Conclusion
At the time of this writing, the ASUS PRIME B760-PLUS D4 can be had for as little as $155 from Amazon.com and Newegg. It is a budget board with some obvious and perhaps not-so-obvious limitations. One thing to keep in mind is that the chipset has almost nothing to do with the actual system performance these days. Going budget with a chipset means a loss of features, not performance. Yes, you can eke out a bit more performance on higher-end motherboards but that often comes at a great cost. ASUS makes motherboards that are better, but you could pay several hundred dollars more for what would be low single-digit improvements in performance.
Installation and Use
Budget offerings can often be super quirky to get running and deal with. Especially if you play with the PLL settings as I do. The initial setup was a flawless experience as was using the system and running the tests. Even tuning the memory was effortless. Granted, I am using a pretty basic kit but I think that’s representative of what someone would most likely use with a board like this. Also, keep in mind we pushed the VRMs harder on this than most people would use a 12900K.
Using ASUS’ UEFI BIOS is always a treat and while some people dislike Armory Crate for the obvious bloat and intrusiveness of it, the application made it very easy to set up the system and get all the drivers sorted. You do have to be careful not to install Norton Utilities or some of the other included software and stick to the drivers alone. After you are done using Armory Crate and any software you might want to set up the system you can remove it.
Stability was essentially perfect and as good as boards I’ve used (or am using right now) costing 6 or 7 times as much. Despite anemic heatsinks, the stock power limits kept everything within an acceptable margin as far as the heat went. I do think the anemic VRM heat sinks are why this board doesn’t draw as much of the PLL limit as other boards have. Though it didn’t really seem to negatively impact performance.
Here you can see the average clocks are a bit lower than you would expect, though the maximum clocks are respectable. The PLL power limit max was only 207w whether the Intel limit was enforced or not. This definitely shows a limitation of the board hardware. If you look at the CPU temperatures, they are still a few degrees below throttling. On other boards, you can push a bit further and hit 101c if you want to. Additionally, you’ll see the PLL power limit hit about 247w on average. We are well below that here. Again, I think we are truly limited by the VRMs and their input power having only one 8-pin CPU power connection. Even though it does have an ASUS ProCool power connector, it’s not going to carry enough voltage to really feed the upper-echelon CPUs.
Again, I was still impressed by the stability and general performance given the board’s price.
Final Points
The ASUS PRIME B760-PLUS D4 is a bit lower-end than what we have reviewed so far. However, I think these boards are looking more appealing given the insane cost increases we’ve seen over the last few years. Paired with a mid-range or cheaper CPU, I think the ASUS PRIME B760-PLUS D4 is a solid offering. It’s a pretty basic feature wise but everything worked as it should have and I had no issues with the sound, network, or any of the other integrated features. I think the ASUS PRIME B760-PLUS D4 will only appeal to a segment of our readers, but if the feature set isn’t going to hold you back, it’s certainly worth considering over more expensive alternatives. It does feature a vertical M.2 connector for a wireless add-on as well as a Thunderbolt header. It’s a versatile board that’s basic, but solid. That being said, I don’t think this is really a good board to pair with a 13900K or KS. It’s not enough board for CPUs like that.
