 So ASOS sent us their ROG B660 gaming motherboard and when one of the best manufacturers in the world asks you to review one of their best top of the line products, well we have no choice but to happily oblige. The future is here and we will take a look at what it has in store for us. I'm Rocky the programmer and in this video we're going to review the ASOS ROG B660F gaming Wi-Fi motherboard. What's up internet? It's still hard to get PC parts now but that doesn't mean you can't get this shirt to remind you of what you still need. Jokes aside, we made our very first merch to not only reflect our passion for PC building but to help you teach your friends what you know through the hardware, sugar, PC, anatomy shirts. To order, go to our site or click on the link in the video description. Hover over products and select t-shirts. We have three designs and they come in sizes ranging from small to XL. Press add to cart, select your delivery option, and your payment terms. We deliver anywhere in Philippines but you can save one delivery fee by paying and picking it up in our store in Makati. And if you wear it long enough, and you'll finally get the go signal from your significant other or your parents to finally get that EIO or RTX 3080 that you've been dying for. So standard disclaimer again, ASOS sent us this review unit for free but they will have no say on our verdict whatsoever. When you see or hear those three letters ROG, they elicit some kind of cerebral visceral primal emotions in our gamers. Even before you knew what a gaming PC is or what a gaming rig is or what PC gaming even is about, ROG rigs are what you dreamed of. And this B660 motherboard encapsulates that feeling. You know, forget that it's the 12th gen Alder Lake system, forget that it supports PCIe5, forget that it runs the fastest RAM module in the world today at DDR5. No, forget all of that spec. This is ROG. Exquisite black PCB, of course RGB, premium looking heat sinks. Heck, even the IO shields are, they look expensive. And that's just the aesthetic. It features a 16 plus one power face design, integrated IO shield and VRM heat sinks on board Intel Wi-Fi 6, 2.5 gigabit Ethernet, AI cooling, AI networking, and two way AI noise cancelling. We will talk about those later. This thing is filled to the brim and armed to the gills with specs. So, and it's a lot to unpack. So let's take a look at the key features of this motherboard. Realistically, you're looking to get this because you're also looking to get the 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs from Intel with the LGA1700 socket and DDR5. It's the B660 chipset. So while there's no core, you know, it doesn't have core overclocking or no core tuning, it still has memory overclocking and power limits tuning. So while it is the milder little brother of Z690, it still packs power and it's still geared towards enthusiasts. Speaking of memory, it has four DDR5 dual memory slots that support up to 6000 megahertz. They also support Intel XMP and ASUS own Optimum 2. For expansion, it has one PCIe 5x16 slot that routes directly to the CPU, one PCIe 3x16 slot and two PCIe 3x1 slots that route to the chipset. For IO, it's a buzzy. So this is the connectivity that you're going to expect from this. Think of headers. Again, ROG is geared towards customizability. So whether you're looking for RGB headers, ARGB headers, USB, USB-C, fan headers, AIO fans, AIO pump headers, this thing has it all. So one more noteworthy connectivity is the Intel Y56 antenna connectors and a USB 3.2 Gen2X2 Type-C connector. So that's currently the fastest USB-C connection out there. But it's too expensive. And did I mention that it has this Thunderbolt header? So talk about customizability and talk about connectivity. Special features include of course the three M.2 slots that have heat sinks and the best quality of life for us enthusiasts. And maybe anyone who will use this is the color-coded post LED indicator. So this is what we're always using. When you're troubleshooting a motherboard that doesn't post, usually, you have the debug light that you call it. The problem is that your PC is located in a remote place or it has a lot of components like this so that when it's turned off, there's not much light that enters your PC. So when those lights come up, they shine like a Christmas tree. They shine like the Northern Star. So they're so bright and you don't know what it's indicating. Here on this motherboard, the debug light is color-coordinated. So my certain color for CPU problem, my certain color for RAM, my certain color for boot, and etc. Super helpful. Thank you ASUS. So another nifty feature is the Q latch for the M.2 drives. And I wish this was in all motherboards. Instead of the very small M.2 screws, this motherboard uses a latch mechanism that is both secure and much, much easier to use. You just line up where the M.2 screw used to go to and lock the latch in place. You can do it too less and you won't have to worry about losing those screws or ruining your motherboard with a slip screwdriver. So aside from that, there are also high-definition audio capacitors and audio systems. And again, we'll talk about that later and that's just a lot of hardware. For software, it has ASUS own UAV BIOS version and its very popular easy mode where it displays everything essential like overclocking the XMP, applying power limits that are super basic, like in bread and butter mode, when you want to boost your PC and your system, all in one page. So it's very easy to use, very straightforward. You don't have to sift through so many convoluted menus. But of course, if you're like me who likes convoluted menus, you can turn off easy mode and it will show you all the options that you want. And another thing that's super cool about this motherboard is that it has memtest pre-installed on some other board. That's effing crazy. You don't know how much of a quality of life improvement that is, especially for us who really want to tweak the under the hood of our PC. ASUS, for some reason, they really love tinkerers like us. It's easily accessible in the BIOS motherboard and you just have to click it. And there, you don't have five minutes. You're already testing your RAM. Outside of the BIOS, ASUS has its own suite of AI powered applications. The AI suite 3 is basically a tuning tool, but it's powered by machine learning where it learns the performance of your rig and it will adjust according to the values that you see. And for those who will determine that the value should be right. Of course, you can set then the values manually if you know what you're doing. But having that AI assistant, it just knows your system as much as you do. That's really helpful if you just want to sometimes take a break and just leave it doing some other work to take care of itself. So more enthusiast features include the Supreme FXALC4080 codec and it's responsible for all audio related premiums like impedance sensing, giving out high quality input and output using the SalviTek SV38712 amplifier to power up your peripherals from gaming headsets to full bone 7.1 surround systems. Again, as mentioned earlier, this also incorporates the two-way AI noise cancelling technology built right in on some other board. And if you've seen that video from us, we really tested the heck out of that system. And as you can see, this is the audio from the mic and there's a lot of noise from the parts here. This is audio from the mic. We're happy to report that it really works. There's still a lot of features that I've left out, but all of this combines into a superbly premium platform that is surprisingly easy to configure and tinker with. While the ROG is of course geared towards enthusiast and many more, first time builders wouldn't have a problem building their first systems or like really syncing their teeth into the PC hobby with this. For us veterans though, it frees us of the usual headaches and pitfalls of PC building. Does it have enough RGB headers for all my RGB components will it support all of my NVMe drives? Can I plug in all my high fidelity gear? Will it power my enthusiast grade CPU? Yes it will and and then some. All we have to worry about is the performance when this isn't an Alder Lake nor a DDR5 performance review. We can see on our tests that the B660 manages to run these components with absolutely no problem. The 1200k consistently boosted at around 4.9 gigahertz at single core and even more, some multicore tests and it gives us these results. Okay so this wouldn't be a complete rocky the programmer review without the gripes and I have just two. First of all I had trouble setting up the XMP and then the default RAM that was given to me which is DDR5 6000 megahertz, it wouldn't post at all. Again that's maybe the RAM modules fault I would think and also because I didn't bother to update the BIOS no motherboard because the motherboard is a bit precious so I didn't want to risk it. But for me that's the first thing that I would do. Basically there's a new way of overclocking with the DDR5 involving gears. Essentially I managed to overclock it at 4,800 megahertz. I didn't have a lot of time and I didn't want to push it too far so the absolute limit known 1200 which is enough 4,800 megahertz using gear 2. Again it's not the MOBO's fault but it does say a lot about the current state of DDR5 and we do have to wonder why it was included in this package in the first place. The B660 is supposedly the budget-friendly version known Z690 and wouldn't have been more budget-friendly if it had DDR4. Without diving into it too much DDR5 is still in the very infancy stages and right now it's it's really not that much faster than the fastest DDR4 RAM. Another and this will be the last is that I had problems with proprietary software in the initial run in my windows. Essentially the current system is when you run it for the first time, you're stuck in the windows for the first time, there's a prompt that comes out to tell you that hey install this bundled drivers of your LAN. So because I have lightning fast reflexes to really just cancel the bloatware, I cancelled it. The problem is you don't have any way to go back to that prompt. So basically you don't have any drivers in your LAN and in your Wi-Fi. Either you get a Wi-Fi dongle, I didn't think that it would work or you download it which is what I did. I downloaded it on your computer, put it on USB and then installed it in the system that has the B660. I guess it's just a bug and that's really me that time. But I really do hope that ASOS make a better way of installing your LAN drivers, something that is 100% essential. And that's it, that's all my gripes for him. Again, he's not fault of motherboard, it's my second fault. ASOS delivers yet another mouthwatering inget motherboard at such a flexible platform. This is absolutely the motherboard for everyone. Beginners looking to build their first systems, veterans looking to upgrade, AMD fanboys looking to switch and trying to see if the grass is greener on the other side. Yeah that is everyone who can afford it. But man, this is such a beast of a motherboard. ASOS pulls no stops at bringing a premium, beastly but still very flexible platform and they didn't disappoint. Highly recommended. And thank you to our top fans who afforded this. Thank you to Leah Magnaje, Ian Meru, ITX addict, John Ruben Ocha, Christian Espinoza, and Rafael James. Thank you for supporting the channel.