B850 Explained – Which AMD Chipset to Buy? B850 Strix-F Overview

AMD has not made it easy when it comes to their AM5 motherboards – with forwards and backwards compatibility, and frankly inconsequential differences between models, it’s genuinely harder than ever to know which motherboard and chipset to buy for your new AMD CPU – but luckily I’m here to help. I have this Asus B850 STRIX-F to help demonstrate, so let’s get straight into it. In short, the B850 and the older B650 chipsets really aren’t that different. In fact, beyond what board vendors like Asus may decide to change like styling and minor tweaks to the IO, the only major difference is that the regular B650 boards had no PCIe Gen 5 support, whereas B850 has the primary M.2 slot set up to support Gen 5. That’s pretty much it – and to make matters worse, the higher spec B650E boards actually had complete PCIe Gen 5 support meaning B850 is actually a worse option compared to the older B650E boards, at least when it comes to PCIe support. Technically speaking, especially if you are buying a Ryzen 9000 series CPU, you are more likely to have that work straight out the box on a newer B850 board, whereas it is technically a bit of a roll of the dice as to whether or not a B650 or B650E board has had a recent enough BIOS update to support those newer chips, although most boards – this B850 STRIX-F included – offer a BIOS Flashback feature which will let you update the BIOS even without a CPU installed, so that shouldn’t be too big a concern.

On the PCIe front, personally I don’t see much need to be pushing for Gen5 support in your system right now. We still aren’t making much use of Gen 4 drives, so I personally wouldn’t be too concerned there. If you are concerned though, like I said, B650E has you covered. If you want to step up, X870 is just B650E but requires motherboard vendors to add a USB 4 port to the boards. The very top end, X870E, well unsurprisingly that’s just X670E with USB 4 as well, and the same (increased) max chipset lanes thanks to the double chipset dies onboard, and doubled max USB ports – 2 20Gbps, 12 10Gbps and 2 5Gbps ports, up from 1, 6 and 1 on B650, B650E, B850 and X870. Basically, the B850, X870 and X870E boards are all very minor refreshes of the old boards with very little differences between them.

With that said, this B850 STRIX-F is an incredibly feature-packed board, so let me take you around it. One thing that often happens between these chipset versions is the CPU’s power phases – the VRMs or voltage regulation modules – get beefed up. The B650E STRIX-F has a 12+2 phase setup, whereas this bad boy has a whopping 20 total phases. The more phases, the more current capacity, which means the less hard each phase has to work, which means more stability. The thing is though, this sort of VRM setup is wildly overkill. This is world-record overclocking level VRMs, and is just insane for a regular gaming machine. This sort of VRM inflation is often used to inflate the cost of this class of board, with this B850 STRIX-F in particular jumping over £100 up on the B650E STRIX-F from the last generation of boards – which remember is a more equipped board at least on the PCIe front. 

You do at least get an upgrade on the WiFi front, from 6E to 7, although interestingly a wash on audio, with the introduction of SPDIF, but the removal of native surround sound support. You also get an extra M.2 slot – this board has a whopping four in total, with the lower three all being run through the chipset, although if the silkscreen on the board is anything to go by, if you use either of the lowest two that disables the four SATA ports – possibly at PCIe Gen 4 anyway, so choose wisely! That goes for the primary M.2 slot too, apparently running that at Gen 5 will disable SATA too. An interesting side note is that, despite the hefty extra cost this B850 board commands, this doesn’t feature Asus’ easy PCIe slot lock feature, not even the newer version the B860 board that’s also being announced today features. While that isn’t a big deal, it’s definitely interesting that Asus didn’t deem that a useful addition. It does feature a quick-release top M.2 heatsink though, and all the M.2 slots are quick release for the drives themselves. That is a very nice feature for sure. 

So, with this absolute mess of motherboards, which one should you get? Well for the most part I’d argue that the VRM configuration really doesn’t matter. Unless you are planning on overclocking a lot – and bear in mind that these chips generally can’t be pushed all that much higher than stock anyway – any mid range board is going to handle any of these Ryzen chips just fine. IO is normally one of the bigger considerations, although keep in mind that USB hubs exist, so spending £100 more just to get a board with a couple extra USB ports really isn’t worth it. With most of these boards having at least two M.2 slots, if not three or four, you should be good on the storage front, and I’ll leave it up to you whether or not you think PCIe Gen 5 support is a useful addition or not. In my eyes, a B650, B650E, or B850 board is still basically everyone’s best choice. Something lower end than this though, unless you are spending three or four times this on your GPU – something like the B650-Plus WiFi is exactly what I’d recommend for basically anyone looking to build a Ryzen system today – especially since it has the BIOS flashback button meaning any AM5 Ryzen chip will be able to work in it without much difficulty. 

I can’t work out much of a use for X870 boards, with only X870E making a tiny bit of sense for a pseudo-workstation setups that need all the IO and PCIe support for add-in cards, storage, and higher than 2.5G networking. If that’s you, then yeah grab an X670, X670E or X870E board, whatever meets your needs, and if it is a workstation cost is likely less of a factor compared to a cash-strapped teen building their first computer with their christmas money – trust me, I’ve been that kid and the pennies matter…