ASUS Prime B650-PLUS AMD B650 AM5 Ryzen™ Desktop 9000 8000 and 7000 ATX Motherboard, DDR5, PCIe 5.0 M.2, 2.5Gb LAN, DP, HDMI®, SATA 6Gbps, USB 3.2 Gen 2 & 1 Type-C®, BIOS Flashback™, USB4® Support

Sealed. Packaged nicely. Everything included. Really cool looking love the aesthetic. Fit perfectly without needing to do anything extra. Very clean and nice. Worked just fine and easy to plug everything in. I would definitely recommend

The ASUS Prime B650M-A AX II is a fantastic motherboard! It was easy to set up, runs smoothly, and has all the features I needed. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth work great, and the build quality is solid. BIOS is user-friendly, making setup a breeze. Perfect choice for a budget-friendly AM5 build without sacrificing performance. Highly recommend!

My old computer, which I purchased in 2012 was getting past it. So I decide to build a new system, being a 90's era Windows fanboy building a PC is a piece of cake. Normally.I selected this Asus board, the Ax2 version for the build, the reviews seemed good. I was careful to select the m.2, ram and CPU from the approved list.When I installed the board and components a couple of problems became quickly evident.The Sata SSD drive that my OS was on could not be recognized in the bios, they would appear on a list of connected devices... but they would not appear on the boot list. I say they because I also tried an older spare drive.While problem solving this a second problem became evident... my fan wasn’t working and the CPU temp reached just over 90C very quickly.I tried another spare fan and both CPU headers were non functional. However as a workaround I was able to connect my Cooler Master fan to another fan header.So I tried to call ASUS... they don't support motherboards over the phone. Period. I was turned away. Let that sink in people... you won’t get anywhere near someone you can verify as human.I tried the ASUS online chat, the support person told me that I would have to sign up for something called Just Answers to get support.Now I was frustrated when I did this and I did not read the fine print, I thought I was paying a token $2 fee. However the two dollar fee was a sign-up fee. I was also charged $70 for a couple of copy paste answers to the problem.To be clear I did try everything on the list of things to try. Some I couldn’t do however because there are settings that you can select in the bios to get it to recognize the drives... however all of those settings were grayed out, such as CSM. Even a bios update did nothing.I decided to buy a device that holds the m.2 and plugs into the USB... using a different computer I cloned my OS onto the new m.2 drive. Even that didn’t work in either slot, I couldn’t get it to recognize any drive at all.Now while I was problem solving this I found a video on YouTube that said with this board...“Ïf CSM item is not user-configurable and shows in grey, please install an add-on Graphics card and CSM item will turn configurable”To be clear... I did carefully choose the CPU based on the fact that it DID have onboard graphics, and I did have a couple of graphics cards on hand however I did some digging and found that neither of my cards were good enough, apparently “you need a dedicated video card that supports VBIOS”Now nobody from ASUS... not even the guy who took 70 bucks from me for a minutes work. None of them told me that. They had led me round in circles.This is unacceptable, expecting someone to have to buy a high priced graphics card just to make a motherboard work. Disgusting.Now I have returned the board, I will never buy ASUS again. Ever.Update 22nd April...I have replaced the Asus board with a cheaper Asrock board, the B650M PG Lightning Wifi. Thus far it is working well and has no coil whine.However when I went to select CSM I was able to select it, however when I exited BIOS it would restart and default back to CSM being off. But at least I was able to select CSM which told me it was working unlike the Asus board which support couldn't tell me if it was working or not. Who knows?So this lead me to do some research as to why my drive wasn't being recognized, it turns out for the last few years legacy support for old hard drive formats has been removed.Now what is shocking is how no one told me this. I contacted Asus several times and even paid the 70 bucks for third party support, they all knew I was using an old SSD and none of them said... "Hey Matt... the reason you can't use you existing drive is because it needs reformatting, there is a free Windows utility that does it, all you have to do is google "Convert an existing Windows 10 Installation from Legacy BIOS to UEFI" and follow the simple instructions"To be clear NO ONE told me that, even the troubleshooting video on YouTube mentioned nothing.So Asus still gets an F for their support for telling me nothing that I needed to know and only some things that I didn't need to know.

Worked perfectly and looks super clean in the build.

I picked up an Amazon Warehouse open box for some nice savings and as always they are hit or miss. Luckily in regards to shape this is a hit but I can see why it was returned and Amazon marks this as a frequently returned item.This is a 7600x, 32GB (2x16GB) of manually tuned memory and a Samsung 980 Pro 1TB SSD driving a 7900xtx.Unit was used but in great shape with all pack ins. No bent pins and ready to go...kinda. Let's talk about the issues with this board.Memory compatibility and BIOS issues:BIOS on board was 1811 which is 4-5 months old.Using the DDR5 memory in the pic, the unit would not post at all and without LED diagnostic lights appears to be DOA (which it is not)I tried a few other sticks from M-die generic sticks to G.Skill and no postI finally found a circa 2022 M-die DDR5 stick and it posted.Once I was able to post, I updated the BIOS to the newest 2413 BIOS and retried all my sticks and they all worked except the one in the pic which after testing in other boards was DOA.So one of the main problems with this board is memory compatibility which the newest BIOS update seems to address BUT you of course need compatible memory to get it to post so you can update it since it doesn't have BIOS flashback. If the memory isn't compatible, it won't post and can even appear to be DOA without any diagnostic lights...brilliant.No diagnostic LED:For a $200 board, the lack of any type of debug diagnostic LEDs is simply unacceptable. You have no idea what's going on or what is failing. I've seen diagnostic lights on B650 boards costing almost half as much as the Asus board.Weak VRMs:As has been reported, this board has weak VRMs *IF* you're trying to power a top end AM5 CPU. I tested it with a 7600X and a 7950X3D running CB23 multi. The 7600X didn't even break 60c and stayed right around 50-55 for the entire run. The 7950X3D *did* get quite warm hitting into the 80s and 90s. A 7950X will definitely topple it long run.So is it worth it?With all that, there is something about the design and look of this board and its heatsinks I really like especially the chipset heatsink. It kind of just works aesthetically.If you can snag this open box for a good price, have patience and most importantly have access to the right memory then yes. I was lucky enough to have many sets of DDR5 laying around to get it to post and update the BIOS to 2413. Once updated, it works fine. I've been testing and running it for several days now and it has been rock solid. For the retail price of almost $200? Look elsewhere.I like it enough that I picked up both this and an Asus Strix X670E motherboard at the same time and I'll be returning the Strix unopened as this gets the job done at a fraction of the price.