$300 for your B650

As you have heard many times, this generation of components is extremely expensive. Surprisingly, the CPU is now often the cheapest component to buy for a new build, with even the mid-range B650 and Z590 boards costing around $300. This means the ASUS STRIX B650E-F WIFI Gaming ATX motherboard is priced similarly to the competition, even in the latest generation you could find the equivalent priced around $100.

For this price, you get quite a few features, including a PCIe 5.0 slot and a single PCIe 5.0 NVME port. In addition to these are also a 16x PCIe 4.0 slot, two PCIe 4.0 1x and a pair of PCIe 4.0 M.2 M key ports of which one has a MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E card installed. Your wired networking is handled by a Realtek 2.5Gbps chip, two USB-C ports, though only one is USB 3.2 2×2, DisplayPort, HDMI, a variety of USB 3.0 ports, an antenna connection, and a BIOS Flashback button as bonus.

3D Gurus were impressed by the power of the board design as well as the thermal profile. Head over for a look at their full review.