If you’ve been waiting for an excuse to rebuild your AMD gaming rig, ASUS just handed you four of them with the new ROG Strix Neo motherboard lineup. These boards are very clearly aimed at people who actually enjoy tinkering with their PCs—whether that means chasing higher frame rates, experimenting with local AI workloads, or just wanting a cleaner build that looks good behind tempered glass.​

What stands out right away is how much ASUS has leaned into DIY quality-of-life features this generation. The Strix Neo family bakes in the full suite of Q-design touches: tool-free M.2 Q-Latch and Q-Slide, so you’re not juggling microscopic screws, M.2 heatsinks that pop off with a press of the Q-Release, and a physical PCIe Slot Q-Release button that saves you from wrestling a wedged GPU out of the slot. On paper, that sounds minor, but in practice, it changes the tone of a build; you move from “please don’t strip this screw” to casually adding and swapping drives as if it were a console storage bay.​​

ASUS has also quietly fixed a bunch of the annoyances around first boot and BIOS configuration. The latest AM5 boards double UEFI ROM capacity from 32MB to 64MB, which gives them room to ship with broader CPU support and even pre-installed Wi-Fi drivers so Windows setup doesn’t stall because you forgot to preload a network driver. On top of that, the refreshed UEFI now opens into a much more visual EZ Mode and even an Essential Mode, which surfaces the basics—CPU and memory info, fan profiles, basic overclock options—without dropping you into the labyrinth that seasoned overclockers live in but newcomers dread. Advanced Mode is still there when you want to get weird with voltages and timings, but for most people, the firmware no longer feels like hostile territory.​​

The other theme is that ASUS has clearly paid attention to how people are actually using modern motherboards. USB 2.0 headers, the thing everyone assumed would die years ago, are back in force: Strix Neo boards pack three internal 2.0 headers because they’re now powering everything from AIO LCDs to fan hubs to Wi-Fi/Bluetooth modules, which means you can fully kit out a modern build without resorting to internal USB hubs. Storage and PCIe lane layout has also been rethought; on the flagship ROG Strix X870E‑E Gaming WiFi7 Neo, you can run a PCIe 5.0 x16 graphics card at full bandwidth alongside two PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs and three PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs without choking the GPU, thanks to lane sharing that offloads some bandwidth from the second M.2 slot to the USB4 ports.​

At the top of the stack, the ROG Strix X870E‑E Gaming WiFi7 Neo is the board for people who treat “overkill” as a starting point. It uses an 18+2+2 power stage configuration rated at 110A, backed by an eight-layer PCB with two‑ounce copper, which is the kind of power and signal integrity you’d usually associate with high-end Crosshair models rather than Strix. That overhead isn’t just for bragging rights; it translates into lower VRM temperatures under load, better transient handling with high-core-count Ryzen chips, and more headroom when you begin to push manual OCs or Precision Boost tweaks. For troubleshooting, you also get grown-up tools like a Q‑CODE diagnostic display and a rear I/O Clear CMOS button, so recovering from a bad memory or BCLK experiment is a 10-second affair instead of a case-opening ritual.​

On the connectivity side, the X870E‑E makes it clear it’s meant for heavy users. Networking is handled by a 5G Ethernet port plus Wi-Fi 7 with ASUS’s tuned Q‑Antenna design, which means you can treat Ethernet as your main line and still have truly high-speed wireless as a backup or for rooms where a cable just isn’t happening. Rear I/O is stacked: two USB4 Type‑C ports, eleven additional USB ports up to 10Gbps, including a Type‑C with up to 30W Power Delivery for fast-charging your phone, and front-panel headers that can drive two USB 20Gbps Type‑C ports plus four USB 5Gbps ports. It’s the kind of board where you plug everything in—VR headset, multiple capture devices, docks, DACs—and still have ports left over.​

A lot of the 2026 ASUS AM5 story is about memory, and Strix Neo sits right in the middle of that push. ASUS has reworked PCB stackups, grounding, and trace routing to improve DDR5 signal integrity across the family, which translates to more stable high-frequency memory kits and less trial-and-error when you load XMP or EXPO profiles north of 6000MT/s. On the X870E‑E and X870E‑A, ASUS layers in NitroPath DRAM Technology, which tweaks the physical DRAM slot layout and pathing to squeeze out up to an extra 400MT/s of achievable DRAM overclock depending on your kit and CPU IMC. For people who like to chase tight timings and insane DDR5 speeds, that’s the kind of under-the-hood change that doesn’t show up in a spec line but matters a lot in practice.​

There’s also a quiet nod to the AI PC trend. Paired with a Ryzen 9000‑series Granite Ridge chip, these boards unlock ASUS AI Cache Boost, a feature designed for people who are running large-language models locally and constantly bumping into VRAM limits on their GPU. When your model spills out of GPU memory and performance nosedives, AI Cache Boost applies a series of memory and cache optimizations to reduce the hit, with ASUS claiming up to around 15 percent better chatbot performance in oversubscribed scenarios. It’s not the kind of feature that makes or breaks a GPU, but if you’re dabbling in local AI and don’t want to buy a 24GB card just yet, it’s a very on‑trend addition.​

A more visible innovation is the move towards cable‑free AIOs. ASUS’s new ROG Strix LC IV series liquid coolers can pair with select boards—including the Strix X870E‑E and X870E‑A Neo—using an AIO Q‑Connector on the motherboard and contact pads on the pump housing to deliver both power and control signals without the usual mess of USB and fan cables snaking across the board. Once you’ve seen a build where the CPU block just sits there, no visible wires, it’s hard to unsee; it’s exactly the kind of small luxury that matters in glass-heavy cases and YouTube-worthy showcase rigs.​

Of course, not everyone wants a murdered-out black board. ASUS leans into that with the ROG Strix X870E‑A Gaming WiFi7 Neo, which takes almost all of the X870E‑E’s platform advantages—16+2+2 power stages, X870E chipset, NitroPath DRAM, dual PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots, and four total M.2 slots—and wraps them in a white PCB with silver and white heatsinks and a customizable RGB treatment across the I/O shroud. Networking gets the same modern treatment: 5G Ethernet, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and a rear panel with two USB4 ports, six 10Gbps USB ports (including a 30W PD Type‑C), plus four 5Gbps ports, while the internal headers let you run USB‑C on the front panel at both 20Gbps and 5Gbps.​

If you’re trying to keep a lid on budget without dropping into generic OEM territory, the B‑series Strix Neo boards are arguably the more interesting story. The ROG Strix B850‑F Gaming WiFi7 Neo and its white‑and‑silver sibling, the B850‑A Gaming WiFi7 Neo, are built on AMD’s B850 chipset and aim directly at mainstream gaming builds that still demand high-end I/O. You’re looking at 16+2+2 or 14+2+2 power architectures, four DDR5 DIMM slots supporting up to 256GB, and a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot supported by a mix of PCIe 5.0 and 4.0 M.2 slots—two Gen 5 plus two Gen 4 on the B850‑F, and one Gen 5 plus three Gen 4 on the B850‑A. For a “midrange” chipset, that’s a serious amount of NVMe bandwidth, and ASUS wraps it in the same tool‑less M.2 setup and armored lower half that makes the X‑series boards look so clean.​

The networking and USB story on B850 Neo is very much next‑gen, not cut‑down. Both boards jump from the typical 2.5G Ethernet of earlier B‑series Strix to 5G Ethernet, keeping pace with the X870E offerings on wired speeds, and they still include Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 for high-throughput wireless. Rear I/O combines up to four 10Gbps ports, six 5Gbps ports, and legacy USB 2.0, while internal headers let you set up a 20Gbps front-panel USB‑C and four front-panel 5Gbps Type‑A ports. In total, ASUS claims you can hit as many as 23 usable USB ports across the system, which again is very much tuned for gamers with stacks of peripherals, controllers, streaming gear, and external drives.​

Visually, the Strix Neo lineup leans into the idea that the motherboard is part of the showpiece, not just a backplane. On the X870E‑E, Polymo Lighting on the rear I/O shroud gives ASUS a canvas for layered RGB animations behind the ROG logo, tied into Aura Sync so it can match the rest of your components. The aesthetic is classic Strix: diagonal lines, heavy armor over the M.2 and chipset areas, and VRM heatsinks that look industrial rather than ornamental, all designed to sit comfortably in a case with multiple glass panels. Meanwhile, the “‑A” boards—both X and B series—trade that stealth vibe for a frosty white look that pairs naturally with white GPUs and cases, which is exactly where a lot of enthusiast builds have been trending over the last couple of years.​

Put together, the ROG Strix Neo family feels like ASUS taking a very current read on what AMD gamers actually care about in 2026. There’s enough power delivery and memory tuning to flirt with Crosshair‑class performance, enough PCIe and USB bandwidth to satisfy people drowning in NVMe drives and external storage, and enough attention to build ergonomics that swapping parts and experimenting becomes less of a chore and more of a habit. Whether you’re trying to build a blackout 4K monster with the X870E‑E, a showy white rig around the X870E‑A, or a more price-conscious gaming box on B850 that still feels properly high end, the Strix Neo lineup is very clearly designed to kick an AMD gaming PC into higher gear without making the builder suffer for it.