ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I Gaming review - Introduction

ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I Gaming
Small, cute yet incredibly powerful and feature rich

Sometimes bigger is better, and sometimes, smaller is cuter. Let's review the ASUS ROG STRIX B450-I Gaming based on the new B450 chipset it is aimed at for Ryzen processors, and in specific the new Ryzen 2000 / Zen+. This dawg is 17x17cm which is the mini-ITX form factor. 

Yeah, Zen+ was launched in April, aka Ryzen 2000 or 12nm optimized Ryzen processors, the 'refresh' SKUs so to say. The new 12nm Zen+ processors will work fine with your X370 chipset based motherboard and vice versa, however, AMD launched the X470 chipset alongside these new Zen+ processors. The new chipset offers small improvements in combo with the new 12nm products. For example, to better facilitate XFR2 options. It has been a year already ever since AMD launched the first generation Ryzen processors. It had a bit of a rocky launch with the inter-core latency discussion a 1080p gaming performance as well as memory support. But the tide definitely turned for AMD as more and more people are considering to purchase an AMD processor-based PC, for their next purchase. The memory compatibility issues are mostly all gone, of course, we'll look at game performance in this article as well. But yes, things are looking good. The new 12nm processor generation can be clocked a notch higher. The upper range frequencies at 4.2~4.3 now are feasible, that also means that on the lower end of the spectrum, AMD is now capable to increase base-clock performance ion the more high-end parts. All these little tweaks bring the benefit of an overall faster processor series. Add to that improved memory latency and improved XFR2 ranges and you'll notice that the new ZEN+ generation now has become a really viable and more competitive product. So the ones that have not made a move towards AMD Ryzen just yet, now potentially could or will.  

You will spot a proper VRM area cooled with a heatsink, it's been a thing that more manufacturers have been giving attention, nice to see. You'll spot 802.11ac wifi. Fun fact, if you'd pop in a Ryzen PRO proc, ECC ram memory is within your reach as well. Audio is covered by Realtek ALC1220. The board can house two 2280 M2 SSDs which are covered by a thermal shield, it has four SATA connectors. You will get USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports on the back, together with four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports. Of course, the usual RGB connectivity is present as well. 

The ROG Strix B450-I Gaming offers users four SATA 3.0 ports and support for two DDR4 memory DIMMs with speeds of up to 3600MHz. The motherboard is very reasonable in its features but certainly grand considering its size in any DIY PC build. The dark and grey styled PCB does not have massive RGB accents, basically. Combine this motherboard with any Ryzen 2000 series four, six or eight-core processor and you'll have an excellent high-end DIY PC! Let’s start up the review, shall we?