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Firmware
Asus’ BIOS on the B650M-Plus is the same as we’re used to with the Asus X670E TUF boards we looked at in the past. The BIOS sports the familiar black, grey, white and yellow/orange TUF theme, which is also easy to read. Asus starts in an Easy Mode that displays high-level information, including CPU and memory clock speeds, temperatures, fan speeds, storage information, etc. Advanced Mode has several headers across the top that drop down additional options. The BIOS is one of my favorites, as almost everything you need isn’t buried deep within menus.
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Software
Asus’ software suite is still the same: Armoury Crate and AI Suite. But like the firmware, it gets updated to support the AMD processors. There are several applications for various functions, ranging from RGB lighting control, audio, system monitoring, overclocking, etc. We’ve captured several screenshots of the applications below. Here’s a look at Ai Suite 3, Armoury Crate, Sonic Studio and the Realtek Audio application.
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Test System / Comparison Products
We’ve updated our test system to 64-bit Windows 11, with all updates applied. We kept the same Asus TUF RTX 3070 video card from our previous testing platforms but updated the driver. Additionally, we updated to F1 22 in our games suite and kept Far Cry 6. We use the latest non-beta motherboard BIOS available to the public unless otherwise noted. The hardware we used is as follows:
EVGA supplied ourSupernova 850W P6 power supply (appropriately sized and more efficient than the 1.2KW monster we used previously) for our test systems, andG.Skill sent us a DDR5-5600 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK) memory kit for testing.
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Benchmark Settings
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Synthetic Benchmarks and Settings
Procyon
Version 2.1.459 64
Office Suite (Office 365), Video Editing (Premiere Pro 22.6.2.2), Photo Editing (Photoshop 23.5.1, Lightroom Classic 11.5)
3DMark
Version 2.22.7359 64
Firestrike Extreme and Time Spy Default Presets
Cinebench R23
Version RBBENCHMARK330542
Open GL Benchmark - Single and Multi-threaded
Blender
Version 3.3.0
Full benchmark (all 3 tests)
Application Tests and Settings
LAME MP3
Version SSE2_2019
Mixed 271MB WAV to mp3: Command: -b 160 --nores (160Kb/s)
HandBrake CLI
Version: 1.2.2
Sintel Open Movie Project: 4.19GB 4K mkv to x264 (light AVX) and x265 (heavy AVX)
Corona 1.4
Version 1.4
Custom benchmark
7-Zip
Version 21.03-beta
Integrated benchmark (Command Line)
Game Tests and Settings
Far Cry 6
Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, HD Textures ON
F1 2022
Ultra Preset - 1920 x 1080, Ultra High (default) Bahrain (Clear/Dry), FPS Counter ON
The review said the the rear panel "only" had seven type-A ports. Just out of curiosity how many are most people using? Currently I'm only using one, for a dongle that communicates with my keyboard/trackball. Would anyone like to comment on how many rear USB ports are in use and for what purposes?
The review said the the rear panel "only" had seven type-A ports. Just out of curiosity how many are most people using? Currently I'm only using one, for a dongle that communicates with my keyboard/trackball. Would anyone like to comment on how many rear USB ports are in use and for what purposes?
2x external SSDs, Vdrums module, audio interface, mouse, keyboard, USB headset, webcam, Wacom tablet. My current MOBO doesn't have enough to support everything so I'd def go for as many ports as I can get for my next build.
