ASUS Prime B450M-A II AMD AM4 (Ryzen 5000, 3rd/2nd/1st Gen Ryzen Micro ATX Motherboard (128GB DDR4, 4400 O.C.), NVMe, HDMI 2.0b/DVI/D-Sub, USB 3.2 Gen 2, BIOS Flashback, and Aura Sync)

A few years ago, my computer was running sluggishly. I started swapping parts, memory, hard drive, upped the CPU, etc. Since none of those fixed the issues I was having, I held on to the old parts. Then my daughter's computer was stolen, and pretty much all that I needed was a motherboard and case. And an OS, which unfortunately meant Win 11, which also meant a new CPU because the one that I had previously pulled for upgrade was no longer up to drill. And more memory. So even though I had already purchased this motherboard, it was cheaper to get her a laptop that was on a one day deal than finish this one. So it sat in a box with the other parts. Fast forward a bit and Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10, not even selling a new license, and my family machine has reached the end of the road. With my grand kids liking little online games and videos, I didn't want to have the computer that I use for my banking and bill payments used for that without a fully supported OS. Some of those games come from Россия for goodness sake! So a new processor, hard drive and more memory later, it fired up and loaded Windows 11 first try. Even though the memory was not on the QVL. THAT, by the way, is the only "con" that I can think of for this board. Most of them are a little hard to navigate, but this one seems completely random and I gave up on finding approved sticks after about an hour. I had two 8's on hand and got two more of the same ones, but for some reason, the old ones go by the brand name, the new ones by the parent company. A Dodge/Chrysler type of thing. (All tech metaphors have to involve food or transportation.) ASUS has a reputation for being tolerant of memory, so I was pretty confident that they would work. I haven't finished everything yet... I have multiple TB of data to copy to external drives first. But initial tests show a machine that works well, even though the parts were spread out over several years. Couple of minor details. My SSD is the M.2 style with an aftermarket heatsink. The TPM module fits with about 2 pieces of card-stock clearance. There are no fan headers near the front; I haven't seen any µ-ATX boards that do, but I haven't looked at all of them. The BIOS was sufficiently up to date for the CPU that I used, even after sitting for years. At my age, this will probably be my last build. Glad I got a good board as the centerpiece.

Its a comprehensively equipped motherboard which gave me no problems populating, thanks to the sockets being clearly labelled with their function. The technical manual is informative and easily understood. The completed PC worked first startup.

My very first total PC build. I fully understood that there are newer mb but for the price and being a first timer. I am extremely pleased with it.

This motherboard is great for starter gamining system and defentily recommend it.

It's a nice budget motherboard I'm soon going to upgrade to a atx board though

I started working with Asus motherboards 15 years ago, and I feel they were best on market then and now. The ease of install and clearly marked ports and jumper blocks make for a strong build and the first time run up anyone can work with. Truly a plug and play mb with the capability to respond to better versed builders. The Asus optimized setting in the bios really takes the work out of setting up your new hardware. Thank you Asus for staying strong

it is a very nice motherboard but...the cmos battery was kind of a trouble for me but not really sure because it did solved me a problem removing it and putting it back in because whenever i saved and exit my bios settings it only saved and exit completely no booting up to windows but instead a black display or no display maybe because the boot order? but atleast make it automatic if it doesn't detect...only if i havent heard of this setting but for me it should always be turned on...it kinda gave me anxiety as a first time builder 😅

This Mobo is great for anybody who wants a budget build and quality in a compact size. The only downside i can think of is the integrated RGB wich look like a error LED.

Extremely hard to set up for multi boot systems and hard to find info on BIOS settings. I still have one problem, the when I get updates in Windows and hit restart the system shuts down and tries to restart but gives a black window stating it insert bootable media and hit any key. I have to power off for about a minute and power on and system restarts.

This motherboard has given us nothing, but trouble. We installed Windows 11 and it won't connect to internet to finish installation. We tried the included installation disk for drivers. It crashed the computer. We reinstalled Windows. We downloaded the drivers from ASUS website and it still won't load any of the LAN drivers.