PC DIY With ASUS new GC-HPWR BTF Swappable Design
ASUS B850 BTF WiFi W
ASUS B850 BTF WiFi W
For a motherboard which has the BTF connectors the packaging gives little away. One would imagine they’d shout it from the rooftops. Instead, if you didn’t know, you could easily buy this by accident.
It’s great to see ASUS doing an AMD version. The X3D Ryzen processors are so insanely popular they’d be foolish not to. We have spoken about the excellence of the recent TUF motherboards at length. It’s nice that even ASUS seem to agree as this has the most amount of TUF branding we can recall. Even the bottom cover has the biggest TUF logo we’ve seen. Nice.
Apart from all the connections being on the back, the B850 TUF looks much like all the other ASUS TUF models. We like that. It’s better than having to compromise the aesthetics just for connection options.
This is the connector which enables the BTF graphics card to get power. As you can see, it lives up to the TUF name. Given this now handles 1 kW it has to be robust. Although even a RTX 5090 won’t draw that much.
The left (right?) edge contains the most important headers. Obviously 24 pin ATX to power the motherboard. ARGB for lighting. USB Type-C front panel to save you faffing about around the back. Most importantly though, the 12VHPWR connector is found here. Remember to ensure it’s fully inserted so you don’t get any heat issues.
Lastly the bottom edge has all you’d expect. Plenty of fan headers for this horrifically hot summer. AURA headers for those cool lighting effects. Thunderbolt 4 should you need all the speed.
