Review ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 Review: Is the Cheapest Good Enough?

[Admin]

The $119 ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 Micro ATX board is designed to get you into the latest and greatest AMD hardware for less. It comes with a PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 socket and supports flagship-class processors, but it lacks included Wi-Fi and only has six USB Type-A ports on the rear IO.

ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 Review: Is the Cheapest Good Enough? : Read more

 

[ocer9999]

Certainly a good motherboard considering the price, that's one thing that actually made me try their motherboards was how good deal they have compared to other brands, same features but for less $.
Nowadays I use most of their stuff for my clients and they are rock solid motherboards, never give me any issues.

 

[drajitsh]

I really like this motherboard because it gets rid of useless things.

1. 2 memory slots are great because the memory speeds supported drop from 5200 to 3600 (official). And you can easily get 32GB DIMMs.
2. It has 2.5G ethernet and wifi can be easily implemented.
3. It is power efficient-- idle power makes a lot of difference.
4. While my current board has 5.1 sound with ALC1220, it has only 2.1 speakers connected. While I do not like it, it would have made no difference if it was ALC 897
5. The VRM heatsink has pushpins . Hopefully that means I can easily replace it.
6. It has no RGB. Hurray! Great! Wonderful! Fantastic! That is the only thing in any component in the whole system that irritates me.

That said I do agree that the lack of more USB ports is a drawback

 

[bigdragon]

I've been using and recommending Asrock boards since 2011. I've been very happy that they've continued to deliver strong mATX products at good prices. I think ATX is too big and packed with things I won't use, while mini-ITX is too small and feature limited. The mATX boards hit that sweet spot. I also had a good experience with Asrock support years ago.

Seeing this b650m board perform competitively doesn't surprise me. I've never noticed a performance compromise in the x79 e4m, x570m, b450m, and other boards I forget the name of. Sure, the synthetic benchmarks show the board lagging behind a bit, but I'm not sure that plays out in real world workloads.

 

[ajac09]

No RGB header is a con? Man thats a pro for me. I dont see why everyone wants all the colors.. I rather sit and play a game not stare at my case all day.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I've had really good experience with ASRock motherboards. My first was the 4CoreDual-VSTA, a socket 775 board with both an AGP and PCI-Express slot that could also handle DDR or DDR2 RAM. That VIA PT880 Northbridge was amazingly innovative!

My past two boards in my gaming PCs have been an X370 Killer SLI and an X570 Pro4. Both have been absolutely rock-solid in every way.

 

[sherhi]

HW unboxed tested this board and recommended it as best budget option but will it be capable of running last AM5 X3D CPU in the future (2025-2026) when going from 7600?

 

[HyggeJJ]

I wonder how Toms adjusted the LLC, as it does not appear to be available in the latest BIOS firmware?

 

[FelixKD]

Your negatives/cons for non-overpriced boards are always hilariously st**id. After two such cases, I think I've seen enough.

First one thinks, "oh what are the issues?" (crashes? Coil whine? Massive incompatibility??). Then it's "oh, I didn't customise the settings, but I didn't like the way they were" or "no RGB? Does anybody care, by the way? Well, now it's a big, fat minus, bro".

And this ruins the rating world-wide... F___ing brilliant.

On a comedy level, I have to say, well done.