I know, I know... BIOSTAR is certainly not the first brand of choice that comes to mind when building a new fancy rig but personally I always found their boards offer a pretty good value, similar to AsRock. Besides, I never had any reliability issues with their boards, e.g. my B250GTN is already in use since 5+ years and is still going strong.
Long story short, today I'd like to show you some impressions of BIOSTAR's B660GTN RACING which on paper offers some nice features for a sub € /$ 200,- Socket 1700 board. Most important for me was DDR4 compatibility, having two M.2 slots and at least 5 to 6 USB ports.
My first impression was already a bit mixed when I took it out of the box. Other than pictures online might suggest, the rear I/O cover thing is not made from metal but is just some cheap plastic part with a tiny aluminum VRM heatsink underneath.
The I/O shield itself is made from some very thin SECC and was already deformed in some places when I took the board out of the box...
the M.2 heatsink is very simple without any fins to improve cooling... when using some high performance SSD that might get toasty but on the positive side...
... it is so thin that it won't block Airflow when using an low profile CPU cooler... oh, and did you notice the fancy steel reinforced PCIe socket that is supposed to hold even the heaviest modern GPUs (more on that later)...
something else worth considering when comparing this board against the competition is the fact that it does not come with a WiFi module... you'll have to get one yourself and take the board apart to install it...
especially for PC building beginners this might be a little challenging...
because if you don't have the correct tools at hand you'll risk to damage the board... one wrong move and some of the SMD components are gone...
here we can see the plastic I/O cover - IMHO the biggest fail of BIOSTAR trying a "integrated I/O shield" design on the B660GTN and the final reason why I would not recommend it ...
I've never been a fan of integrated I/O shields but what BIOSTAR did here is the worst I've come across...
not only does it nowhere match with the I/O cutout on your case, leaving a ugly gap, but even worse....
the plastic cover blocks the whole PCIe slot and you won't be able to plug in a modern GPU with backplate into there - and even without a backplate on your GPU it's questionable tight... honestly I can't believe how such an obvious design flaw wasn't detected somewhere down the R&D road... either BIOSTAR does not have any recent GPU models to test their boards with, or they assume everyone is using sandwich cases these days...? Well, I really wasn't expecting too much from this board but just that it functions and that I could plug my GPU into that shiny metal reinforced PCIe slot...
summarizing: without further testing, the B660GTN goes back to the shop and I'll keep looking for another budget alternative... the B660T-SILVER maybe???
Long story short, today I'd like to show you some impressions of BIOSTAR's B660GTN RACING which on paper offers some nice features for a sub € /$ 200,- Socket 1700 board. Most important for me was DDR4 compatibility, having two M.2 slots and at least 5 to 6 USB ports.
My first impression was already a bit mixed when I took it out of the box. Other than pictures online might suggest, the rear I/O cover thing is not made from metal but is just some cheap plastic part with a tiny aluminum VRM heatsink underneath.
The I/O shield itself is made from some very thin SECC and was already deformed in some places when I took the board out of the box...
the M.2 heatsink is very simple without any fins to improve cooling... when using some high performance SSD that might get toasty but on the positive side...
... it is so thin that it won't block Airflow when using an low profile CPU cooler... oh, and did you notice the fancy steel reinforced PCIe socket that is supposed to hold even the heaviest modern GPUs (more on that later)...
something else worth considering when comparing this board against the competition is the fact that it does not come with a WiFi module... you'll have to get one yourself and take the board apart to install it...
especially for PC building beginners this might be a little challenging...
because if you don't have the correct tools at hand you'll risk to damage the board... one wrong move and some of the SMD components are gone...
here we can see the plastic I/O cover - IMHO the biggest fail of BIOSTAR trying a "integrated I/O shield" design on the B660GTN and the final reason why I would not recommend it ...
I've never been a fan of integrated I/O shields but what BIOSTAR did here is the worst I've come across...
not only does it nowhere match with the I/O cutout on your case, leaving a ugly gap, but even worse....
the plastic cover blocks the whole PCIe slot and you won't be able to plug in a modern GPU with backplate into there - and even without a backplate on your GPU it's questionable tight... honestly I can't believe how such an obvious design flaw wasn't detected somewhere down the R&D road... either BIOSTAR does not have any recent GPU models to test their boards with, or they assume everyone is using sandwich cases these days...? Well, I really wasn't expecting too much from this board but just that it functions and that I could plug my GPU into that shiny metal reinforced PCIe slot...
summarizing: without further testing, the B660GTN goes back to the shop and I'll keep looking for another budget alternative... the B660T-SILVER maybe???
