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Firmware
Asus’ ROG Strix B660-A Gaming BIOS sports a familiar black-and-red theme. The BIOS is loaded with options and menus and the most frequently accessed items are easily accessible and not buried several layers down. There’s also an Easy Mode that’s more of a dashboard with limited functionality. We're fans of the Asus BIOS and its logical layout. It has everything you need, and then some, to tweak your motherboard and component settings. And if you want to know how to access your BIOS (from any system), we can help!
Software
Asus has applications designed to control the motherboard's various functions, ranging from RGB lighting control to audio, system monitoring, overclocking and more. Instead of plodding through each application as if it changes for each review, we’ll capture several screenshots of a few major utilities. In this case, here’s a look at Ai Suite 3, Armoury Crate, Sonic Studio and the Realtek Audio application.
Test System / Comparison Products
We’ve updated our test system to Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied as of October 2021. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver to version 496.13. Additionally, our game selection was updated, as noted in the table below. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:
Test System Components
CPU | Intel Core i9-12900K |
Memory | Kingston Fury DDR5 5200 CL40 (9KF552C40BBK2-32) |
Row 2 - Cell 0 | GSkill Trident Z DDR5 5600 CL36 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) |
Row 3 - Cell 0 | ADATA XPG DDR5 6000 CL40 (AX5U6000C4016G-FCLARBK) |
GPU | Asus TUF RTX 3070 |
Cooling | MSI MEG Coreliquid S360 |
PSU | EVGA Supernova 850W P6 |
Software | Windows 11 64-bit (21H2, Build 22000.282) |
Graphics Driver | Nvidia Driver 496.13 |
Sound | Integrated HD audio |
Network | Integrated Networking (GbE or 2.5 GbE) |
EVGA supplied our Supernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the outgoing 1.2KW monster we used) for our test systems, and G.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing.
Benchmark Settings
Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings | Row 0 - Cell 1 |
Procyon | Version 2.0.249 64 |
Row 2 - Cell 0 | Office Suite, Video Editing (Premiere Pro), Photo Editing (Photoshop, Lightroom Classic) |
3DMark | Version 2.20.7290 64 |
Row 4 - Cell 0 | Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets |
Cinebench R23 | Version RBBENCHMARK330542 |
Row 6 - Cell 0 | Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded |
Blender | Version 3.0.1 |
Row 8 - Cell 0 | Full benchmark (three sub-tests) |
Application Tests and Settings | Row 9 - Cell 1 |
LAME MP3 | Version SSE2_2019 |
Row 11 - Cell 0 | Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s) |
HandBrake CLI | Version: 1.2.2 |
Row 13 - Cell 0 | Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX) |
Corona 1.4 | Version 1.4 |
Row 15 - Cell 0 | Custom benchmark |
7-Zip | Version 21.03-beta |
Row 17 - Cell 0 | Integrated benchmark (Command Line) |
Game Tests and Settings | Row 18 - Cell 1 |
Far Cry 6 | Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HD Textures ON |
F1 2021 | Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HBAO+, RT Med, TAA + 16xAF, Bahrain, FPS Counter ON |
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Prev Page Features and Specifications Next Page Benchmarks and Final AnalysisJoe Shields is a Freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US. He reviews motherboards.
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giorgiog This motherboard is dead on arrival at this price range. How much did Asus pay you for this positive "review"?Reply -
thisisaname giorgiog said:This motherboard is dead on arrival at this price range. How much did Asus pay you for this positive "review"?
Aye $239.99 is hardly budget priced! -
vMax I paid that price for the Asus Z690 Strix D4 as they had a cash back offer when it launched and that was the only reason I bought it (and they took an eon to pay it back but still made a difference!). I have to admit the Strix Z690 has been rock solid and easy to overclock but this B660 version is well and truly over priced. Not sure why the Intel series motherboards in this generation are so high in price, yes they have good features but still a good bit more than the previous generation. Is it something to do with PCIe Gen 5 or just trying to squeeze more money out of us?Reply -
Giroro $240 is, like, 2-3x what I think a B series motherboard should cost.Reply
My X570 board cost less than that, and that was at the launch of the platform.
And sure, that's AMD vs Intel. But my last Z-Series Intel board was still under $200.