ASUSTUF Gaming B550-PLUS WiFi II AMD AM4 (3rd Gen Ryzen™) ATX Motherboard (PCIe 4.0, 6, 2.5Gb LAN, BIOS Flashback, USB 3.2 2, Addressable 2 RGB Header and Aura Sync)

There are newer chipsets and I largely went with this because of the price to get to the AM5/DDR5 platform without having to sell a kidney. The firmware was pre-flashed with a version that already supported Zen 5 already, so I didn't have to try to figure out how the headless flash function works. There was still a newer firmware version out there, so I still recommend updating, but you should be able to do so as normal through the menus.There is a lot to be said about ASUS one way or the other, but the motherboard firmwares are pretty good with excellent options. There are bonus extras that many others forget like the uncore/memory "OC mode" which doesn't actually overclock (they should probably change that name) but can help with performance. There are lots of other little things here and there, some of which I haven't seen in a few of the other firmwares right now. Nothing major, but altogether you have a lot of control over your system configuration. This doesn't only allow for good overclocking, but just better control altogether (for example, even lowering clocks is easy to do if you want a system to run cooler and quieter.) It even can override CPU speed to a fixed speed if one was so inclined (you have to be _very_ careful with this, but it can yield good results if the cooling can handle it.)The WiFi and Bluetooth functions were a nice little bonus. In Linux they just worked right out of the box for me, so big plus there. (I half expected that they wouldn't work and I'm sure ASUS wasn't thinking of Linux users, but I'm really glad that it does work. Nice bonus feature.) I didn't even know about the Bluetooth until I saw it show up in Linux, but that's a very useful feature to have built in to the motherboard.It also has three M.2 slots, though I'm a bit confused about the PCI-E/M2 configuration in this system. I originally read this as a PCI-Express 5.0 system, but it may only be the first M.2 slot? Very confusing. If it's PCI-E 4.0 only on the PCI-E slot perhaps that will limit later GPU options, but today even if a PCI-E 5.0 card comes out I seriously doubt it could utilize the capabilities of 5.0.All in all a really good bang for the buck if you're looking for something that isn't the absolute top of the line but has plenty of features. The fact that it just works right out of the box with Linux also is an excellent plus.

Cons: only one 9-pin usb connector; ARGB has been finicky with my chassis (Montech Air100); and manual pdf doesn’t download / open on my iOS devices. Meh: the bios interface is fine. Pros: everything else; especially the manual (seriously)This is my third MoBo for a recent build (Gigabyte Gaming b650m quit after a month, ASRock pro B850m was DOA) so I feel like I’ve been through my paces. This board was a joy to build. It feels thick and heavy to hold—it barely gives when you press the DIMMs in, e.g. The plugs are located around the edges of the board in good, common locations. As noted in cons, there’s only one USB 9-pin plug—my cooler was already daisy-chained on it, so I had to plug my chassis into the 4-pin UBB_16. The bios interface is fine—doesn’t stand out, but they at least have a good manual for it and it’s highly customizable. The pcie5 is noticeable on the ssd (I upgraded from a WD Black sn850x to the sn8100 2Tb). And I found the board’s instruction manual both helpful and well written. I had an ASUS TUF laptop for several years that barely showed any wear when I finally sold it to upgrade it on this rig. This board feels like the same quality. Ease of use:

This ASUS B850 Plus motherboard is an excellent product and a good value. I am a home user and the complete build went well without any problems. I installed an AMD Ryzen 9 9900X CPU on it and was able to reuse my old AMD CPU fan from an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X mounted on the old AM4 socket. It worked perfectly on this new AM5 socket and cools the CPU to just under 50 degrees C. I also reused my old chassis with 3 quiet fans and a 550W power supply. I also installed a Crucial Gen5 SSD on this new board. What a major improvement. This new computer is lightning fast. I used Acronis True Image cloning software to transfer all software from my old HDD to the new SSD. It all worked without any issues and saved a lot of time. I upgraded from Windows 10 Pro to Windows 11 Pro on this and had no issues. This major upgrade cost me under $1000.

I don't know what it is about AM5 motherboards, but with the maiden boot cycle, I never get a video out signal if I use a Graphics card in the rig. After they fail to get a signal, I boot up with the monitor plugged into the rear I/O, dGPU removed, and then I get a signal. After this, I can put the dGPU back into the rig and everything is fine.My personal system has a Ryzen 9 9950x, the Crossair X870E board, and 64GB of DDR5-6000 cl30 Hynix die RAM. I have no problems tuning the RAM and passing rounds of Karhu, Prime95, and anything else. I even have the RAM running at 6200MT/s with the lateincies below what's on the Ram's sticker. It passes everything.Now, I put together a system with the TUF B850 along with the Ryzen 9 9900x, and the exact same 64GB kit of 6000MT/s cl30 RAM. No matter what I do or have tried, I cannot get this RAM stress test stable with EXPO enabled, the U-Clk at 3000MHz, and the F-CLk at 2000MHz. I know that Dual Ranked RAM is a bit tougher to tune, but my high end X870E board is running circles around this B850 baord.Other than that, this board is a bit pricy for what you get out of it. It must be the Asus tax. The only reason I bought this board in the first place is because I was building a PC for a friend of the family and she picked an ATX sized board to go with the Thermaltake Tower 300, and this case only works with mATX boards. For the price, it would have been nice if this board came with better Audio Codec and Wifi 7.Then again, as I was thumbing through the market, I noticed that really good mATX boards are non-existent. I was hoping to find a Strix X870 mATX board, but this is the best Asus has to offer. This board at least has a M.2 slot that supports a PCIe 5.0 drive, the VRM's are good, and the primary PCIe x16 slot supports PCIe 5.0. The BIOS Flashback feature is also useful.