Why you can trust Tom's Hardware Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Go to page:

Benchmark and Final Analysis

Our standard benchmarks and power tests are performed using the CPU’s stock frequencies and default Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) with all power-saving features enabled. Optimized defaults are set in the BIOS and the memory is set using the XMP profiles. For this baseline testing, Windows is set to High Performance, before we switch over to Balanced during power testing, so the PC idles properly.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Image 1 of 21

Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Image 1 of 4

We’ve recently updated our game tests to The Division 2 and Forza Horizon 4. The games are run at 1920x1080 resolution using the ultra presets. As the resolution goes up, the CPU tends to have less of an impact and most games at this resolution in the first place. The goal with these settings is to determine if there are differences in performance at the most commonly used resolution with settings most people use or at least strive for.

Image 1 of 4

There are several ways to overclock on AMD platforms, depending on your goals. If your goal is single-threaded performance, you may want to focus on using Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) and adjusting its parameters. If you can use all cores and threads, setting a manual CPU multiplier and voltage is likely the better route. While the latter clips peak single-threaded performance a bit, it increases all core/thread performance from base. To that end, we use 4.3 GHz and roughly 1.35V for an all core/thread overclock.

As we expected, the ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi took our Ryzen 9 3900X to 4.3 GHz without issue. We didn’t witness much vdroop, and the system was stable in testing. Nothing to complain about here. On the RAM side, we know AMD is limited to around 3600/3733 MHz if you want to keep the FCLK at a 1:1 ratio with the memory. With this in mind, instead of pushing for a higher clock speed, for memory testing, we add two more sticks and run 4x8GB at DDR4 3600, which is AMD’s current sweet spot. Our B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi had no issues running DDR4 3600 with 4x8GB sticks and keeping FCLK 1:1 with the memory.

In a previous B550 motherboard review we looked at the Gigabyte Aorus Master ($279.99) which proved to be feature-laden and also one of the most expensive boards in its class. The Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi comes in priced significantly less at $209.99 (and the non-Wi-Fi version is $189.99). At this price point, you still get all of what B550 has to offer, including PCIe 4.0 for the video card, dual M.2 slots (one PCIe 4.0 capable), along with a beefed-up power delivery that supports our 3900X without issue.

While the B550-F Gaming Wi-Fi may not have the three M.2 slots as the much more expensive B550 Aorus Master does, most users are only using one or two M.2 devices in the first place. Outside of that, there are eight total USB ports on the rear IO, which should be enough for most users, though none are USB 3.2 Gen2 (20 Gbps). Additionally, both boards include 2.5 GbE LAN, Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200, and the Realtek ALC1220 codec (Asus’ SupremeFX 1220S is a tweaked version of this) for premium audio.