The Box and Packaging
Surprisingly the contents were very basic. You only get a pair of SATA cable, 2 x M.2 screws, 1 x wifi antenna, some TUF Gaming stickers and a user guide.
The ASUS TUF GAMING B650-Plus WiFi Motherboard
The motherboard comes in a black PCB with several large silver heatsinks. One covers the chipset, 2 x Shield Frozr for the M.2 slots, another covers the VRMs/Mofets on the top of the motherboard and lastly, a large heatsink covers the entire left side of the motherboard and this doubles as a I/O hood too.
There’s no onbard RGB lighting on this motherboard which is slightly disappointing, however you do get addressable Gen 2 headers for additional RGB lighting of your choice.
A Closer Look
Since B650 chipset does not support PCIE 5.0 for graphics card (only PCIE 4.0) … you get 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot with ASUS SafeSlot Core+, 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16/x4, and 2 x PCIe 4.0 x1 slot. You’ll also notice that the motherboard comes with enhanced DDR5 DIMM slots (with SafeDIMM protection) and supports DDR5 ram up to speed of DDR5-6400 OC+. Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram.
To give the motherboard extra power and stability, you’ll find 1 x 8-pin and 1 x 4-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. Make sure you these connect up.
Because the motherboard doesn’t come with any onboard RGB lighting, you can add your own RGB lighting by using the included addressable Gen 2 headers. There’s a total of 3 x 3-pin (5V) and 1 x 4-pin (12V) headers.
And for storage options, you get 4 x SATA3 ports and 1 x PCIe 5.0 M.2 Gen5x4 slot and 2 x M.2 PCIE Gen4x4 slots which are cooled by a pair of dedicated M.2 heatsink. I do like the screwless design of the M.2 locking mechanism as it allows me to quickly secure the M.2 SSD in place quickly and easily.
There’s plenty of USB connectivity. You get a total of 8 ports at the rear, which includes 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port(s), 1 x USB Type-C, 3 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 port(s) (2 x Type-A + 1 x USB Type-C), 4 x USB 2.0 port(s) (4 x Type-A). At the front, you get a total of 7 ports … 1 x USB 3.2Gen 1 connector (supports USB Type-C),1 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 header(s) support(s) additional 2 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 2 x USB 2.0 header(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 2.0 ports.
For connectivity, it features the Realtek 2.5 Gigabit LAN, as well as an onboard WiFi 6 module that’s compatible with the 802.11ax standard.
The rear I/O panel includes the DisplayPort, HDMI port, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1, 4 x USB 2.0 ports, Realtek 2.5G LAN port, 2 x Wifi 6 antenna connectors, and an array of audio connectors.
