ASUS STRIX B550-F Gaming review

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Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

For B550 typically a lot of features are stripped away, ASUS, however, beefed up this Strix quite a bit with dual M2, 2.5 Gbps ethernet, WIFI6 with AX and Bluetooth, support for the 4400 MHz clocked DDR4 modules (not that we'd recommend you that) and then heaps of functionality. So what's the big difference between X570 and B550 then? Well, in this specific design everything linked to the chipset chip is PCIe Gen 3.0 based, which includes the interlink between the chipset and CPU. There's still heaps of USB 3.0 available so again we do not see any problems there. All the features make this board really nice, the motherboard also got a bump upwards to AX WIFI (WIFI6) and thus that 2.5G Ethernet jack. Then the VRM design looks good - albeit we cannot conclude indefinitely about the temperatures. 


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DDR4 Memory

Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep repeating this, but there are some really good Ryzen optimized kits out there. With Ryzen Generation 3 you can go higher in DDR4 clock frequency if you want to. We advise that up-to 3600 MHz, CL16 is fine, after that frequency value a 2:1 divider kicks in, and that can have an effect on the Infinity Fabric bandwidth, inter-core CCX bandwidth. We see no reason for faster DDR4 memory anyways, it's expensive and does not bring in added perf, much like what you see on Intel platforms as well.

Power consumption

With Ryzen 3000 processors now fabbed at 7nm, you may see some interesting energy efficiency. now we used a 12 core 3900X on B550 which is a little excessive I agree. The load values are excellent. The 3900X on B550 did show 55 Watts idle load, ergo read my previous statement on the motherboard. The load values with 12 cores stressed topped just over 200 Watts (entire PC). So yeah, it's all good there. 

Performance & tweaking

Your motherboard will not be a restriction for tweaking and overclocking, the processors and ASIC quality alongside cooling these days are the more important factor.The original Ryzen series from 2017 revealed clocks in the 3900~4000 MHz range on all cores. For Ryzen 2000 / Zen+ that was a notch higher. Ryzen 3000 seems to take an all-core clock of 4300~4400 MHz at best. Ryzen 7 3700X was able to reach a stable 4400 MHz, but that was on proper liquid cooling and really absolutely the maximum. If you tweak to the maximum, likely 1.425v~1.450v is needed for a stable 4.3 GHz on all cores. The thing is, and I have been thinking about this for a long time, I would not recommend overclocking and tweaking. These processors by themselves can boost 1 or 2 cores to 4500, 4600 and, on the 16-core part, even 4.7 GHz. So while the rest of the cores will be binned slower, that's where you get your extra game performance. The positives of an all-core 4400 Mhz would not outweigh the positives of the default high Turbo clocks. It is something to think about for sure. At least you can try and see what works best for you. But the binned clock recipe that AMD has applied to the processors at default likely will work out the best in most scenarios, including power consumption. This is going to be a generic and general consensus for all many-core processors really. 


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Final words

ASUS has a nice offering with some pretty sweet features here, however, we do feel that b550 belongs in another price bracket (at least sub 200 and preferably sub 150 USD). This board sits at 219 USD/EUR. Next to a decent looking motherboard (with very little RGB I might add) you also reap the benefits of 2.5G Ethernet and AX WIFI. The audio is Realtek 1220 which is good. Next to that, you'll have an abundance of USB 3.2 connectivity at your disposal making this board really feature-rich. The overall performance is in line with X570 and other B550 motherboard with the default anomalies and offsets here and there, the memory support is great. Remember my remarks on frequency though, your sweet spot is two DIMMs at 3200 MHz / CL14 or 3600 MHz CL16. With B550 AMD still allowed partial PCIe Gen 4.0 support, which is great to see. Pricing aside overall it's a lovely product that brings AX WIFI and 2.5 GigE towards the B550 platform. We had no stability issues and had good times testing the product. As such recommended.

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