ASUS Prime B650M-A AX II AMD B650(Ryzen 7000) Micro-ATX motherboard(DDR5 6400+(OC),PCIe 5.0 M.2 support,2.5Gb LAN,Wi-Fi 6,DisplayPort,HDMI,USB 3.2 Gen 2, front USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C®,CEC Tier II ready)

This is another great ASUS Motherboard. Very quick and easy build using this board with the Ryzen CPU. Lots of USB ports, lots of expansion headers and the heatsinks on the control chips are great. I only have a couple of obstacles that had to be overcome using this board. First, there is no speaker or speaker connector on this board. Second, the space between the memory and the CPU is a little tight so be aware of that when you are selecting a CPU cooler. Your CPU cooling fan may end up sitting on top of your memory if your memory has ARGB on it - easy enough to overcome but it slowed an otherwise lightning build down for a while. Lots of support, 3 NvMe slots for solid state storage. This is a lot of bang for the buck. And performance speed? FAST. A great choice for gaming or power computing.

As I have said in the headline, it didn't work and I sent it back. I found it hard work initially registering it on the ASUS website so I could get technical support. Without registration ASUS make it impossible to get technical support. I ended up complaining on the ASUS YouTube channel but the registration problems then fixed themselves. ASUS tech support were asking me questions I had already given them information about. Then the video stopped working. To me it was clearly a motherboard failure. I had seen quite a few warnings about ASUS quality not being what it once was but I have always bought ASUS. With the failings in the motherboard together with the underwhelming technical support I decided to send it back. It is going to take some convincing for me to buy ASUS again.

The con: no cpu-less bios updates. built-in wireless has issues; have to disable then enable in device manager every reboot (updated drivers through Iobit Driver Booster fix this). The pro: 2x m.2, adequate number of USB ports (if you case has more than 2 front USB), and easy to populate. I dislike Gigabyte from the days of DDR2, and my last MSI build went poorly. Asus would normally be my last choice, but ASRock had nothing decent in this price range, either. I'll run this until AM6, then maybe splurge on a high end board.

I'm taking a star off for the simple fact that the board does have a pretty annoying coil whine. Other than that though, works well! UPDATE: Month long; either the recent BIOS updates helped with the coil whine or I've gotten used to it. Regardless, it's still there but seems to be less significant than previously.

I engaged ASUS support when their board fried my chip + Motherboard, and they had the worst support I have ever recieved. They told me to ship the board back, at my own cost, 80$. Then because it had a tiny superficial plastic damage on the board, unrelated to the electrical issues. (Damaged while disassembling) they would not RMA and quoted 200$ for "repair". When I has asked only to repair the electrical issue, they said they don't repair, and their policy states i have to pay the money to get a replacement board. They have designed thousands of reasons not to provide support and will provide a bad product and even worse support. I'll never buy ASUS again.