Meet the Asus ROG Strix B550-E Gaming, the most expensive of Asus' new lineup of AMD B550 boards. The motherboard with the cheap chipset costs almost $300. Really. If you're thinking, "Wait a minute. Actually, it is not crazy at all.

Yes, the B550 is the second in AMD's latest 500 series chipsets. But compared to its larger X570 sibling, it doesn't miss out on much. Basically, there's one really important downgrade, and from there a slew of detailed changes flow.

In the B550, AMD connected the heart of the chipset, the PCH chip, to the CPU socket via a quad-lane PCI Express Gen 3 interface; the X570 also has quad-lane PCI Express, but the interface is Gen 4 in the X570. Simply put, this means twice the bandwidth. To elaborate, the B550 supports only one M.2 PCIe Gen 4 SSD running at full speed, whereas the X570 chipset supports two

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Other bandwidth-sensitive areas, such as USB connectivity, are also affected. In other respects, however, the B550 is not necessarily as poorly specced as one might expect.

With the above background in mind, how should we evaluate this premium B550 board? A large number of heatsinks and spreaders, including one in each M.2 slot, LED lighting, and three full-length PCI Express slots (two of which are Gen 4 trim) make for a seemingly convincing enthusiast specification.

Remarkably, these slots support dual-GPU graphics, each in an 8-lane PCIe 4.0 configuration, the maximum bandwidth currently available for high-end graphics. Niche Concerns. But it does show the ambition of this board. Similarly, the Strix B550 has a 4-pin auxiliary CPU power connector as well as an 8-pin. This is another indication of a board designed for high performance.

Other performance-oriented features include a chunky heatsink for the VRM (no fan for the chipset, as the B550 has a lower power rating of 5W versus the X570's 10W), a dedicated power header for the AIO water cooling pump, and multiple PWM fan headers. Incidentally, the board is a 6-layer PCB design, offering 14+2 power stages.

In addition, it has a two-digit debug display and shielded 7.1-channel audio for reduced interfacing and improved sound quality. In addition, it features Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200 wireless connectivity for 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) as well as ultra-fast networking with an Intel I225-V 2.5Gb Ethernet controller. This is double nice with added cheese. Incidentally, the aforementioned LED lighting can be easily synchronized with the ever-growing Aura-enabled ASUS hardware portfolio. Now you get the idea.

Also of concern would be performance. Is it really that much better than the more mediocre (and less expensive) B550 alternative? With stock clocks and default board settings, the inevitable answer is no. In fact, the Asus ROG Strix B550-E Gaming is about 50% more expensive than the MSI MAG B550M Mortar and others, and is clearly slower in most benchmarks, including gaming.

What makes the Strix look strong is inevitably overclocking; AMD's laissez-faire approach allows for ultra-simple core ratio tweaking to improve any CPU's clock. the Strix B550-E has not only the core ratio, but also the ability to adjust it to almost any setting that an avid overclocker It comes with Asus' sleek and familiar BIOS interface that allows access to nearly any setting desired. So you can choose to pull up the core ratio and let the board take care of the details, or you can fine-tune the voltages and timings.

After letting the board do the detailed brainstorming, the AMD Ryzen 3 3100 quad-core test chip overclocked to 4.2 GHz on all cores, with the Ryzen 3100 clocked at 3.2 GHz. The standard boost clock is 9 GHz, so this is a 300 MHz overclock. This overclocking is not great, but it is significant.

While discussing the extreme ends of the performance envelope, it is also worth noting that Asus' Direct Over Clock Profile (DOCP) is not entirely successful in this implementation: the HyperX Predator DDR4 DIMM's 3,000 MHz XMP profile is detected correctly, but hangs on reboot. Stable operation is possible at 2,866 MHz and not a million miles away. However, Asus' DOCP falls short of its advertised purpose, which is a nearly identical experience to Intel's XMP profile.

In short, we are back to square one. If maximum bandwidth for peripherals connected to the chipset is important, the B550 can help. On the other hand, if you envision a lean system operation with a single M.2 drive and not many additional peripherals, you may decide that it is not worth paying a premium for an X570 board. Spend the money you save on a slightly faster CPU or graphics card, and you'll still get a fairly high-end, full-featured motherboard.