ASUSPrime B550M-A WiFi II AMD Micro ATX Motherboard with PCIe 4.0, WiFi 6, ECC Memory, HDMI 2.1, RGB Header

If you're deciding between a x570 chipset motherboard and a B550 chipset motherboard but you don't want to pay so much for the same features, you can get the cheaper B550 motherboard that has all the same features pretty much as the more expensive x570 motherboards. You get a much more bang for your buck with this motherboard. Comes with all the bells and whistles. Installing it in my case was very easy didn't take very long and the manual was easy to understand. Handles everything well with very cool temps. And that classic ASUS sleek aesthetic I love the design a lot it goes great with my NZXT case!

ASUS Prime B450M-A II – Great Budget-Friendly MotherboardI’ve been using the ASUS Prime B450M-A II in my Ryzen build, and it’s honestly been a really solid experience. I paired it with a Ryzen 5 5600 and 16GB of DDR4-3200 RAM, and everything worked smoothly after a quick BIOS update (which was easy thanks to the BIOS FlashBack feature).**What I like:*** It supports Ryzen 1000 to 5000 series CPUs, which gives you a lot of flexibility whether you're upgrading or building new.* BIOS FlashBack is super helpful — I was able to update the BIOS without even having a CPU installed.* RAM compatibility has been great, and the system feels very stable overall.* It’s a clean, straightforward layout that’s easy to work with, especially for first-time builders.**A few things to keep in mind:*** It only has one M.2 slot, so if you plan on using multiple NVMe drives, just be aware of that.* No PCIe 4.0 support — but for most builds, especially at this price, PCIe 3.0 is more than enough.* There are only a couple of case fan headers, so you might want to use a splitter if you’re running more fans.**Overall:**This board is a great pick for a budget or mid-range AMD build. It’s reliable, easy to set up, and works well with a wide range of Ryzen processors. If you don’t need a bunch of extra features and just want something solid that works, the B450M-A II is a great choice.

This is a really nice motherboard and was an upgrade over my older & much cheaper B450 that I, by a tragic mistake, dropped (literally) and accidentally broke. Visually, this ASUS motherboard I’ve replaced it with is stunning, much nicer than my last motherboard with larger & better looking heatsinks.For clarification, I bought the WiFi II version of this motherboard. Software-wise, well, I couldn’t get the WiFi or Bluetooth to work right away, but I found the required drivers included on a DVD. After inserting the DVD, there’s clearly marked drivers for the WiFi & Bluetooth. Unfortunately for me, the files didn’t seem to work in Windows 10 for Bluetooth, but it did for WiF, which was more important to me. Windows Troubleshooter couldn’t get the Bluetooth to work, and the drivers I tried from the ASUS website didn’t work either in getting Bluetooth to work. Anyway, it’s not worth returning over or going to great lengths to troubleshoot outside of the windows Bluetooth troubleshooter, as I had a cheap Bluetooth adapter I bought for $5 years ago, which I just plugged in and it worked right away. One of the first things I did also was disable the “armoury crate” auto-download in the BIOS. I thought that for a nearly $200 motherboard, it was strange there were even such bloatware options in the BIOS on top of included Bluetooth I couldn’t seem to get connected to anything. That was something I more expected out of a motherboard in the barely-over-$100 price range.It’s still a 5 (or maybe 4 1/2) star motherboard to me because despite the two little complaints I have about the motherboard, it still functions very well, handling a Ryzen 7 3800X with my H100i cooler quite well while also looking great. The RGB lighting on the motherboard looks great. WiFi works very fast with the included drivers on a DVD. (Although, in 2024, I’d like to maybe see drivers located on a cool USB) I had more fan headers on the motherboard than I had fans, which was nice.