Review on 💻 ASUS Prime B450M-A II AMD AM4 (Ryzen 5000, 3rd/2nd/1st Gen Ryzen Micro ATX Motherboard with 128GB DDR4, 4400 O.C., NVMe, HDMI 2.0b/DVI/D-Sub, USB 3.2 Gen 2, BIOS Flashback, Aura Sync) by Kevin Shimmens

Excellent motherboard for USB, VR and Ryzen (AFTER bios update) I checked the board carefully before buying to make sure that the PCI slots and SATA ports work fine with my case (Silverstone FT03). I also checked and double checked the hardware compatibility information on the ASUS website and made sure I was buying hardware that would work with the motherboard. But I still had problems. The first was with RAM, I chose the Corsair brand, but then I realized that the RAM I bought had different versions from different manufacturers. And there's no way to choose which version you get. Unfortunately I have RAM that does NOT work with the motherboard. I switched to Kingston HyperX. The second issue I'm deducting a star for is that the processor compatibility matrix is wrong. The BIOS version on the motherboard was supposed to support Ryzen 7 out of the box compared to the die, but I still had to look for an older Ryzen just to be able to boot and update it before I could use Ryzen 7. Pity! I've debugged the CPU before, so removing and reattaching the thermal applicator to finally boot it up was a pain. After everything is clarified, it works great. I have a mechanical keyboard that put so much strain on my USB hub on my previous motherboard that I had to use external hubs along with my mouse and wireless headset, and now everything gets enough power and enough bandwidth on the motherboard USB ports . Lose the PCI slot to PCI-E when using a graphics card, but that's usually the case. I still have a free PCI that I can reach out to if needed. There are more than enough SATA ports for all my drives (ssd and 3 hdd) but if I added more I wouldn't be able to use nvme which is not a problem as I don't plan on adding any additional SATA devices. Anyhow, overall this is a great motherboard for the Ryzen range, but be aware that if you want to use Ryzen 7, 5 and below, you'll just need to update the BIOS before you can use it.