rate in the network.
4 SATA 6 Gb/s ports are located along the end plate in a very compact way:
The built-in SupremeFX audio chip is responsible for the sound, which has very good acoustic capabilities:
| BIOS |
If desired, we freely switch to the Advanced mode, where we will carry out all the manipulations:
We have just an incredible amount of settings to control absolutely all aspects of the motherboard:
Additional utilities included in UEFI will allow us to easily save user profiles, update a new firmware version, and also find out information about system components:
We'll talk about overclocking a bit later.
| ASUS PBO Enhancement |
But you're unlikely to see the maximum temperature until you start a workload that uses all the CPU cores. During everyday work, light workloads and during most games, the processor temperature is usually much lower.
To give users control, ASUS has released a BIOS update for X670 and B650 motherboards with new PBO enhancements that make it easy to balance temperature and performance. PBO Enhancement BIOS makes it easy to limit temperature for multi-threaded workloads.
To access this option in the UEFI BIOS, you need to activate advanced mode. Go to the Extreme Tweaker tab and select Precision Boost Overdrive. UEFI BIOS settings to improve PBO showing a drop-down menu where users can select their preferred temperature level.
In the menu that opens, select "Improve" in the drop-down list of Precision Boost Overdrive. You can then select one of three preset temperature limits. Level 1 will set the maximum target temperature to 90° Celsius, which is a small step down from the default of 95° Celsius. Levels 2 and 3 lower the maximum CPU temperature more aggressively, to 80° and 70° Celsius respectively. It was tested in more detail in our last review.
For example, let's just give the activation of PBO Enhancement Level 1, which lowered the temperature by 5 ° C, maximizing system performance, and reducing the maximum temperature of the processor to 90 degrees. Enhancement Level 2/3 leads to an even greater decrease in temperature, but performance also decreases relative to even the default 95 ° C ...
| ACCELERATION |
As for overclocking the latest generations of processors, this is already a rather subtle science, because lately processors are already being sold with maximum overclocked frequencies. The AMD Ryzen 7000 series processors were also no exception, therefore, chasing an increase in the frequency of the processor, an ordinary layman can even do the opposite - do harm, significantly increasing its heating and thereby reducing performance.
To get the maximum performance of the system, we used 32 GB DDR5 6000 Kingston FURY Renegade memory , got a maximum bus of 3000 MHz and reduced the timings to CL 30.
Now we will show you how the game performance changes at a frequency of 5200 CL 40, 5600 CL 40 ( 32 GB DDR5 5600 Kingston Fury Beast ) and 6000 CL40, 6000 CL30 ( 32 GB DDR5 6000 Kingston Fury Renegade ) using the AIDA64 cache test and memory.
Well, as we can see, the best result was achieved with a memory frequency of 6000 and manual setting of the CL30 timings.
| TEST PART |
| Test configuration | |
| test stands |
ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi Kingston XS2000 Portable SSD 1 TB - the optimal solution for testing different configurations 32GB DDR5 5600 KingstonFURY Beast |
| multimedia equipment | |
| Software configuration |
|
| operating system | Windows 10 21H2/ Windows 11(Alder Lake) |
| Graphics driver |
Nvidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 528.02 WHQL |
| Monitoring programs |
MSI Afterburner |
| SYNTHETICS |
| GAMES |
| Mount & Blade II Bannerlord |
Testing took place at maximum quality settings with 1000 units
In Mount & Blade II Bannerlord we can see that with 3000 bus and 6000 cl30 memory the motherboard has the best performance.
| Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered |
Testing took place at maximum quality settings and with ray tracing.
Here we see the situation described above - 6000/3000 is more preferable.
| Cyberpunk 2077 |
Testing took place at maximum quality settings and with ray tracing.
And here, from overclocking, we have a profit in the range of up to 10% of the nominal value.
| Gotham Knights |
Testing was carried out at maximum quality settings.
In Gotham Knights, we also have a profit from overclocking, which is quite significant in terms of average FPS.
| The Callisto Protocol |
Testing took place at maximum quality settings and with ray tracing.
In The Callisto Protocol, the 7950X does not perform very well, but overclocking the memory and bus significantly improves its result.
| The Witcher 3 |
Testing was carried out at maximum quality settings with RT without frame generation.
In The Witcher, there is practically no profit from overclocking.
| Marvel's Midnight Suns |
Testing took place at maximum quality settings with RT.
Well, in Marvel's Midnight Suns we also have a significant increase in performance, by the way, you will see a review of this game tomorrow!
| CONCLUSION |
Well, after testing, the ROG Strix B650-A Gaming WiFi left a pleasant impression. It is attractive in appearance, has good equipment. A lot of attention has been paid to the power of the power subsystem and cooling, which allows you to use the most powerful processors of the AMD Ryzen 7000 series without any problems and, within certain limits, experiment with overclocking.
In general, in terms of the level of bells and whistles, this model can easily be compared with many motherboards based on the more powerful X670 (X670E) chipset, but the B650 chipset used here made it possible to make the price more attractive.
In fact, the B650 is the same X670, with all the bells and whistles, but cut down in the number of PCI-E lanes for video cards - we can put only one video card here, although this is not a minus, since SLI and CF have long been dead.
Advantages
- great performance
- good overclocking potential
- more attractive price compared to solutions based on X670
Flaws
- one full-size PCI-E slot (for us personally)
