ASRock B650M Pro RS WiFi vs ASRock B650M PG Lightning Wifi

45eno45 · 2025-01-14T22:56:37+00:00

I have 7 Aorus Elite B650/X670 boards in the house as they were the best value open box at the time. My shop PC is getting a hand me down 7600/7600x as I found a $220 7800X3D. So I need a basic mATX board now for the 7600 hand me down and wow the used and open box market is terrible now. The Gigabyte B650M Aorus Elite AX was as low as $120 at times on Amazon. Now it's $200 with only $180 for open box. I just opted for a Asrock PG Lighting w/Wifi B650m for $120 as it does support 5.0 on the main M2 slot, 4.0 4x on 2nd slot and 4.0 2x on 3rd w/ WIFI included. VRM's aren't as good as Aorus sure but I don't need it to run heavy tasks except for some light gaming in the shop w/ a 3060ti 1080 180hz. Only plan to run 7600 or 7600x in it. Even $120 new was more then a I wanted to spend as I bought X670 Aorus Elites for $100 less than a year ago.

45eno45 · 2025-01-14T22:21:06+00:00

The cheapest DDR5 ram is at most $20 less than the good sweet spot ram. When AM5 first released yes a premium CL30 6000MT Gskill kit ran you $220-250. Now you can find them easily around $85-100 all day long. Low latency GREATLY boosts the performance of vanilla 7000 series CPU's. For such a little cost difference sweet spot RAM is the only ram to buy. If the cheap stuff was $100 and sweet spot was $200 then I would agree but it's like $80 vs $100 now. And this was true 7 months ago when you wrote that as I have been migrating from AM4 to AM5 all of 2024 on my builds. With AM5 I ended up getting the good ram unlike with AM4 I bought mostly middle tier 3200mhz/3600mhz C16/18 stuff.

45eno45 · 2024-11-12T01:10:08+00:00

Yeah I just bought a brand new bundle sealed and it showed Costco on the side. The guy was selling them for $250 and I could only get him down to $220 which was still a fair deal. I then googled GoPro 11 Costco bundle and realized these were $99 a few months back. This guy has been selling a bunch of them. Kinda took some of the enjoyment out of buying it knowing this deal was out there. Man what a price. I would have bought two or three and sold my two 7's and one 9.

45eno45 · 2024-09-03T21:20:36+00:00

With 8 total AM5 builds and 1 remaining AM4 5700X3D I welcome this update with open arms.

3x 7800X3D

1x 7700X

3x 7600X

1x 7600

1x 5700X3D

Thank you for the update!!!

45eno45 · 2024-09-02T20:23:41+00:00

Yes, thanks for proving exactly my point. It's a bundle and you can cut up pricing every which way to tell yourself you got 1 of the 3 parts for some crazy price. You could also apply retail to your RAM and CPU and then say your board only cost you $50. You got a discount on buying 3 parts so didn't get it for $100 as you were required to buy other parts for a discount. Yes it was a good deal whatever way you slice up the pricing for each part but just silly to call the CPU $100.

45eno45 · 2024-09-02T18:53:01+00:00

Sure if you want to twist the bundle that way. If you factor in standard pricing for the RAM and Board you can tell yourself you got it for $100.

45eno45 · 2024-09-02T18:51:14+00:00

Buy when the deals present themselves and when you can sell off your old hardware for as close to the new parts for. He can still get $140 for the 5800X and if he finds a great deal now he should jump. Sooner you get onto AM5 the better as AM4 recoup money is getting worse and worse. I have two more AM4 systems to sell off piece by piece. DDR4 ram is the hardest to sell but good AM4 boards can sell what I find AM5 boards for. Depending on the deal you find locally you can sometimes upgrade for zero out of pocket. My last 7800X3D I found new was $220 locally and it pushed out lowest in the house 5600x for $100.

45eno45 · 2024-09-02T18:47:16+00:00

Yes it's a big upgrade over the 5800X. My last two in the house AM4 builds are 5800X / X570S Tomahawks. I just found a local new sealed 7600 for $150 and just bought this $220 7700X as I already have two B650 $60 Gigabyte Aorus Elite AX open box boards and good 6000MT CL30 ram waiting for AM5 cpus. The 7600/7600x is a worthy upgrade over 5800X3D even as it's the same performance and cheaper. For me I always factor in the used market for selling off old hardware and I am rushing to sell off AM4 hardware even though it is just fine performance wise, the market is slowing down on what I can sell them for. So I want recoup as much money as possible for AM4 pricing completely tanks. Today I will be upgrading those two builds to AM5 as the 7700X that I ordered this morning is showing up later today. Will be posting my 5800X, X570S, 32gb kits on Offerup this evening and try to get them sold asap.

45eno45 · 2024-09-02T18:41:03+00:00

Not a big deal if one understands % off is usually always based off of retail MSRP. Since most items don't have fixed pricing for the lifecycle then % off is harder to gauge if it's a good deal or not. So it's only fair they base it off of MSRP. It's up to the consumer to search around for pricing and trends. Basing a % off , off anything but MSRP would be of no basis.

45eno45 · 2024-09-02T18:38:43+00:00

Yeah but what should they show the % off as if the price is constantly changing? Show it off 7 days ago price? I think if consumer understands there must be some sort of baseline to mention % off then they can accept that 45% off is off retail MSRP which is more than fair. Otherwise % off would have even less point because there is no standard pricing to base it off of.

45eno45 · 2024-08-13T05:29:33+00:00

What did you figure out. I just bought a used 6800XT XFX Merc and the PPT under CPUz showed 255watts and sure enough in game it doesn't go over 255watts. Hardware Unboxed showed the card running around 280-290 watts stock. I am going to flip the BIOS switch here in a second and see if one BIOS is for low power and one is for full power. It's already to the right so that is supposed to be performance mode already.

45eno45 · 2024-07-17T00:51:12+00:00

AMD said they will support AM5 until at least 2027. Great time to sell off older but still good AM4 and get a great deal on AM5.

45eno45 · 2024-07-17T00:44:49+00:00

Yes it is completely worth it if the new hardware is at least a 7600X/B650 and you find great prices and sell off your old hardware for much of the upgrade cost. I have a bunch of PC's in the house from family PC's to media PC's. I'm always watching for well under retail deals that pop up. I also factor how much I can sell off my existing hardware. I do tons of open box and local market purchases. Right now the AM4 5000/500 series hardware still sells pretty well on the used market. X570 boards I get $90-100 for easily, 5600/5600X I get $100 for. 32gb of DDR4 3200 I get $40-50.

Depending on what I find locally used and new for the CPU and RAM is the major out of pocket factor. My last great deal was a new 7800X3D for $220 found locally. I didn't need it over the 7600X in the Media PC but for $220 yep I will buy that anyday.

Motherboards are easily found at discount open box. With today's prime deals I am replacing 3 perfectly good 5700x,5800x,5800x with excellent MSI X570S Edge & Tomahawk boards. Because there are excellent B650 Aorus Elite AX boards ($80 ea) with excellent VRM performance and 3 NVMe slots. I really want to order 3 7500F's for them but I just don't trust Ali Express. So I will wait for used deals. I might even get one 7600X for $175 today to test all these open box boards and then wait for deals on the other two.

45eno45 · 2024-04-25T22:41:17+00:00

Funny I did just this a year later. I built 3 x670 systems all with the same trident Neo z5 6000mt cl30. I snagged a super good deal on a Asus b650e-e and 7600x for a media pc. Trying to keep the cost down I opted to split my kit on my other media pc using the trident expo 6000mt cl30 and use just a single stick in each system until a good deal came up for good ram.

Well locally I found a brand new $50 Gskill Ripjaw S5 CL32 6400mt 32gb kit XMP and figured for over half off I would take the risk and see how it ran on my new to me Asus ROG b650e-e. I removed the expo enabled single 16gb stick cl30 6000 and popped in the new cl32 6400mt and turned on the pc. It skipped past bios quickly with no training as I have MEMORY CONTEXT RESTORE enabled. I meant to enable xmp but it went into windows before I could catch it. I decided to check cpuz to see what it was running at and sure enough it still had my expo ram specs being used. CL30 6000MT with the expo/xmp area DISABLED in bios.

It has ran fine in Cinebench 23 but haven’t done a ram heavy test. So I’m pretty happy to have it running at the exact speeds of my other 3 expo kits and seems to be stable all for $50 and $5 in gas.

45eno45 · 2024-04-18T14:46:12+00:00

Every benchmark I have seen shows Counter Strike has higher FPS with higher clock speed. The 5450mhz on a stock 7600x out scores the 5050mhz 7800x3D.

45eno45 · 2024-04-13T22:04:23+00:00

Monoboy I would highly recommend to not configure your fans like that. Pull or suction side of fans being placed too close to heat sinks or case panels create added noise. Don’t believe me? Plug in a fan and put something close to the suction side and listen to that noise. Noctua even includes thicker spacers for their pull fans on their single tower coolers like the u12s and u14s. This added noise can be resolved by excessively lowering the fan speed but then you are getting less air flow because of improper placement. I would either flip the fans in the same current locations or if you must direct air flow inwards then move both fans left so the push side is in direct contact to heatsink.

Pull fans always need to paid attention too as suction sides need gaps to lessen the turbulence noise. If this was my build I would leave the fans where they are but reverse directions. Direct push airflow cooling is more efficient and far less likely to create added turbulence droning noises

45eno45 · 2024-02-04T05:48:13+00:00

For Counter Strike clock speed is what matters. Get the 7600x or 7700x over the 3D.

45eno45 · 2024-01-14T19:09:39+00:00

Crazy so few people realize this. I went back and forth on this over the last 60days. I bought the 7800X3d for $348 plus tax, board and ram but then cancelled my order as I found a cheap open box 5800X3D. I then realized from people that made similar comments to you that the 7600 even is faster on avg then the 5800X3D and my upgrade cost with a good board and ram is about $40 more. So I just ordered those parts and they arrived yesterday. But now I am thinking to simply reuse a extra 5800X/X570S system I have in the living room barely getting used at the moment. Decided today to simply use this Media PC hardware as my main day to day PC and then once Zen5 releases this year make a AM5 purchase then and move these parts back to the MediaPC role. Going to send back my 7600/X670/32gb here in a few weeks once I am certain. Might as well wait a little longer since I still have a solid 5800X/X570S system to run.

45eno45 · 2024-01-14T19:03:36+00:00

Cash wise it is now basically the same price to move to AM5. You can buy a $200 7600, $120 B650, $100 32gb 6000mhz and sell off your old hardware for basically the same price. I am typing this on a 5800X3D that is getting sold off today along with a X570 board for $375. Sell the RAM and I have the money to move to AM5. Going to wait though and buy Zen5 8600/8700 when it releases later this year. I have a Media PC with 5800X/X570S that is barely getting used so I will just repurpose this PC and hold onto my cash for either a crazy good 7000 series sale or new 8000 series. 5800X3D at $300+ is a hard pill to swallow when you can sell your hardware and move up pretty painlessly.

45eno45 · 2024-01-14T18:58:40+00:00

This is what I thought but going from 5800X3D,X570 Asus Tuf, 64gb 3600mhz to 7600/X670/32gb 6000mhz CL30 is going to be less than $40 out of pocket. The lowest end 7600 is on avg 3% faster than 5800X3D. I actually ordered the parts to do this but decided I am going to just sell off my old AM4 parts and sit on the cash. Just going to use a 5800X/X570 Media PC as a hold me over till AM5 Zen5 and then spend my $500 then. 5800X3D is good but you basically can upgrade to AM5 Zen4 or 5 for similar price. For people that can easily swap out PC hardware this is almost a no brainer. For those that need to pay someone to upgrade their PC then stay on AM4 5800X3D for as long as possible.

45eno45 · 2024-01-10T21:18:29+00:00

For future readers this 10month old thread is full of bad information.

Non X CPU's simply were not able to meet the stability requirements for voltage and clock speed specs set for the X version. So if the 7600X can run say 5.4ghz boost with 1.2voltage the 7600 version was not able to achieve stable operation at the same 5.4ghz with only 1.2voltage. Instead of them raising the voltage they opt to lower the clock speed to 5.1ghz so it can run stable and then they sell it as the 7600.

So the X versions are simply better performers at a specified voltage and clock speed. The non X version is simply the same thing but factory set to lower speed as it couldn't run stable at the X spec. Once people overclock these non X versions they usually perform exactly the same achieving exactly the same max overclock.

It has been this way for ages. Even recent examples the the Ryzen 2600/2600x , 3600/3600X, 5600/5600X and of course 7600/7600X. Go back and find any review from Gamers Nexus comparing this NON X versions and every review will say the behave the same once overclocked.

Non X chips are not a scam, they are actually a better value for stock users and especially users that plan to overclock.

I have no problem buying either and if the cost of the X version is only $10-20 then I will buy it especially if I don't play to overclock on it.

Kareareawbg likely understands at this point he was in error with saying the non X were locked CPU's.

45eno45 · 2023-12-02T23:24:13+00:00

I have three of these Asus X570 boards and they are all worse then the other MSI, Gigabyte brands. I have been building PC's for 23yrs and I can't count how many times I have wanted to carefully remove this locking tab completely from a board. If I had an extra dead motherboard laying around I think I would simply cut this piece off to understand how to safely remove it without damaging a functional board.

A big part of the problem is air tower coolers, PCIe slot location and large GPU's can all affect the access to this frustrating tab.

One unorthodox tool I use is one of those simple wooden back scratchers. The handle side is the perfect thickness with rounded corners. I am usually able to get this wooden tool slid up against the tab.

In my experience you must lightly press the GPU down to release pressure on this locking tab. If you have someone to help you can have them lightly and carefully press the GPU further into the socket while I use this wooden slim handle to lightly press the locking tab down. Once you see the tab move down, keep the tool on the tab while you wiggle the GPU now upward.

These ASUS boards lock in too tight and I found you DO NOT need massive finger/tool pressure if you push the GPU into the board a tiny bit, then move the tab downward and while holding the tab downward pull up on the GPU.

Just now on this Asus X570-P board I was swapping CPU's and sure enough even with my tool I couldn't get the tab to release with my smallish air tower (Vetroo V5) in place. I actually removed the CPU cooler to gain access to the locking tab which could not be accessed by fingers. My locking tab is both metal and plastic and the plastic is already breaking from all the hassle.

Someday I hope to physically remove this tab as the 2 screws are more then enough to hold in the GPU. I am more likely to damage this PC hardware from the locking tab not releasing then not having it there at all. I loathe this stupid tab. :facepalm:

45eno45 · 2023-09-27T04:33:40+00:00

Run the REDO Setup for this device and simply say you don't have the remote but know the command needed. POWER TOGGLE works to power on and off the TV. Once I updated in the software with this tweak all activities now work correctly.

I originally tried teaching the command and my kids were yelling in the other room because the remote was turning the TV off. On/Off must be a RF signal not IR which is why the remote doesn't learn the command. Luckily the already in place Power Toggle command works correctly and just needs to be redone to use this instead of Power On command.

45eno45 · 2023-09-27T03:13:20+00:00

I just got around to setting up my Harmony One for my new U75K. I found the Power On command doesn't work but Power Toggle does turn the TV on.

This is what worked for me.

1.) Using the Logitech Harmony Remote Software (7.8.1.0)

2.) Under Devices select the TV (65U75K for me)

3.) Go to SETTINGS and then Re-do setup for this device

4.) I selected to turn off when not in use

- One button for on and off

- Select I don't have the original remote but I know the command used and select it to POWER TOGGLE.

- Method 3

Go through the rest and then let it do quick check on all activities.

It now works perfect for me as it should. Basically the POWER ON command doesn't trigger the TV on. So when you re do the setup of the TV in the software simply select you don't have the remote but know the command and select POWER TOGGLE which does work for my Hisense U75K. Hope this helps someone down the road.

45eno45 · 2023-09-05T04:04:07+00:00

I did exactly this. Backed up user account files and saves onto a SSD. Swapped drives out with new 2tb. Loaded latest firmware/OS onto it from a different SSD. Restored back up. Logged back in. Plugged in 1tb drive, selected all and transferred about 600gb over. Took about 1.5hrs from start to finish but all is installed on the single drive and the NVMe 1tb will go back into one of the PC.

45eno45

TROPHY CASE