ASUS ROG STRIX B360-F Gaming review - Introduction

ASUS ROG STRIX B360-F Gaming motherboard
B360 never looked this good

ASUS releases its budget-friendly ROG STRIX B360-F Gaming motherboard, we'll pair it with a six-core Core i7 8700K processor. Yes, this is the Coffee Lake platform being more affordable.

Compared to the H370 chipset you'll forfeit another few PCIe lanes and well, that's pretty much it really. If you do not need tweaking options, pair it with the new Core i5 8600 (non-K), and you'll have the ability to create a beast of a gaming rig with the right graphics card. With a B360 chipset you get many of the features and functionality from that H370 and Z370 platform, yet scrap the tweaking and overclocking functions. This effectively means that K model processors are not something you should spend your money on as you cannot OC them easily anyway. Any B360 chipset based motherboard, however, offers plenty of features for both internal and external connectivity. For example, you will spot things like an HDMI port, USB 3.1 ports, six SATA3 ports, and even a full speed M.2 slots. There is a Gigabit Ethernet, 8-channel HD audio. 

The familiar looking ROG STRIX Gaming series is paired with a Core i7 8700K today, is a motherboard positioned in the affordable mainstream segment of the line-up. It very decent looks (even including some LED bling), offers features like higher-grade onboard audio, 2x M.2 SSD support (one with heatsink), GigE Ethernet interface (Intel), and a reinforced PCIe x16 slots. On the next few pages, I will take you guys a little deeper into the architecture and processor series that is Coffee Lake as well as the B360 chipset, followed by a hefty benchmark session to see how well this motherboard performs and what it has to offer.  

Have a look first, this is what a budget product looks like anno the year 2018. That B in the chipset really was the synonym for Budget/Business OEM motherboards. How thigns have changed.