We have a couple of B660 motherboards for review and its an exciting time for anyone who wants to build a modern PC but is somewhat still caught up in the 2018 pricing of AMD’s Ryzen 5 3600. Intel’s new Alder Lake offering has opened up the entry-level market and has made it quite the interesting landscape.
In the past, the Hx70 chipset was the most consumer-forward chipset amongst all of Intel’s partner offerings. This meant that a Z/P chipset served the enthusiast market while an Hx70 answered to a multimedia audience who were probably not interested in overclocking. Then, most motherboard stack will be taken up by the B-class chipset and the lower-end H-class. That was before though, 2022’s chipset stack from Intel is quite the same but includes a very vital change, something which has proven to be the limitation of many Intel mainstream product before: memory overclocking.
With base memory support already going for both DDR5-4800 and DDR4-3200, these are fairly high already but Intel has enabled XMP on the B660 chipset which is the reason why you’ll be seeing a lot of it in mainstream boards today. A simple IO offering coupled with a partially unhindered performance and the B660 chipset completes the dream Intel mainstream motherboard.
That said, we have a couple of B660 boards to check out but we’ll start off with a fairly top-end model: the ROG STRIX B660-F GAMING WIFI from ASUS. For reference, here is the entire ASUS B660 product stack and its official SRP in Philippine Peso:
| ROG STRIX B660-F GAMING | PHP 14,210 |
| ROG STRIX B660-A GAMING D4 | PHP 12,640 |
| ROG STRIX B660-G GAMING | PHP 12,640 |
| ROG STRIX B660-I GAMING | PHP 12,000 |
| TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4 | PHP 10,770 |
| PRIME B660M-A D4 | PHP 7,750 |
| PRIME B660M-K D4 | PHP 6,830 |
| EX-B660M-V5 D4 | PHP 6,700 |
We’ll take a closer look at this motherboard and I’ll let you know what I feel and not feel on this motherboard especially the part where it costs nearly $300. Read on!
| ASUS ROG STRIX B660-F GAMING WIFI Specifications | |
|---|---|
| CPU Support | Intel 12th-generation Core CPU (LGA1700) |
| Power Delivery Design | 16+1 |
| Chipset | Intel Z690 |
| Memory Support | 4 x DIMM, Max. 128GB, DDR5-6000 (OC) |
| Expansion Slots | 1x PCIe 5.0 x16 (CPU) 1x PCIe 3.0 x16 (x4 Mode) 2x PCIe 3.0 x1 |
| Storage Interface/s | 3x M.2 4x SATA |
| Networking | Intel 2.5GbE 2×2 WIFI6 |
| Audio | Realtek S1220A |
| Fan Headers | 6x 4-pin 1x AIO pump header |
| Dimensions | ATX 30.5cm x 24.4cm |
| Rear I/O Ports | 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port(s) (1 x USB Type-C) 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (1 x USB Type-A) 5 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 port(s) (4 x Type-A, 1 x Type-C) 2 x USB 2.0 Gen 1 port(s) (2 x Type-A) 1 x DisplayPort 1 x HDMI port 1 x Intel 2.5Gb Ethernet port 5 x Audio jacks |
| Features | Extreme Engine Digi+
ASUS Q-Design
ASUS Thermal Solution
AURA Sync
|
