The Intel B560 Motherboard Overview: 30+ Budget Models Starting from $75
by Gavin Bonshor on March 29, 2021 7:00 AM ESTASUS ROG Strix B560-F Gaming WIFI
The second in ASUS's Republic of Gamers B560 series is the ROG Strix B560-F Gaming WIFI which is one offive (at the time of writing) available Alphabet Strix models. The ASUS ROG Strix B560-F Gaming WIFI offers a mixture of premium features commonly found on its Z590 models but keeping in line with the overall premise of the value element of B560. Its design consists of a typical Strix model, with primarily black heatsinks with Strix graffiti-inspired text. There is also an illuminated RGB ROG logo integrated within the rear panel cover.
Included in the feature set are two full-length PCIe slots including one PCIe 4.0 x16 (top) and one PCIe 3.0 x4 (bottom), with two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Storage on the F model consists of three PCIe M.2 slots with one PCIe 4.0 x4 and two with support for PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA drives. Along the right-hand side are six SATA ports arranged in a line with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. At the time of writing, ASUS hasn't published its QVL memory list, so support is listed as DDR4-3200 in line with Rocket Lake, but we do know that the four available slots will accommodate up to 128 GB of memory.
On the rear panel is plenty of connectivity including one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, three USB 2.0 ports, as well as one of ASUS's latest Type-C audio ports. For users of integrated graphics, ASUS includes one HDMI 2.0 and one DisplayPort 1.4 video output, as well as five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output driven by a ROG Supreme FX S1220A HD audio codec. On the networking side of things, there's an Intel pairing including an I225-V 2.5 GbE controller and an AX200 Wi-Fi 6 CNVi model. Finishing off the rear panel is a BIOS Flashback button.
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Irata - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link
Is that the other side though ? If they are in a „better at everything“ position, why should they charge bargain basement prices? And anti-consumer ? That would be paying / pressuring OEM and stores to not carry alternative products and that‘s not happening.And you actually have a choice - want the best ? There‘s Ryzen 5000 but it costs a bit more. Want budget ? There‘s Ryzen 3000 and 2000. They all fit the same motherboards with the exception of 2017 era 300 series boards.
What you shouldn‘t do is compare EOL close out prices to current products prices. I bought my 2700x new for €150 including Borderlands 3 and the stock HSF but it was so cheap because they were clearing out stock. The same thing is happening with Comet Lake but compared to Ryzen 2000 EOL prices you could even argue that they are still overpriced.
Either way, we‘ll see what RKL brings to the table, both as far as performance, features and price is concerned.
madseven7 - Friday, April 2, 2021 - link
How do you figure that AMD is price gouging? Intel is late to the game, underperform, runs hot and you have to get a new motherboard for every new cpu that Intel releases. AMD has supported new processors on the same motherboard since 2017. AMD are faster and run cooler. Just because AMD decided to increase prices by $50 the first time in years they're gouging customers? Every new Intel CPU release increased the price from $10-$30laduran - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link
Real men own fabs. Jerry Sanders. AMD.Samus - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
This is a huge problem for AMD. The last few PC’s I’ve built during the pandemic have all been Intel because the platform cost is so much cheaper, and Intel had still competitive chips in the $150 range that you can actually get for MSRP. Meanwhile there are no AMD boards for under $100 unless you want an old platform, and their ~$120 chips are selling for $200.Basically at the low end you can build an Intel system equivalent in performance to an AMD system for nearly $100 less. Obviously you are throwing future proofing out the window when it comes time to upgrade your CPU to something high end but I rarely see people replace CPU’s without replacing their motherboard anyway...which is kind of sad :(
siggidarius - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link
Future proofing and cpu upgradeability is fiction IMO, save for some edge cases. Usually CPU we buy is enough for some time, and after that it makes more sense to buy new mb+cpu+ram combo, especially now, when we are at the end of DDR4 era.My current platform is based on x570 and Ryzen 3600, but I'm not planning on switching to ZEN3 or ZEN3+ if it ever comes out, and same is with Intel.
Also with current market integrated GPU is a nice thing to have for a fresh build, and here AMD just doesn't provide anything meaningful - it's all either old or expensive (and still a little worse then GPU-less CPUs due to less cache).
eastcoast_pete - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Hi Gavin, your last table (audio) has a legacy headline (Z490..).Question: which HDMI-out standard is supported by these MoBos? Are they all 2.0b? Thanks!
dullard - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Multiple tables on the first page have the wrong headline (Z590 instead of B560).yeeeeman - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Frankly, the 100 bucks motherboards are quite nice if you pair them with a non K CPU. With 300 bucks you end up with a pretty powerful system. Similar IPC to zen 3 parts and cheaper. No matter how much you despise intel, these are quite attractive.Samus - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
I agree. I just built an H310 system ($56 motherboard brand new) with a new old stock i5-8500T? Maybe 8600T? I forgot. But $130 new on eBay, and threw a $10 cooler on it good for 65w (it’s a 35w CPU)It’s for my torrent PC/HTPC that was still sandy bridge and running a GT430 for video, new system will use around 1/3rd the power at load and 1/8th the power at idle. Total cost for board cpu and 8GB DDR4: $200.
Linustechtips12#6900xt - Thursday, April 8, 2021 - link
completely agree, was looking at a 10400 or 10600 and a b560 from asrock actually not bad