ASUS TUF Gaming B650-PLUS WiFi Motherboard Review

Verdict and Conclusion

Although the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi is designed for the casual gamer and first-time builder, it offers an amazing set of features with performance to match. Utilizing AMD’s B650 chipset, it’s suitable for all the latest Ryzen 7000 series of processors, and supports DDR5 ram with speeds of up to DDR5-6400 OC+, AMD EXPO memory profiles, as well as some mild overclocking. However, it does lack some of the enthusiast features found on the higher-end X670E motherboards. Still, it’s worthy to note that the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi does come with plenty of decent features from Asus’s TUF Gaming series of motherboards.

By now, you should all know that B650 motherboards do not support PCIE 5.0 for next-gen graphics cards, but instead you get a PCIE 4.0 x16 slot, which to be honest, is more enough for most gamers out there. On a more positive note, I’m glad that they’ve included a PCIE 5.0 Gen5x4 slot for M.2 SSDs, this should help boost overall performance when paired with a decent Gen5 M.2 SSD.

Memory compatibility have always been a headache for a lot of manufacturers, even with EXPO certified memory. I faired a little better this time … using Kingston’s Fury Beast RGB DDR5-6000, I was able to run them at DDR5-5800 speeds. Check out the list of compatible memory from qualified vendors for trouble-free installation. I suggest you check ASUS’s QVL page here for memory compatibility and QVL (qualified vendors list).

For RGB lover, you’re out of luck. The Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi doesn’t come with any onboard RGB lighting, however 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.

The large heatsinks seem to do a great job of cooling the VRM/Mofets. This heatsink covers the entire left side of the motherboard and this doubles as a I/O hood too.

During our tests, we used an AMD Ryzen 9 7900X processor and a GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card. We managed to pull some decent scores in all of our benchmarks, including a Cinebench R23 scores of 28,691 (multi core) and 1,960 (single core). For PCMark 10, we got a score of 9,585, and a score of 8,217 for PassMark9.

For UL’s latest Procyon Photo Editing Benchmark, we got a score of, 10,540 and 8,225 for the video editing suite. For 3DMark Speed Way and Port Royal, we got a score of 5,163 and 12,956 respectively. And finally, for Timespy and Firestrike, we got decent scores of 18,338 and 40,157 respectively.

Current pricing of the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi motherboard is around USD $239, and you can get it from Amazon – https://amzn.to/3jo41Ra, which I think is pretty amazing considering what you’re actually getting.

Pros:

• Excellent Price and Affordability
• Good performance
• AMD B650 chipset
• Support PCIE Gen5x4 M.2 SSD
• Supports AMD Ryzen 7000 series processor
• Supports DDR5-6400+ (O.C.)
• Realtek 2.5G LAN and onboard WiFi 6
• Includes DisplayPort and HDMI output

Cons:

• No PCIE 5.0 slot
• No onboard RGB

Final Words:

Aimed at the casual gamer and first-time builder, the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi, not only offer plenty of features but also decent performance to match. You get all this for under USD $250, which is pretty amazing to say the least.

You can buy the Asus TUF Gaming B650-Plus WiFi motherboard for around USD $239 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/3jo41Ra

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