Product on Review: ASUS TUF Gaming B550M-Plus (Wi-Fi)
Manufacturer: ASUS
Street Price: GBP £184.99 / USD $179.99

ASUS, most notable within the PC Gaming industry for their ROG range of products, also produce the TUF Gaming range, a more budget-friendly option that offers stability, durability and a whole host of features. The TUF Gaming alliance also collaborates with several trusted manufacturers to ensure compatibility across a wide range of components including cases, power supplies, CPU coolers, memory kits and much more, often all sharing the same colour scheme.

Part of ASUS’ B550 lineup, today we’re putting the B550M-Plus (Wi-Fi) under the microscope, examining the pros and cons and seeing what’s what.

As a quick introduction to B550, it’s essentially a chipset aimed more towards the budget end of the market, for those who still wish to take advantage of new and exciting features but are willing to make some sacrifices to save a buck. One of the biggest compromises is the lack of support for Zen and Zen+ CPUs, with only Zen2 (and future CPUs) supported. In regards to system connectivity, the B550 offers up to eight SATA III connections, with support for RAID 0, 1 and 10. We also see PCI-E specifications upgraded from the previous-gen flagship, the X470 chipset, with four PCI-E 3.0 lanes and eight PCI-E 2.0 lanes, while the X470 offered only eight PCI-E 2.0 and the B450 and B350 chipsets had to make do with only six PCI-E 2.0 lanes. We also get up to two USB 3.2 Gen. 2 ports, six USB 3.1 ports, six USB 2.0 ports and native overclocking support right out of the box.


Rocking an 8+2 DrMOS power delivery with Digi+ VRM, a comprehensive range of heatsinks, Intel WiFi 6, 2.5G ethernet, Realtek S1200A onboard audio with AI-powered noise cancelling software for the microphone and subtle RGB lighting on the bottom-right of the board.

Priced at £184.99 (and the equivalent in your part of the world) the TUF Gaming B550M-Plus (Wi-Fi) doesn’t appear to strike that budget note we typically associate with the brand but we’re more than willing to give it a chance based on the hefty feature-set that it boasts.

ASUS on the B550M-Plus (Wi-Fi):