ASUS TUF Gaming B660-PLUS WiFi D4 DDR4

Conviene prendere questa scheda solo se si monta una cpu 11 Gen. Se si usa il secondo slot M2 si perde l’uso del SATA2. Era meglio scriverlo nella descrizione un dettaglio così importante e non in piccolo dietro la scatola.
Perfetta per una soluzione gaming senza troppo pretendere, io l’ho montata con con un intel 11600k, RTX 3060Ti, SSD M.2 e RAM a 2400Mhz, i giochi vanno che è una meraviglia a 60 fps senza cali di framerate anche in 4k

Built with an i5 11600, to replace 7 year old i7 4790 with £65 Gigabyte motherboard …. interestingly both those CPU’s were £220 …. A similar AMD 5600X system would have been £100 more (cpu & mobo both £50 more) … and whilst it sounds like you might make that £100 difference back in electricity costs over 5 years if your pc is on ALL the time, I couldnt stretch to that … but my system is prob 10% – 20% less powerful than AMD

There is as much reason to upgrade a motherboard as a CPU these days, NvME SSD’s, DDR4, USB C, Windows 11 etc

AMD’s integrated gfx on the 5600X are much more powerful than on Intels 11600 …. perhaps twice as … so consider this if you dont have a gfx card … Im lucky to have a 5 year old GTX 1080 … If you do have a graphics card, you could consider an i5 11400F and save £50 – £70 on the CPU, if you are considering a similar build … i only bought integrated gfx cos I wasnt sure my 1080 was still working

Of course Ive just built this the same week that the 12th gen of Intel CPUs is released, and DDR5 memory became a thing, but it seems it wasnt a stupid decision. DDR5 is double the price and currently makes little difference to games. And the new cpus and motherboards are priced like an AMD 5600X system that I couldnt afford

Had zero intention of building with any RGB, was gonna spend £40 on a case …. but I saw this case for £85 on CCL (£100 RRP … not a Corsair fan … free delivery if you can wait 4 – 5 days) and couldnt resist … also wanted front panel USB C, which comes at a premium … SOO nice to see you can configure RGB to represent your system temperature … ie green/yellow/red …. and it is real nice to have pretty lights in the room. Silly thing, but its also nice that everything is painted black, there is zero silver metal in sight anywhere, the mobo input shield is black too

ASUS screams quality, and I have no problem with what I paid for it – £145 (a month prior I built my bro an i3 10100F on the ASUS B460M plus wifi, and was so impressed I stuck with ASUS) …. for £40 more there is an MSI option with 3 M2 slots, which I did want … but I realised you can buy a £13 PCIe card that takes NvME SSD’s

Anyone who has ever had to screw in Motherboard standoffs (Hex shaped) with pliers will be pleased to know that a tiny screwdriver converter is included (but not listed in the parts), which makes short work of installing the standoffs

However, the M2 SSD Standoffs are also hex, and also fit this converter, which I used, and meant i was able to screw in the M2 standoff with more force than they are designed for … they are tiny and poorly made and the thread sheared off in my motherboard. So be careful!

Luckily i could see the sheared thread, still in the threaded hole, on the rear of the mobo, and it came out just by screwing in a replacement standoff (£4 Amazon) … was careful to make sure the sheared thread was removed so it didn’t roam around the PC and short anything

ASUS support dont stock ANYTHING and tell you to go to the retailer …. this is a known issue and i feel is poor from ASUS …. Imagine trying to explain to Amazon that you need a replacement screw …. theyd tell you to return the whole mobo and send you a new one … if you are not gonna stock spares then make sure the parts you supply originally are good … I imagine this has been a problem for 5 years now…. they dont even include a spare … 4.8 stars

The case pictured is a Be Quiet 500DX, which I love (top quality dust filters top (a thing of beauty), front, bottom). Everything is designed around hiding cables, to the point when working on the PC later, youll be able to get most things done by taking off the non window side panel … only improvement i would like is toolless Hard drive and SSD mounting … but ive put in 3 extra case fans (£4 each – Scan – Arctic 10 year warantee), so now 6 case fans (3x140mm 3 pin included, 3x120mm PWM 4 pin, added to front) … I have learnt that heat can kill hard drives (4 Seagate failures, zero Western Digital failures), so hopefully these extra fans will resolve the need to work on the drives …. the RGB has gone from Green to Yellow once, for a split second during Outer Worlds gameplay on Ultra settings … so im very pleased … the power supply shroud is not removable however, and I recommend installing all fans before even installing the mobo

I havent seen a new gigabyte mobo up close in 7 years, but this mobo didnt seem to have the typical ASUS markup, and my bro’s B460M was £110 (Scan)…. I am now an ASUS convert … you wont regret buying this board … the VRM heatsinks are very decent, that said the chipset is usually at 40 centrigrade, 10 higher usually than the CPU and system … i also needed SPDIF on the back, which isnt included on basic mobos

Of the 6 sata ports, 2 are on the middle-right edge of the mobo, which are PERFECTLY placed for old sata SSD’s, for cable management, and in this case, 2 SSDs can be mounted, in view, just to the right of the mobo, and the mounting panel is another case design highlight. 2 further SSDs can be mounted at the rear of the mobo, and mounting for 2 x 3.5″ hard drives is included.

Yes my Gigabyte mobo is 7 years old and was the cheapest at £65, but the ASUS software and BIOS is night and day …. still not perfect but getting there

Only one M2 heatsink included, which is a little cheap …. (£6 Amazon)

Final tip from someone that has had 3 SSD failures in the last 5 years …. they dont like being full … its not nice, but leaving 20 – 25% of your SSD unassigned to a drive, may extend its life twice over … I put 2 x 1TB Western Digital SN550’s in my build, which at £65 – £70 each are a bargain … and up to 4 times quicker than a SATA SSD … so 24 times quicker than a hard drive … makes a PC so snappy quick ….

My drive assignment: Drive 1 – C: 200GB, D: 500GB Drive 2 – E: 700GB …. which leaves almost exactly 25% unassigned on each … If I remember correctly 1TB actually means around 931GB of usable space

I also highly recommend the Arctic e34 esports CPU air cooler (£30, easy install, great reviews and performance) and cheap Arctic fans … I wouldnt say my system is that quiet, but it hasnt run over 60 centigrade yet … The cooler also comes with a spare or more maybe fan mounts so a fan can be mounted both sides of this cooler for push pull … I believe the fan included is a more premium Arctic model …. Did I mention that my 3×120 Arctic fans have a 10 years warantee? … and costs closer to £10 than £4

Unfortunately, the 3 x 140mm included case fans, are 3 pin, NON-PWM, which means they just run at full speed, and so quite loud (900RPM … ironic from the Be Quiet brand) … the 3 added fans, that are 4 pin PWM (speed controllable) run at around 300 RPM at low CPU load, and are very quiet …. translucent blades carry the RGB lighting a little

The 500DX can take 3 x 120 mm fans in the front … and no gaps, or 2 x 140mm, with a gap … I went for 120’s so that the whole front has intakes keeping especially the Hard Disks cool

As far as i can work out bluetooth is v5.2, but i cant confirm yet

Extra parts bought: 4 x sata cables (2 included) (£7), with one end being L shaped lockable connectors, 1 NvME SSD cooler (£6), 4 x 4 Pin fan extension cables (£6), Replacement M2 screws (£4)

Have small and large Phillips screwdrivers handy, and if buying extra fans, consider rubber fans mounts, cos screwing in the fans can be a pain, even with electric screwdriver

Enjoy the night and day differences between a new and 7 year old mobo … I did 🙂

Great USB connectors at the rear. Having touch screen monitor, UPS, silhouette cutter along with mouse/keyboard etc I needed many USB connectors and this has it. Layout of interior connectors such as USB 3 in the expected place, so just a question of unplug old motherboard and put in this one. Able to use M2 SSD slot, original DVD player and old backup discs without issue. Added video card for HDMI output. Old board without load running at 120 watts now running 75 watts with no load. Haven’t found anything odd or not working. Very happy

Scheda madre asus linea gaming economica. La serie TUF GAMING si colloca in una fascia entry level per quanto riguarda le MB da gaming. Innanzitutto, come ci si aspetta dal titolo, è dotata dell’ultimo chipset intel z490 che permette di effettuare l’overclock del processore. In base a questo, quindi, bisogna associare un processore serie k (frequenze sbloccate). Quindi i5-10600k oppure i7-10700k. Ovviamente funziona con qualsisi processore di decima generazione ma credo che questi due siano gli unici appropriati.
Parlando dalle caratteristiche: a differenza di altre MB della stessa fascia di prezzo notiamo una dotazione tecnica scarsa. Questo perché solitamente i prodotti asus hanno sempre un prezzo leggermente pompato rispetto la concorrenza (vedesi MSI) pur avendo caratteristiche inferiori: mi riferisco in particolare al controller ethernet Gigabit e non 2.5G tipica delle altre schede madri da gaming. Assenza di una porta lightining e di porte USB 2.0 aggiuntive. Shell non attaccata alla scheda (tipico dei prodotti economici). Presenza di un solo dissipatore per SSD M2.
Per quanto riguarda l’overclock da sottolineare che rispetto alla linea strix ROG non è presente il software di autotune per un overclock automatico. Quindi tutti manuale come al solito.
I LED per chi è amante del design sono presenti solo ai bordi destri. E parliamo di due piccole strisce di 5 cm.
Durante gli stress test ho notato un aumento di temperatura del chipset che sta sui 40° in idle e arriva a 65° in fase di stress senza alcun overclock.
Purtroppo la mia scheda madre ha smesso di funzionare la scheda di rete wi-fi dopo appena una settimana di utilizzo. Questa veniva rilevata ma non si poteva avviare. A nulla è valso reinstallare il sistema operativo. Una cosa strana è che la striscia di LED superiore era diventata tutta rossa. Amazon purtroppo a differenza del solito non è stata impeccabile. Dopo circa 6 giorni ancora non ho ricevuto il rimborso per cui sto ancora in attesa di ordinare il prodotto sostitititivo e perderò quindi, se sono fortunato, 10 giorni di lavoro.

This was my first time building a PC, having just got back into flight sim after what…20+ years!!!. After many months researching various brands, components and reading reviews, I decided to pull the trigger(possibly a bit late to show in regards to GPUs) but I got the bug after Christmas and decided to go for it.
The board and instructions were really easy for a complete newb to figure out and I’m really pleased with how it turned out. It looks the part in my case. There’s plenty of space to work getting parts in and out if needed and everything is clearly labelled on the board and matching the instructions.
The bios is pretty intuitive as well, having come from not really knowing anything about bios or overclocking this was really easy and accessible.. Along with the desktop software you can download Armory crate/Ai Suite etc.. I was afraid this was all just going to blow my mind, so thumbs up for making this idiot proof.

in alcune recensioni ci si lamenta della stabilità del wifi, io appena l’ho installata ho fatto tutti gli aggiornamenti disponibili, e l’ho trovata perfetta.
WiFi, overclock automatico, rgb, tutto funziona come da descrizione.
Per quanto riguarda la stabilità direi che è perfetta, nonostante non sia di fascia altissima rispetto ad altre schede ASUS l’ho trovata più che ottima.
Gli effetti RGB funzionano bene e sono molto personalizzabili, però rispetto ad altri componenti (es. ram rgb, ventole, pompa liquido) la luminosità è davvero bassa.