ASUS ROG Strix B450-F Gaming Review

Up Close

There is no denying that the Strix packaging has quickly become as iconic as the all red ROG boxes are. We’d argue they are even nicer than the regular ROG ones, but then we’re fans of pretty colours here at OC3D Towers.

  

It is surprising how quickly the blended in IO Shield/Power Heatsinks have become the standard aesthetic for motherboards. Looking at the B450 Prime Plus it looked odd how much like an island on a PCB sea the heatsinks looked, but here on the Strix-F they blend in beautifully and the extra effort taken on the looks of the heatsinks themselves certainly makes the Strix look significantly more expensive than its stablemate.

  

Down the bottom end we find three full length PCI Express slots alongside 3 x1 PCIe slots. Above the primary PCI Express slot is one of the two M.2 slots, with the other in its now usual spot just below the chipset cooler. There are also four headers here, three for fans and one dedicated to the pump of your AIO.

  

We’re not sure how good our language skills are but doesn’t “sigue jugando” translate to “keep playing”? Is the ASUS ROG arm the KP arm in Spain? Just curious.

  

We wonder if the numbers beneath the RGB Strix logo on the chipset heatsink have any significance. Is it LongLat coordinates for the ASUS factory? The combination to the ASUS safe? Just random numbers? You can also see from the following two photographs the wording placed upon the PCB itself. We like it a lot. It manages to catch the eye without being distracting, not an easy combination to pull off.

  
  

We know we harp on about it a lot but horizontally mounted SATA ports always look more upmarket than vertically mounted ones. Not only are they a ton easier to work with and cable route, but by keeping it all together rather than having them strewn across the PCB lends an air of professionalism to proceedings.

  

The IO section is a big step up from that which we saw on the Prime Plus, having enough USB ports for even the most peripheral rich gamer whilst also providing a full selection of audio ports, display outputs and the all important Gigabit LAN that is the pathway to the information superhighway.