Introduction

With some of the best microATX motherboards we've seen credited to their name, it's slightly surprising that ASUS doesn't have anything more premium than B850 products for this form factor. That's a shame, given how fantastic some of the more recent Gene boards have been and things aren't much better on Intel either, with just two lower-end Prime microATX boards on Z890. The TUF Gaming B850M-Plus Wi-Fi, then, represents one of its higher-end options in this form factor. It does seem that Mini-ITX has taken the high end of compact boards, Mini-DTX is dead, and microATX has been relegated to budget or mid-range.



Mini-ITX is the only consistent high-end sub-ATX form factor, at least with ASUS, since it has both ROG Strix X870 and Z890 boards in that size. Another option would be the ROG Strix B850-G Gaming Wi-Fi, which certainly has a premium price tag at $400, but this is rather unusually expensive for a microATX board. This TUF Gaming B850M-Plus Wi-Fi is far more reasonably-priced at just $210, so could be the perfect partner for affordable cases such as the Lian Li A3-microATX or Phanteks XT M3. The competition is fierce, though, with plenty of B850 and X870 options.

The relatively low-end price tag does come with some compromises, too, such as Wi-Fi 6E rather than Wi-Fi 7, and while it has a PCIe Gen 5 M.2 port, it's heatsink is very small and of course there's no USB4. However, some of that is also true of the more expensive ROG Strix B850-G Gaming Wi-Fi too. Still, there seems to be enough here to justify the price tag, so let's see how it actually performs.

Specifications

Packaging and Contents

Unsurprisingly, the accessories feature the bare essentials including two SATA cables, a Q-Antenna compatible Wi-Fi antenna, plus several M.2 screws and rubber supports for single-sided SSDs, which you'll definitely need to use in case you have some.



The full list of accessories includes:

• Wi-Fi Q-Antenna
• 2x SATA cables
• 2x M.2 backplate rubber packages
• 1x M.2 screw package
• 1x TUF sticker set
• 1x Quick start guide