Asus Rog Strix B550-F vs Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro – Which One is Good?

When AMD unveiled the B550 chipset, there was a lot of hue and cry in the market. Most of the conversations were about everything else apart from the price of the unit. The B series boards are mostly cheaper and come with materials that will not cost you a lot.

You will be glad to know that the Ryzen 3000 processor does not get warm when working on the 2000 processors. Most of the time, these boards get pushed beyond normal limits and yet are able to perform well.

Having said that, it is not surprising to note that AMD B550 boards have surged in the market. The B550 is a cheaper alternative to the X570, and the producers have gone ahead, providing you more than 50 models coming at the price of $200 and $300.

Today, comparison review we will discuss on Asus Rog Strix B550-F vs Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro. These boards are mid-range priced units that come with all the specifications that you want. When you search for exceptional audio and networking controllers found on your board, you can consider using this unit.

We felt that Asus had done an exceptional job in producing the Rog Strix B550-F boards. This is a prime example of how makers can design a cost-effective unit. It comes with 2 M.2 slots. In that, one supports PCIe 4.0 x4, and the other is to lock PCIe 3.0 x4.

The Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro is a good choice too. Gigabyte has made its presence felt in the market for quite some time now. The 3rd generation Ryzen CPU is proving to be a thorn in the flesh of other mid-range priced models in the market.

We felt that the B550 Pro model from Gigabyte comes with all the necessary features you need without spending a lot. There is PCI Express 4.0, support for 5GHz+ DDR4, and USB 3.2 Gen2.

It is a sleek motherboard that appears very industrial. It comes with thick heatsinks, M.2 heatsinks with a black finish, and reinforcement on the PCIe slot. Besides, it also comes with premium chokes, WIMA capacitors, and six layers of PCB.

All these features make up a solid motherboard in the market. Did we find them useful for your gaming cause? How good is the B550 Aorus Pro compared to the Strix B550-F? Let us read to see that.

ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F	GIGABYTE B550 AORUS PRO
PROS	PROS
The unit has a special 1-phase power delivery. It comes with the 2.5 GbE LAN. The board has the Wi-Fi 6 AX200 infused in it. It comes with premium audio performance. The board is priced affordably less than $190.	The board has a sleek design on par with top-end models. It has a robust power delivery feature. The motherboard has 10 USB ports. It has incredible audio quality. The unit is priced reasonably less than $210.
CONS	CONS
Users felt that the board is expensive for B550.	Unfortunately, it comes with 1 M.2 with a heatsink.

FEATURES & LAYOUT

The Asus Rog Strix B550-F has a spectacular design coming with pink lights at the rear panel. You can also find the lights on the chipset heatsink. On the board, there is a black tone ROG design that is very aggressive.

Asus has managed to retain the ROG design on most of their devices like laptops, smartphones, and even the motherboard. The manufacturer is known for its design capabilities. It can easily blend with the front and the rear of the panel.

Besides the illuminated RGB logo, you can find Aura RGB headers coming using the accessible RGB header. The PCIe includes a complete slot that is present on the top of the panel. That comes with the metal PCIe slot fortification.

You can also find 3 PCIe 3.0 x1 slots and PCIe 3.0 x4 slots. On the right side, you can find 4 memory slots that support DDR4-5100. It comes with a capacity of 128GB. On the motherboard, you can find 6 4-pin headers.

Each of them has their tasks. 3 of them work with the CPU fan, AIO pump, and 3 used for chassis fans. The manufacturer has designed the board such that it can improve the delivery and the power consumed.

At the rear it comes with a 1 USB 3.2 G2 Type-C, 4 USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, 1 USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and 2 USB 2.0 ports. All in all, gamers and users of all kinds can find the specifications they want. On the other hand, the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro is another exceptional device.

The board comes with outstanding features and exceeds in terms of looks. It comes in black and grey colors that are present on the board, consisting of slots, sockets, and black connectors. The VRM heatsinks come with an aluminum finish.

You can also find the plastic shroud that is surrounded on the left VRM heatsink. It also comes with integrated RGB light. You will want to know that the strip lights for the audio separation are orange in color, and you can add RGBs.

At the top, you can find the heatsinks, socket, and the DRAM slot area. Sadly, they can get extremely hot if you push things a little bit. On the right of the socket, you can find 4 DRAM slots. The manufacturer has claimed that it comes with 128GB for speeds to DDR4 4266.

Next, we have the primary GPU slot on which you can find 2 M.2 sockets. Each of the sockets come with their own tasks. The first socket is given the task of keeping the device cool. At the bottom, the socket supports both SATA- and PCIe 3.0 x4-based components.

On the whole, we found exceptional features infused in the B550 Aorus Pro.

SOFTWARE & FIRMWARE

The software and firmware of any motherboard play a crucial role in ensuring that it can work fully. We are delighted to inform you that they both did exceptionally well in the testing. The Asus Rog Strix B550-F did exceptional on the test, and the time was stunning.

We used the Ryzen 3700X on it, and the timing was stunning. Besides, the DPC latency was also quite good. Its firmware is one of the best in the gaming industry, and it comes as no surprise that several professional gamers trust it.

The armory crate comes pooled into the memory on the board. It contains most of the networking drivers. It comes loaded with software, too, like the ROG Gamefirst VI software, ASUS AI Suite 3 software, and RAMCache III software.

As a user, you can overclock the processor. A notable feature here is the network traffic shaping options. To be fair, we have tested most of the boards on the Ryzen 9 3900X. They worked just fine and took everything that was thrown at it effortlessly.

Now, when you want to use Ryzen 9 5950X? Not all boards can take it with the same enthusiasm as the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro. As we said at the beginning itself, this unit comes with more power delivery than most boards found in the market.

The unit comes with 12+2 Phases Digital VRM with DRMOS, premium chokes and capacitors, and 50A stages. It can effortlessly work on all the boost clocks the whole day. The fins array heatsinks on the VRM and are cooler than the GPU.

The CPU components do not matter because you can quickly push it quite hard. It does not come with Wi-Fi, and to tackle that, you need to have all your main rigs wired. There is plenty of connectivity options on the board, like 8 fan/pump heaters, 7 internal temperature sensors, and 2 external sensors.

We are coming to the audio aspect of the board. You can find no sign for the Realtek ALC1200 codec. Unlike most of the other motherboards, this one comes with no fancy stuff around it. There are no op-amps or knightly features on it.

To be honest, performance-wise, the B550 Aorus Pro provides you with a stunning performance as the board could crank up the Ryzen processor to new levels. Though at times, we felt that the board has heating issues if you push it a little more than it can handle.

OVERCLOCKING

The AMD B550 models come with splendid overclocking capabilities. They usually allow you to experiment on them tirelessly. You can overclock the memory and processor on the X570 series motherboards.

Thanks to the fact that the Asus Rog Strix B550-F board firmware is easy to navigate, it becomes easier to overclock both the processor and memory. You can find the necessary settings for overclocking under the AI Tweaker menu.

This also comes with the CPU options consisting of voltages, CPU frequency, and power delivery settings. The overclocking of the processor can be easily performed by altering the CPU Ratio and CPU VCore voltage.

You can also change the overclocking of the board by using the tweakable options for less than zero overclockers. When you want to use the memory, you can enable XMP 2.0 profiles with DOCP based on its AM4 based models.

You can find settings, which can be customized, like the DRAM voltage and memory latency. When you want to get more out of the MHz on both the memory and CPU, you can adjust the BCLK frequency.

Our tester used the automatic overclock options. We noticed that the CPU voltage on the boards was able to do well under 90degree Celsius. Overall, the board did not come with any lag and did well.

You can overclock using many ways on the AMD platform based on your requirement. However, you may need to see the board Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO).

When you can push all the threads and cores of the board, then you can effortlessly set the manual CPU multiplier. The power of the board can enhance the performance of the single thread a bit.

The board was able to handle the overclocked 16-core/32-thread Ryzen 9 5950X effortlessly. Yes, the VRMs did get hot occasionally, but it did not cause it to overheat or anything like that. You may also want to note that the throttling was not a concern.

The memory aspect of things also worked splendidly. As you know, the AMD is limited that came close to 3600/3733 MHz. Testing to see if it was able to reach the sweet spot of the motherboard if it was able to work 4x8GB at DDR4 3600, there were no issues.

PRICE

Now, we will be seeing the pricing of the Asus Rog Strix B550-F and Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro. They are mid-range products, and hence we expected them to be priced anywhere between $200 and more.

The Asus Rog Strix B550-F is priced less than $190. We felt that it was priced right for the features that they have embedded in it. You stand to get it a lot cheaper during the discount period.

The Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro is priced under $210. The board is priced quite reasonably well for the specifications that are infused within it. In the pricing, we thought that the makers had done an excellent job here.

VERDICT

This is it. We have ended our comparison review of the Asus Rog Strix B550-F vs Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro. The Asus Rog Strix B550-F comes with a stunning performance, and we noticed that there are extensive improvements on the B450 board.

You can see that it comes with integrated support for USB 3.2 G2. It is with two ports at the rear. Another exciting feature about this board is the inclusion of the Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller.

You can notice this specification on X570 boards that are really expensive. We were highly impressed with the SupremeFX S1200A HD audio codec features that provide the board with exceptional audio quality.

Besides, the design was top-notch, as in most Asus models. On the whole, the board comes with plenty of quality and performance. We can say that this B550 motherboard is outstanding. On the other hand, the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro is definitely a worthy rival for the Asus model.

It comes designed with a MicroATX B550-based system. The unit provides you with 4 SATA ports, a solid audio section, 2 M.2 sockets, and 10 USB ports. During testing on the Ryzen CPUs, the board came with extensive powers.

Now the winner. This was a tough call because both Asus B550-F and Gigabyte B550 come with exceptional features infused in them. However, we thought that the Asus Rog Strix B550-F comes with better features and brand value.

Having said that, the Gigabyte B550 Aorus Pro is also an exceptional board if you want to use it. The unit can offer immense support for the latest generation AM4 processors. If you wish for a MicroATX board to manage flagship AM4 processors, it is a good option.