Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi review

pcgamer.com:

Almost four months after AMD first announced the details of its budget-orientated B850/840 chipset, the first motherboards to sport them have finally arrived. The first one to pass through our magnifying glass of inspection is the Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi—an ATX-sized model that probably best represents the higher end of the B850 range.

In case you're not familiar with the new chipset, it's worth noting that the primary difference between AMD's Xx70 and Bx50 is the number of connectivity options, such as USB and M.2 ports, but it's a little more nuanced than that. For example, X870 motherboards all come with at least one USB4 port but such a feature is entirely optional for B850 boards.

What you're getting here though is pretty much all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a last-gen X670 motherboard. The ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi sports four M.2 slots for SSDs (the primary one is Gen5, while the other three are all full-speed Gen4), which makes a change from seeing multiple M.2 slots running at all kinds of different speeds.

The good news continues with the USB options. You're not getting USB4 but at least you have one 20 Gbps Type-C, one 10 Gbps Type-C, two 10 Gbps Type-A, four 5 Gbps Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports on the rear IO panel. Those twelve USB ports are joined by another four headers on the board (1x 10 Gbps, 1x 5 Gbps, 2x USB 2.0) for a total of 16 USB ports.

Socket: AMD AM5
Chipset: AMD B850
CPU compatibility: AMD Ryzen 7000/8000/9000 desktop
Form factor: ATX
Memory support: DDR5-4800 to DDR5-8000+(OC), up to 256 GB
Storage: 4x M.2, 2x SATA
USB (rear): 1x USB 3.2 Type-C 20 Gbps, 1x USB 3.1 Type-C 10 Gbps, 2x USB 3.1 Type-A 10 Gbps, 4x USB 3.0 Type-A 5 Gbps, 4x USB 2.0 Type-A
Display: 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x DisplayPort 1.4
Networking: Intel 2.5G LAN, Wi-Fi 7
Audio: ROG SupremeFX 7.1 ALC4080
Price: $300 / £348 / AU$541

However, the payback for all these storage and connectivity options is a dearth of SATA ports and PCIe slots. You get two apiece