ASUS ROG Strix B550-E Gaming Motherboard (Open Box)

The B550-E was an upgrade from the B450-F I had before. It was a simple drop-in replacement and just worked flawlessly with my Ryzen 7 3800X. The board had no issues getting the CPU to 4.5 GHz on all cores, voltage at 1.35v on the core. I was original going to purchase a competing board because it was cheaper and had the same overall feel and aesthetics but I was already well verse in the ASUS BIOS that really made it simpler just for me to purchase this over the competition. The M.2 heat sinks have a thermal pad already preapplied and all you need to do is take the small plastic sheet off and install your drive. I dare say that the all-black board is a very slick design, pared with a NH-D15 chromax.Black edition, it's just beautiful. Some constructive criticism: I rated the value for money at 4 stars but not because it is a bad board, but because of the choice to include a dedicated USB Type-C port for the rear I/O specifically tailored to audio. I would have preferred to see more USB 3.2 ports in the back or additional 2.0/3.0 ports. I feel the price of $270 + California tax is not too much when you take into account that this B550 chipset motherboard has the same feature set of X570 motherboards at a fraction of the cost without sacrificing too much or adding too much cost. ASUS have done themselves in with one and still provided a motherboard with excellent support and potential. We don't have money to spend all over to upgrade to the latest and greatest chipset but with this board I can still hope to achieve 5th gen Ryzen and even 6th gen or further without having to purchase a new board immediately. ASUS is a company I've been purchasing products from since 2014, with the release of their ROG G751JL gaming laptop. ASUS has never done me wrong and back in 2017 when I had accidentally destroyed my laptop when working on it internally (fried the south bridge, literally) I had contacted their support and genuinely asked if they could repair/replace the motherboard. I did not mind paying for the repairs at all being that the laptop was out of warranty and it was my fault in the first place. But despite the laptop being out of production for a little over a year and half (or even more) they still took it in and re-manufactured the part for me without charging me the same cost for the laptop. Now I won't guarantee that ASUS will continue doing this, but it is the first company I've done business with whom genuinely did offer to help repair a laptop that they themselves did not even service/warranty/produce anymore at the time and it has kept me a returning loyal customer from that generosity.