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

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.
 
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drajitsh

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Sep 3, 2016
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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

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Oct 19, 2011
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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

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Jun 10, 2009
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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.
 

sherhi

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Apr 17, 2015
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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?