Asus ROG Strix B560-F Gaming Wi-Fi
A whole lot of board for the money.
The Asus ROG Strix B560-F Gaming Wi-Fi is one of the more expensive B560 boards and it gives Z590 boards around the same price a serious run for their money. It looks every bit a premium board. The little RGB ROG logo adjacent to the I/O adds a touch of class to the subtle mostly black aesthetic.
It features 3x M.2 slots, where the topmost one one connected to the CPU with a PCIe 4.0 connection. The others are PCIe 3.0. All slots come with metal heatsinks. Its one of the few B560 boards to come with heatsinks for all three slots. Notably they come with Asus’ Q-Latch mechanism. No more fiddling with minuscule screws! You also get six SATA ports. Also worthy of note is the inclusion of Realtek S1220A audio. This is more common on high-end boards, with most B560 boards making use of cheaper codecs. It’s one of many features that belie the fact that we’re looking at a B560 board.
The Strix B560-F includes an 8+2-phase VRM with 50a stages. An 8-pin EPS connector provides the juice. That’s perfectly adequate for any 11th generation CPU, especially since OC isn’t allowed on B560 boards. The heatsinks are aren’t huge but they’re a massive improvement over some of the garbage heatsinks you’ll find on cheap boards. Under a full AVX load with an 11900K, VRM returned a temperature of 63 degrees, a very good result.
The rear I/O features a great array of ports. We’re pleased to see a Type- C USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port along with two Gen 2 ports, two Gen 1 ports and two 2.0 ports. That should take care of the needs of most users. Networking duties are provided by Intel 2.5G and Wi-Fi 6 controllers. Wi-Fi 6E would have been a cherry on top and the MSI B560i includes it but 6E still mostly confined to high end boards for now. DP and HDMI ports will be welcome for users looking to make use of 11th Gen Xe onboard graphics. Also note the omission of the common S/PDIF port in favor of a USB Type- C port. This adds some flexibility by allowing easy compatibility with Type- C headphones or an external DAC. S/PDIF or USB? That’s a question that deserves its own article.
The Strix B560-F performed as expected in our benchmark suite and particularly under heavy multi-threaded loads compared to the little MSI. It also did ok in the gaming tests. Not that you can get better performance if you relax the power limits – if you’re running a low end CPU you’ll be able to extract more. The board certainly has the VRM headroom to do it.
The Asus B560-F is an excellent board that’s packed with features. Our only gripe, if it can be called that, is it may be too much board for its own good. At $300+ its well into Z590 territory, but if you’re not overclocking or running a load of drives and expansion cards, do you need Z590? If you look at a board like Asus’ own Z590 TUF, it’s a good $50 more without really adding a lot more. At $309 we feel the Asus is priced just right, and it resets expectation of what to expect from a premium B series board.