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Firmware, Software and Test System

Firmware

Asus’ B660M-Plus WIFI D4 BIOS is essentially the same as what we saw with the Z690, except it doesn’t have the CPU overclocking options. The orange and black/grey theme remains, as does the ease of movement through the UEFI. It’s loaded with options and menus, though 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. In all, we’re a fan of the Asus BIOS and its logical layout. It has everything you need, and then some, to tweak your motherboard and component settings.

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Asus TUF Gaming B660M-Plus WIFI D4 — (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

Software

Asus has applications for various functions, ranging from RGB lighting control, audio, system monitoring, overclocking, etc. Instead of plodding through each application as if it changes for each review, we’ll capture several screenshots of a few major utilities moving forward. In this case, 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 Windows 11 64-bit OS with all updates applied. 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 has been 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

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CPU	Intel Core i9-12900K
Memory	GSkill Trident Z DDR5-5600 CL36 (F5-5600U3636C16GX2-TZ5RK)
Row 2 - Cell 0	ADATA XPG Lancer DDR5-6000 CL40 (AX5U6000C4016G-DCLARBK)
Row 3 - Cell 0	GSkill Trident Z Neo DDR4-3600 (F4-3600C16Q-32GTZN)
Row 4 - Cell 0	GSkill Trident Z Royal DDR4-4000 (F4-4000C18Q-32GTRS)
GPU	Asus TUF RTX 3070
Cooling	Coolermaster MasterLiquid PL360 Flux
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.

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Benchmark Settings

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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 (all 3 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