ASUS PRIME B450M-A II AMD B450 (Ryzen AM4) micro ATX motherboard with M.2 support, HDMI/DVI-D/D-Sub, SATA 6 Gbps, 1 Gb Ethernet, USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A, BIOS FlashBack™

A few years ago, my computer was running sluggishly. I started swapping parts, memory, hard drive, upped the CPU, etc. Since none of those fixed the issues I was having, I held on to the old parts. Then my daughter's computer was stolen, and pretty much all that I needed was a motherboard and case. And an OS, which unfortunately meant Win 11, which also meant a new CPU because the one that I had previously pulled for upgrade was no longer up to drill. And more memory. So even though I had already purchased this motherboard, it was cheaper to get her a laptop that was on a one day deal than finish this one. So it sat in a box with the other parts. Fast forward a bit and Microsoft is ending support for Windows 10, not even selling a new license, and my family machine has reached the end of the road. With my grand kids liking little online games and videos, I didn't want to have the computer that I use for my banking and bill payments used for that without a fully supported OS. Some of those games come from Россия for goodness sake! So a new processor, hard drive and more memory later, it fired up and loaded Windows 11 first try. Even though the memory was not on the QVL. THAT, by the way, is the only "con" that I can think of for this board. Most of them are a little hard to navigate, but this one seems completely random and I gave up on finding approved sticks after about an hour. I had two 8's on hand and got two more of the same ones, but for some reason, the old ones go by the brand name, the new ones by the parent company. A Dodge/Chrysler type of thing. (All tech metaphors have to involve food or transportation.) ASUS has a reputation for being tolerant of memory, so I was pretty confident that they would work. I haven't finished everything yet... I have multiple TB of data to copy to external drives first. But initial tests show a machine that works well, even though the parts were spread out over several years. Couple of minor details. My SSD is the M.2 style with an aftermarket heatsink. The TPM module fits with about 2 pieces of card-stock clearance. There are no fan headers near the front; I haven't seen any µ-ATX boards that do, but I haven't looked at all of them. The BIOS was sufficiently up to date for the CPU that I used, even after sitting for years. At my age, this will probably be my last build. Glad I got a good board as the centerpiece.