ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming Review

Conclusion

We can breathe a small sigh of relief at this point, knowing that we’ve finally reached the end of our lengthy set of reviews to accompany the launch of the 2nd Generation of AMD Ryzen CPUs and their X470 chipset. It’s been a rollercoaster. Hopefully you have enjoyed reading about them all as much as we’ve enjoyed bringing them to you.

Probably the biggest take away we have from our time with the X470 and Ryzen 2 is how consistent it is in every possible set up. Whether running at stock on an affordable motherboard or running balls to the wall on a seriously high-end flagship offering, the scores remain incredibly tightly grouped, which if nothing else frees you up to make a choice based upon which one you like the most or can afford rather than being forced to pick based upon raw output.

The ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming was the final motherboard we looked at and to a reasonable degree we think that – unintentionally – we’ve saved the best for last. The MSI M7 might outperform it at the high end, the Gigabyte Gaming 7 might be flashier, the Crosshair VII has more connectivity options, but the Strix has monstrously good stock performance and damn fine overclocking performance to boot. We often see motherboards that overclock well being slightly soft at stock, because the design is intended to be pushed hard, and good stock performance doesn’t always equate to high overclocking because normally that means that the motherboard is already slightly overclocked to gain a little bit at stock. The Strix seems to do both of these things well. Clearly the stock performance is outstanding, regularly finding itself not only at the top of the stock group of motherboards in our graph but in the thick of the action with the overclocked setups too.

Aesthetically the Strix is neutral enough to find a place in any system that doesn’t rely upon a white PCB. It has, if we have to be extremely nit-picky, perhaps not quite the wow factor we were hoping for from the gaming arm of the ASUS family. Certainly looking at how much the Gigabyte brings to the party, and what the Strix range has had under its umbrella before, we were hoping for a little more than just the slogan daubed chipset heatsink and a little bit of RGB lighting at the top left. As we say though, this is very much us nit-picking an otherwise excellent product.

Whether you plan to run at stock or want to delve into the BIOS and overclock you’ll be pleased with the performance you can achieve from the ASUS ROG Strix X470-F Gaming. If it was any more well rounded it could double up as a cannon ball.

  

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