ASUS TUF Gaming B650M-Plus Motherboard Review

How Much Does It Cost?

The ASUS TUF Gaming B650M-Plus Motherboard is available on Amazon for just £190.97, which is pretty decent given that a lot of these mid-range boards are hitting prices of around £300 now. Plus, it gets bonus points from me for being mATX, as it’s a form factor that’s seemingly less common right now, so it’s great to see not only a new mATX motherboard but one that’s also priced competitively and delivers such amazing performance. Furthermore, if you do want this motherboard with WiFi, the WiFi edition of this same board is available for just £219.98.

Overview

I adore this motherboard, and ASUS has hit the mark with this one in terms of style, price, form factor and performance, which makes it not only one of the best B650M motherboards but also one of the best all-around AM5 motherboards for those wanting to build a high-end AMD system.

While flagship motherboards can cost £500+, sometimes nearly double that much, it’s clear that the bulk of that extra investment isn’t going towards improving the general performance of your processor, storage or graphics card, that is unless you’re trying to push some overclocking aspects, but frankly, I think overclocking is a dying trend, and having quality hardware that can maintain your hardware boost clocks is the way forward.

The ASUS TUF Gaming B650M-PLUS has more than enough armour and heatsinks to ensure all its hardware is kept at optimal temperatures. The VRM configuration may not be the biggest, but it is built to a high standard with great quality components, and it’s a clear example that sometimes, less is more. This may be a £200 mATX motherboard, but it allowed our CPU to hit some of the best benchmark scores we’ve seen from AMD, and that’s a very good thing.

So why would you pay so much more for the STRIX or ROG motherboards? Simply, I/O, more expensive motherboards will have a greater number of M.2 slots, and this board also doesn’t have a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, but PCIe 4.0 is plenty fast for storage for most users anyway. More expensive boards would typically have more WiFi, USB ports, and similar, so you have to take that into consideration.

However, with room for a full-size GPU, an additional add-in card such as a PCIe RAID card or capture card, two M.2 SSDs, and more than enough USB ports for a typical PC gamer, it’s likely the TUF Gaming B650M-PLUS has everything you need.

Should I Buy One?

With the fantastic build quality and upgraded quality of components we’ve come to expect from the TUF series of products, the classic TUF Gaming Alliance-friendly aesthetics, and a truly astonishing performance from this competitively priced mATX motherboard, it’s really a no-brainer, it’s one of the best all-around AMD motherboards on the market right now for any type of system builder, from the home office to your next high-end gaming system.