ASUS ROG Strix B650E-I Gaming WiFi AMD B650 AM5 Ryzen™ Desktop 9000 8000 & 7000 mini-ITX mITX Motherboard, 10+2 Power Stages, DDR5, 2X M.2 Slot, PCIe® 5.0, 2.5G LAN, WiFi 6E, USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C

Great MB, works as expected. My only complaint is that sometimes memory training on startup takes a long while (up to a minute) vs my previous AM4 build that would boot under 10 seconds.The white looks GREAT as well.The no-tools m.2 slots are fantastic and a snap to install a drive. They look kinda cool as well.

This is a great MOBO. The modern Type-C buses are super nice to have, multiple NVME slots. If you plan to run multiple GPUs make sure your case is large enough. Only beef I have with ASUS is that the Armory Crate software is hot garbage. Seriously. They moved Aura Sync into Armory Crate so just to run the LED drivers you need almost 3 GB of SDKs and frameworks to use it with the native app. It requests multiple admin permissions on startup. Why? The software hogs resources during runtime. Needs updates otherwise it breaks. Won’t download and apply updates correctly due to tight system permissions, no debugging. Utterly ridiculous. I guess they spent the entire budget on UI R&D

Great board. BIOS loads fast, especially compared to my previous Gigabyte AM5 board. Rock-solid stability, no coil whine or buzzing noises under load. Installation and setup were straightforward—haven't run into any issues. Definitely recommend for anyone building a compact AM5 rig.

I won’t go into detail about ASUS the company, there is more than enough details online, but I will go into detail in regards to the B650E-I.The first problem that I got was the fact that there are no Internet drivers preinstalled onto the motherboard meaning that you have to save your Internet drivers onto a separate USB before you actually get even LAN working. This is a problem because if you are like most people, you will be reusing part from your previous build and will not have a computer to actually download the drivers until it is already too late. I was fortunate enough to have actually done this however it shouldn’t even be a problem, yet it is.The second issue is the boot times last substantially longer than any other motherboard that I’ve used before.The third issue is going to be the fact that there is coil wine on my unit. It’s not entirely audible, only noticeable if I have my fans at a low speed and the case panels off, however, based on previous reviews, it is likely that this will get worse overtime and I have purchased motherboards for 1/3 of the price that had no coil line.The fourth and final problem, which is the most important for me is that the audio solution on this motherboard is absolutely horrible. For whatever reason the audio signal that comes out of the rear is incredibly loud, it distorts my headphones even at 50% system volume on windows. There is a lot of distortion and the audio sounds tinny, installing the drivers from the ASUS website does not help. This is not an issue that I have seen substantially covered at all except for one Reddit thread, this in my opinion, makes the board unusable and even though you can compensate by reducing your system volume it is common for volume to reset on startup and it shouldn’t even be an issue in the first place.Yes, the motherboard does have many good features and the rear Io is best in class and there are no extra daughter boards that you have to use to get full features like other manufacturers, but it is not worth the price nor the quality.EDIT: Some extra info.- Coil whine can be “solved” by keeping your CPU above 1.2V at all times. Should not have to do this for $300.- Long boot times are a problem with AM5 in general apparently. Go into your BIOS and turn on BOTH Memory Context Restore AND Memory Power Down. ASUS BIOS should do both automatically when one is enabled. Fast boot helps as well, 13second boot times.- Audio is done by Realtek ALC4080 which does audio over USB and has “impedance detection”. This does not work. It detects 80ohm headphones as over 1000ohms, massively over amplifying the signal. Realtek audio drivers (not Microsoft defaults) and Realtek Audio Console must be installed to manually change amplifying level, but ohm detection is still wrong. This fixes sound level, but ALC4080 implementation and noise isolation is still bad. Get constant crackles during any bass notes above 50% volume. Especially when CPU utilization or Ethernet utilization is high due to bad isolation. Stick to motherboards that use ALC 800/1200.I will be returning this when the ASRock B850 boards come out.

So to be clear: I bought the renewed/used like new version of this MoBo, and this is my experience. I've been using this motherboard for a few days now on a brand new build, and everything is working smoothly and without issue. I was able to boot into Bios easily and make all the necessary adjustments with no major issues. The Bios that it came with is from October so about 8-9 months old, but it still worked right off the bat with my Ryzen 5 9600x, which was my major question. I didn't want to have to do a Flashback immediately before getting things up and running. When I got the package, everything looked as it would have if it were new, except that the anti-static bag the Mobo came in was taped closed, not necessarily factory sealed, but that's sort of irrelevant. I *believe* that it came with all of the extras/accessories/cables but honestly if it did, I would have liked more. There weren't any extra screws, other than the M.2 clip-screw replacements, and there weren't any extra cables, which would have been nice. The manual was there and looked new, and is not a bad manual when it comes to explaining all aspects of the function of the motherboard and features. Speaking of which, the rear ports are a great selection on this mobo, plenty of ports, everything working as they should, and the quality of the board seems great. Another reason I bought this motherboard was the SupremeFX audio codec on board, which as far as mid-tier motherboards go, seems to be a pretty good on-board audio setup. So far, with testing on intricate songs like Steely Dan's Aja and Daft Punk's Touch, the sound is amazing, very clear, multi-layered, and no static-y edge that I was getting in the past.Overall, I think this board is a steal at $160 in 2025, and I am happy to report no issues with a "used" or "renewed" motherboard.I will update this review if there are any major failures or issues.