ASUS ROG Strix B850-A and B850-I Gaming Review
Strix B850-I
Strix B850-I
It might be black, and it might be tiny, but the ASUS ROG Strix B850-I is a fantastic foundation upon which to fulfil your gaming dreams.
It’s amazing to us how well designers fit everything on such a small PCB. Four fan headers, two Addressable RGB headers and the CPU power input are more things than we find on many ATX motherboards. Under there are 10 70A power phases.
The big Strix B850 just had a couple of SATA ports and this ITX is no different. Similarly it has both Type-A and Type-C front panel USB options. It’s only the things at the southern edge of the Strix-A that are missing, which is to be expected on this very compact format.
You might not get swathes of M.2 slots on the Strix I but that doesn’t mean you’re not getting a good heatsink. Given how much high temperatures degrade transfer speeds on M.2 drives, we like the chonky nature of the heatsink here.
One of the negatives of compact dimensions is cooling. The more you get things packed tightly together, the less airflow and cooling you have on hand. By using an active cooling solution – chiefly a fan – the Strix ITX keeps the VRMs cool during use.
Beyond the physical dimensions, the rear of the ASUS ROG Strix B850-I is probably where you’ll most notice the differences between it and the A. ASUS still give you four 10G Type-A ports and both a 10G and 20G Type-C. With 2.5G LAN and WiFi 7 handling your networking needs, the Strix B850 ITX covers a lot of ground.
