ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-PLUS, AMD B550 (Ryzen AM4) Micro ATX Motherboard (PCIe 4.0, Dual M.2, 10 DrMOS, DDR4 4400, 6, 2.5 Gb Ethernet, HDMI, DP, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A and C, Aura Sync)

Being an Aberdonian, I'm happy to spend hours of my free time saving a few quid. Meaning, research. I want value for money. Meaning all the features, cheap, and futureproofing to boot.After all that, I end up buying /this/ board. Note: I was only looking for an mATX board (to fit my current case) and didn't consider any regular ATX boards..This is everything I could want from series 5 Ryzen board. 32GB RAM in slot one (of four) is plenty for now, but no doubt double that will be standard a few years on. This board will still be viable. And by then, those 5000 series mega-chips (5950X, et al) will be cheaper and this board can handle them all.Built-in NVMe is FAF (gen 4). I installed Windows 11 in around three minutes to an SK Hynix Platinum P41 1TB M.2 in slot one. Read speeds from the M.2 are insanely fast. To give you an idea; the largest stable diffusion models (e.g. Deliberate V5) are loaded and running in under ONE second. This slot has no heatsink. I guess it's because they reckon you will want a custom heatsink for your primary drive. If you have a P41, you will *definitely* want one. I ended up with a SNOWMAN cooler, which works superbly (prevents throttling) and looks beautiful on this motherboard.The BIOS is complex (it thankfully defaults to simple view, though you can also have it default to advanced, which is handy when tweaking). Loads of stuff in there I haven't heard of (yet), but it was simple enough to overclock my CPU and RAM. Kingston Fury Beast 32GB DDR4 3200MHz happily runs at 34000Mhz with no effort on my part except selecting this in the BIOS . Not that I need overclocking now.Setup was effortless. I dropped in a stick of RAM (in slot B.2, as per the manual) and M.2 storage, slammed in my Windows 11 (£22 at SocialStack) flash drive and (around three) minutes later I'm running Windows.The board layout is logical enough. The components are of good quality (some /very/ good quality) and the whole board feels weighty and solid. It came with a backplate, SATA cable and a heap of stickers I'll never use, but hey, free stickers! Packaging was all cardboard, which we like.Also the BIOS update facility. Very nice. No CPU required; just insert the stick and press the button for three seconds. Clever stuff.I have six drives attached to this motherboard; two on USB 3, three on SATA and one (System drive) on the NVMe. As well as a USB 3 hub with multiple peripherals attached. No dropouts or errors anywhere. This board takes whatever you throw at it.Gaming is flawless. My eldest has tried a few of the latest titles (everything max - RTX 3060) and he's impressed. Jealous, even!After a week of trouble-free use, I'm impressed, too. I think this is a bargain and a great board on which to build your current (and future) Ryzen platform.

It's getting very hard to find a B550m (micro-atx) motherboard that properly handle the power requirements of the Ryzen 9 5950x. I would have ideally used the Gigabyte Aorus Pro-P which has 10+2 Phases Digital Twin Power Design with 50A DrMOS. The Asus TUF only has 8+2 DrMOS power stages so I was worried. But honestly I've had no problems with power delivery what-so-ever. From what I've researched, you should stay away from anything that has only 4 power stages (for obvoius reasons) unless you're running a Ryzen 7 5700g (60w TDP) and do your research before buying a board claiming 8 power stages because in reality they may actually only be 4 (a little dressed up).In a side by side comparison the ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-PLUS wins overall for better features , it's cheaper and still readily available. I paid £130 for mine while the Aorus Pro-P is a solid £160 (if you can find it). You can buy them for £200 imported from Japan (no thanks). Also, Gigabyte has discontinued it and I searched high and low for one locally then felt like I was buying something inferior getting this ASUS TUF board, but I was wrong. It has fantastic BIOS and they have it set up so you can modify the most fundamental power delivery features very easily. My only gripe is that it doesn't remember that you've set it to Advanced mode and always boots into Easy Mode.I have some really nice T-Force DDR4 Samsung B-Die memory which is 3600mhz CL14,15,15,38 and I set it to 14, 14, 14, 30 and it's running flawlessly. And also I occasionally touch the VRM heatsink to see if it's hot and sometimes when I'm running all cores it's a bit warm but it's ok. I also give a my memory a heat test and it's always cold. So overall I'm very happy!I totally recommend this for the VRM's as it's just about the last micro-atx B550m board you can find that can handle the Ryzen 9 5950x. The price here on Amazon fluxuates from £130 to £160. Check daily and grab one when the price is within your budget.

Wanted a new motherboard for my new 5600X build and I was thoroughly impressed with the upgradability and features of this motherboard, the addressable RGB is wonderful and the board looks very good in almost any case, definitely recommend!

Very nice board with a bit of heft to it. Looks very good with the black and white/light grey pcb. Heatsinks very well built and has tons of connectivity. Love the bios flashback button. Very nice to see 2 m.2 slots so you can ha e a ni e snappy Gen4 boot drive and a decent games drive with no extra drives or cables in your case. Shame there is no heatsink on the Gen4 nvme slot and there is no usb c header on the board.I don't like rgb puke so the bottom right corner of the board bothers me a little but if you like that then it's a nice touch.Performance wise I can't judge yet but the board worked well right from the first boot up with no issues so overall very pleased with this board. Would deffo buy a game and recommend for a mid range gaming build.

Good instructions, and easy bios settings, for me who has very limited knowledge of this.This is now part of gaming pc. Very good

Works out the box with my Ryzen 2700x , took a chance wasn't to sure they would pair, as i don't intend to upgrade to 5800x for maybe 6 months, running great zero issues and gained extra 10/15 FPS in games.

Good quality power phases and runs stable with a Ryzen 5950X.Decent connectivity options with all the latest PCIe and USB versions.The 2.5Gbit ethernet is a bonus and no issues on Linux if you use a recent up to date distribution.The RGB can be easily disabled in the BIOS if you're not a fan of bling.The board looks well-made with good quality components.