ASUS - ROG STRIX B850-A GAMING WIFI7 NEO (Socket AM5) AMD B850 ATX DDR5 Wi-Fi 7 Motherboard - White

IMO this is a great mb at this point in time because of the relevant specs it has. Obviously wifi 7, 5g ethernet and ddr5 will keep anyone up modern standards for some years to come. Love the look, it's very clean yet edgy. I had no issues with any part of installing components. 10/10

The ASUS ROG STRIX B850-A GAMING WIFI7 NEO is one of those components that immediately makes a custom PC build look more premium. From the moment I installed it in my white case, it was clear this motherboard was made to be seen. The clean white design, ROG styling, silver accents, and large heatsinks complement a white build extremely well and give the whole system a polished, high-end look even before everything is powered on. The aesthetics alone make this motherboard stand out, but it is also loaded with features that make it feel built for a serious gaming setup. The chipset design is awesome, and there are plenty of heatsinks spread across the board to give it a strong, performance focused appearance while helping manage heat from the major components. Once paired with white fans, a white AIO cooler, and clean cable management, it really becomes the centerpiece of the build rather than just the part hidden behind everything else. I may have to even find a way to paint my gpu to complete the white out look. One small feature that I genuinely appreciate is the main M.2 boot-drive heatsink. ASUS included a very convenient pull-tab mechanism that makes securing and releasing the heatsink over the SSD easy. There is included foam protection underneath as well, so installing the M.2 drive feels more secure and less stressful than having to deal with tiny screws and awkwardly fitting heatsink covers. It is a thoughtful design choice that makes the installation process much smoother, especially for someone building or upgrading a PC at home. The board also has plenty of RGB and fan headers, which gives you a lot of flexibility when connecting case fans, RGB accessories, and an AIO liquid cooler. That is important for a build like this because it lets you keep the lighting and cooling setup organized without immediately needing extra hubs or splitters. There is plenty of room to grow the build visually and functionally, whether you want a clean all-white setup, more RGB effects, additional cooling, or a more advanced AIO configuration. Connectivity is another strength. This motherboard has plenty of ports for a modern gaming PC, allowing room for storage, graphics hardware, peripherals, networking, fans, lighting, and other upgrades. The Wi Fi 7 support is a nice future-focused addition as well, and the overall feature set makes this board feel like something that will stay relevant for a long time rather than needing to be replaced after only one upgrade cycle. In fact, this motherboard is so future-proof that it is already making me want to change and upgrade other parts of my PC just to take fuller advantage of what it offers. Right now, I am using an AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, and while my setup works fine for the moment, this motherboard clearly has more potential than I am currently using. My first major upgrade will hopefully be moving up to a Ryzen 7, or another processor more worthy of turning this into the ultimate gaming PC. The AM5 platform, DDR5 support, strong cooling design, modern connectivity, and expansion options all make that upgrade path very appealing. One thing I was especially happy about during the build was that the B850 accepted my current AMD Ryzen 5 processor without needing a major BIOS update first. That made the installation and first boot much less stressful, since the system powered on, recognized the CPU, and ran smoothly right away. Performance with the Ryzen 5 has been stable and satisfying for my current setup, but I can definitely tell this motherboard is capable of much more than I am asking from it right now. The board is not the limitation, the processor is. Until I upgrade to a stronger Ryzen 7 or another higher-end AM5 CPU, I know I am leaving a lot of this motherboard’s gaming and performance potential unused. Still, it is reassuring that the system runs so smoothly today while giving me a strong and easy path toward a much more powerful build later. Overall, the ASUS ROG STRIX B850-A looks incredible in a white PC case, offers smart installation touches like the pull-tab M.2 heatsink, provides plenty of RGB and fan connectivity, and gives you the foundation to build into something much more powerful over time. My current Ryzen 5 setup is working well, but this motherboard has me excited for the upgrades ahead because I know I am only scratching the surface of what it can do.

Amazing Asus motherboard. With this new Neo series Asus has made lots of improvements. From the aesthetic point of view, now the motherboard is completely white and silver. Even the DIMM and Pcie slots (the previous iteration had them black). So if you are looking to build an all white rig this motherboard won't disappoint. It still looks beautiful on a regular black build (like mine) though. Included in the box was 2 sata cables, a Wi-Fi antenna (with great quick connect plugs, no more having to screw in the antenna), some rubber pieces for single sided Nvme drives (I did not need them, there were some pre installed already), some nice stickers and a key chain. Building up my rig was super easy and the motherboard already has a io plate pre installed. One great new feature is this motherboard has a larger size bios (64mb) compared to the common 32mb. This will allow the motherboard to further support more bios upgrades for future Ryzen CPUS. It also allows it to have a pre included Wi-Fi driver, so if your windows build install does not have the drivers, they are already included on the motherboard itself and they will install for you. It has tons of USB ports on the back, including 2 type C ones. One great surprise is on the motherboard itself they not include 3 (not the common 2) USB ports for internal connections. Asus was smart enough to think on these modern times, those connectors can be used quickly as many AIO coolers, internal screens etc connect that way and you can run out of connectors, so 3 was a welcome new addition. It also has tons of fans and ARGB connectors (bare in mind, it only has the newer 3 pin ones, so if you have old devices that use the older 4 pin analog RGB ones they won't work here, but who uses those?). Installing my Nvme drives was also a breeze, the top main Pcie gen 5 one has their Qlatch mechanism and the bottom too has a quick mechanism (I'm referring to the heatsinks), only the middle one has two screws. The NVME drives themselves are also screwless. Then I nervously installed my Ryzen 9800x3d CPU making sure I didn't damage any of the tiny pins (be careful!) and then installed my RAM modules (this is also great, only one side of the DIMM slots have those pesky latches, great!). The bios was modern enough that it detected my CPU and RAM right away. Of course I looked for the latest bios and flashed it right away (you should too). My RAM is a Team group extreem 48GB (2x24GB) kit DDR5 8000mts and the bios detected the EXPO profile and everything is running as it should. The bios layout is amazing and easy to work with. It also supports full HD! With t he larger size bios they can support this now and wow, I can't believe we can now see our BIOS setup on HD. You can select and EZ mode or if you are a tinkerer like me, also an advanced mode. It has a mode on the fan setting were it can detect the lowest and highest speed your chassis, CPU fans can do and you can tune your fan curves accordingly. Now, their software, I was greatly surprised at how good on a "diet" they have put their Armory crate software. They have definitely taken in the feedback, because years ago Armory crate was a bloated mess and to the verge of being considered malware. Not now, I had heard them talking about this before on hardware review sites and it is true. The have worked good on it making it as light as possible and you can choose what you want to install. If you just want to control your fan and RGB, just make it do that. If you want all their bells and whistles (Aura animated wallpapers that sync with your RGB etc., install that too, its in your hands). However, if you still don't want anything to do with Armory crate, again, listening to us the consumer, they have made a lighter program called Asus Mainboard manager and you can control the basics (fans, overclocking etc.) without resorting to Amory crate. Everything is running fast, stable and cool for me. Greatly surprised on how much has Asus worked on giving us lots of features and not skimping on them for the price (forgot to mention, its a B850 chipset, however they did make the graphics PCIe slot a full gen 5 16x one and also the first Nvme slot, and they do not share bandwidth!, this is optional on B850 boards). The only slot that may 'share" something is the lowest Nvme slot on the left. If you only use it and nothing is plugged on the lower PCIe slot, the Nvme drive works at full Pcie gen 4 x3, if there is something on the slot, then they both work at x2, but you can change that in the bios. Definitely great motherboard for the price, amount of features and great improvements Asus has made, and listened to us, the customer!

The Asus ROG B850-a Wifi7 Neo is an amazing motherboard that packs all the high end features you would expect into a midrange motherboard package. This motherboard is perfect for anyone doing an all white build and wants all the nice features you find in a premium board. I see no real reason to buy an X870 board over this for 99% of people. Pros- Great Looking Board GPU Quick Release Easy to navigate BIOS/Software Cons- CPU voltage seemed a little high at stock, but still safe. Overall the build quality for this motherboard is very premium. It is a nice, weighty board, not a cheap thin one (PCB layers matter). It has nice tool-less NVME drive slots so you can easily add and remove NVME drives, while including 4 total slots which is great (keep in mind though using all 4 will reduce your GPU lanes). Additionally they included a GPU release button, replacing the annoying tab that we've been dealing with for years. As far as performance goes, this board does as well as any other higher end board I have used with AM5. It has a lot of DOCP profiles for RAM, and setting those profiles worked effortlessly. It has the standard AMD overclocking menu, that with only a few minutes time had me running a -25 PBO offset dramatically lowering my temps, while allowing my 9950x3D to maintain boost clocks under load. The Wifi 7 worked without a hitch and drastically improved my wifi speeds in my room. I was previously using a Wifi5 card, and my speeds have improved dramatically. The bios and software are both very easy to navigate and use. There is of course advanced things in the BIOS that you shouldn't mess with if you're not experienced, but I'm happy they are there. There is an easy and advanced mode like you find present on most motherboards now, and its easy to switch between boot options. The desktop software is loaded with features that I'm sure a lot will find useful. I personally tend to try and avoid excess software running on the computer, but it includes the typical things like stat monitoring, RBG control, fan control, etc. The fan control alone is a handy feature to have if you're into overclocking/benchmarks or heavy load stuff like 3d rendering. Overall, this is a very good motherboard at its price point. Carrying all the fancy features you'd expect in a premium motherboard while coming in at much less. I highly recommend if you're going for an all white build.

As someone who's built and had computers built for me, you'd thinkI'd value motherboards more. Normally, it's been a space where I save money. It wasn't until my recent ocmputer malfunctioned and I had to replace my motherboard with whatever was available at a local shop that I realized how impactful a motherboard cna be. My new motherboard was a horrible. Lacked M2 slots so I couldn't use all my SSDs. Wifi conection was so bad I had to buy a separate adapter. It was. a huge downgrade. Which brings me to the ASUS ROG STRIX B850. This was a game changer, and a reminder of why motherboards matter. First of all, this requires a AMD processor. Second, surface level, this the all white base is a change of pace from what I'm accustom to with my motherboards, and beautiful. It's not as visible once all of my hardware is attached, but it looks nice before it's everything is fully installed. This MOBO has 4 M2 slots! This is a huge upgrade from the previous MOBO I was "forced" in to purchasing. This gives you more than enough ability to store games (if youc an afford the SSDs in the rampocalypse era). I was more than satisfied with the m2 slots. ASUS proudly advertises the motherboards WIFI 7 connectivity....boy did it come through. Both of my previous MOBOs required an additional wifi adapter. This thing boosts top speeds with no adapter. Running games..absolutely smooth with no issues. I've had issues with previous mobos causing stutter, etc...this one? Everything ran perfectly smooth. So, a beautiful motherboard, 4 M2 slots, wifi 7 and smooth gaming once everything is connected? I didn't install it myself, so I can't speak to the ease of installation, but in terms of using it? It's a no brainer top quality motherboard I'd recommend to anyone.