ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Motherboard, AMD AM4 Zen 3 Ryzen 5000

I bought this 5 months ago for my main PC as an upgrade to a Tuf Gaming B450 when I got a Ryzen 5700X3D last year. Has been nothing but solid and reliable. I even got a bit of a GPU performance bump because of going from PCIe 3.0 to 4.0. And the MB has been great about squeezing the most out of the 5700X3D and my RAM. And, no, AM4 is not dead in 2025. Pay no attention to the hype.This MB has the best audio chipset you can get on a consumer MB. As a musician, that was a big selling point for me.Also has some nice RGB accents, though I don't use them and keep them switched off in BIOS.This MB is high quality. Good CPU power conditioning going on and nice fat heatsinks where you need them. You can do some serious overclocking on this board if that's your prerogative. With the 5700X3D being locked, I don't use that feature but it is there if I want to put a 5950X on the board and put it in a home sever or dedicated video editing workstation down the line.Keep in mind this MB doesn't have WiFi or BT. I have a dongle if I need that capability. They add way more to the cost of a MB than it is worth to have Wi-Fi and BT on the MB. You can get a TP Link Nano for under $20.Ports on the MB are decent. You have 2.5Gb Ethernet, 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (1x Type A and 1x Type C), 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 and 2x USB 2.0 on the back. The headers for the front panel support 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 and 4x USB 2.0.There are 5 analog audio jacks, supporting Dolby 7.1 and an optical digital audio line out.

I keep coming back to ASUS motherboards and for good reason. I have never had any problems with functionality or setting up. I continue to use ASUS Rog Strix for every setup of mine due to the quality, and the price!

Excellent

PCI express 4.0 became a necessity when purchasing an M.2 gen 4. My old ASRock steel legend B450 motherboard did not have support for this hardware, so I chose to stick with Asus on the recommendation of friends and YouTubers. Without a doubt, it has been one of the components that I have felt the most satisfaction after purchasing it. Pay attention to small details, architecture, design and compatibility with third-party hardware in your RGB customization software. Since I turn on the computer and see the Asus logo in red, it gives that "there is quality hardware here" message. I have been fascinated by how "friendly" the possibility of undervolting the processor from the company's own software is for newbies. I faithfully recommend this one.

I purchased this board to replace a fried ASUS Z-97 Sabretooth. That chipset/board were outdated and generally no longer available. I run Ubuntu Linux and not MS-Windows, so I looked for compatible boards/chips in a price range that I was comfortable with, and this came up. So far, so good!I ordered an AMD Ryzen 3 3100 4-Core CPU along with 16 MB of Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 3200MHz C16 LED memory to go with it, an Cooler Master MasterBox MB511 ARGB ATX Mid-Tower case and finally a Western Digital 500GB WD Blue 3D NAND Internal PC SSD - SATA III storage for my OS disk. I've got several 2TB HDDs for storing files that I'll add later. A 750 modular power supply was used for the PSU.When I finally got everything in on place, I started to assemble my system. The first big problem was that there are two plastic brackets on the board around the CPU mount. When I tried to fit the supplied CPU cooler to the CPU, these brackets were in the way. Some Google-fu revealed that these brackets are for some CPU coolers other than the one supplied with mine. Two screws each removed the brackets. Loosening those screws also loosened a back-plate on the MB, this back-plate is still needed in order to mount the CPU cooler to the system. Again, not in the instructions, it was only via Google that I found this out. Things are looking dim...The WD Blue SSD fits in one of two M.2 slots on the MB, I selected the A slot near the CPU. Two screws are loosened to remove the cover, install the SSD (it looks sort of like a naked thumb drive) in the slot and then reinstall the cover. No biggie, but different from the couple of dozen other systems I've put together over the years. This was covered in the instructions, but not very well.The rest of the assembly went fairly well, with the occasional misstep here and there. I finally got everything together and ready for my first startup. At this point, for anyone new to assembling a PC, I heartedly recommend that you don't put your case covers on, nor that you put your system in its final designated place. It is much easier to troubleshoot before doing those things. You'll need a monitor, keyboard, mouse, access to ac power for your system and the monitor, and an internet connection. i recommend a wired connection, not wireless (yet). I left my extra storage drives in their bays, power hooked up, but didn't connect their SATA connections. It is a lot easier/safer to keep your backup media drives out of the way during installation, that way you won't accidentally overwrite them with your O/S!My case had no provisions for optical drives, they are not standard on many systems now. So I had my Ubuntu Live CD on a thumb drive, which I inserted in a front-panel USB connector. I hooked up monitor/keyboard/mouse/internet, and pressed the power button. The CPU lit up, the monitor lit up and after the generally slow startup from a thumb drive, the installation screen lit up. I went through the standard installation routines, everything looked good. After 'installation' I removed the install thumb drive and allowed the system to restart. Boot screen, good. Then... All I got was the Splash Screen for the MB. I tried restarting this system several times, with the same results.Back to Google. This board is optimized for Windows gamers, and Linux works, but not well. I'm not sure what in the BIOS interferes, but after much research and trying this, that, and two or ten other things, I came to the conclusion that the GRUB loader (part of the BIOS startup sequence) was somehow being corrupted and there was no viable loader on the SSD. My research showed me that if I used my Live CD to reboot and run Ubuntu, and did a boot-repair operation, a viable GRUB loader would be installed. This was something I've seen mentioned, but never had to use. I also created a BIOS FLASHBACK USB and updated the BIOS on the motherboard at the same time. Rebooting and finally, I get my normal Ubuntu screen!After doing all of that, i finally have a system that works, and so far it works well. But this is not a system that I would recommend to other users. I'll use it/keep it until it dies, but this isn't a system that just gets up and running without extra research, at least not if you're running an OS other than MS-Windows. You have to have a fair amount of knowledge about Linux, motherboards, and peripherals in order to figure out what might be wrong, do the research and try to find the work-arounds that do the trick.

Purchased my Asus ROG STRIX B550-F October of 2024 and am very pleased with the performance. Build used my existing video card, Ryzen 5 5600X with ID-COOLING SE-224-XTS CPU Cooler and Kingston Fury Beast 2x16GB memory all installed in my existing case. Have built prior systems using ASUS motherboards and needing to build due to motherboard issues I spent a fair amount of time researching. Install and set up went smoothly. I really appreciate the amount of fan headers and I/O ports and the aura sync lighting is a cool plus. Chose this over cheaper entry level boards to have forward upgrading capability as well as perceived long term satisfaction.

Had to replace my motherboard. Working great once I figured out that it expected me to be using Win11. Had to change one bios setting so it would boot on Win10. Works great.

excelente producto