most of you probably wouldn't have touched another BIOSTAR motherboard after the experience I had with the B660GTN but hey, everyone deserves a second chance and with the B660T-SILVER, BIOSTAR did indeed a better job...
taking it out of the box, I quickly noticed that the B660GTN and B660T are technically the exact same motherboards, just with a few important differences: the B660T-SILVER does have a larger VRM heatsink and the stupidly designed I/O plastic cover was removed, instead we now have a good old traditional I/O shield in black/silver...
same like the B660GTN, the B660T does not come with WiFi but only the assembly parts to install your own WiFi adapter...
anyways, this goes nice and easy now because you do not have to remove any useless plastic covers from the board to reach the WiFi M.2 slot...
the top M.2 SSD / chipset heatsink is still pretty simple, just comes in silver anodized aluminum instead of black... for me personally that's fine because I'm still using PCIe Gen 3 SSDs which do not tend to get very hot... plus I'm using air cooling so there will be enough airflow around that area...
here's another shot, showing the VRM heatsinks - nothing fancy but sufficient to run a 65W / 125W CPU at stock settings
another difference between the B660T and the B660GTN is the "hardware" BIOSTAR used... the B660GTN had some nice looking metal PCIe slot and blackisch CPU socket... but better appearance does not always mean better quality! the B660T-SILVER comes with quality sockets from LOTES while I didn't find any known manufacturer name on the slot/socket that were used for the B660GTN...
next up, let's have a quick look at the BIOS/UEFI... and honestly there is not much to say... everything works well enough out of the box, after setting your fan curves and XMP memory profile, but if you are looking for some nice overclocking features, that is not a board for you...
I even found a bug that my i5 12400 would be locked down to 400Mhz if I'd try to set custom PL1/PL2 wattage levels... so better keep everything at AUTO
now comes the best improvement BIOSTAR did against the B660GTN: my GPU finally fits and the I/O shield does actually match with the I/O case cutout!
final words: the closest competition in terms of price and features is currently the AsRock H670M-ITX/ax and unless you already have a WiFi module for the BIOSTAR board lying around, AsRock would probably be the overall smarter choice for a medium budget build...
last but not least... BIOSTAR gives you a 4 year warranty if you register your board online - now I hope it will really last that long
taking it out of the box, I quickly noticed that the B660GTN and B660T are technically the exact same motherboards, just with a few important differences: the B660T-SILVER does have a larger VRM heatsink and the stupidly designed I/O plastic cover was removed, instead we now have a good old traditional I/O shield in black/silver...
same like the B660GTN, the B660T does not come with WiFi but only the assembly parts to install your own WiFi adapter...
anyways, this goes nice and easy now because you do not have to remove any useless plastic covers from the board to reach the WiFi M.2 slot...
the top M.2 SSD / chipset heatsink is still pretty simple, just comes in silver anodized aluminum instead of black... for me personally that's fine because I'm still using PCIe Gen 3 SSDs which do not tend to get very hot... plus I'm using air cooling so there will be enough airflow around that area...
here's another shot, showing the VRM heatsinks - nothing fancy but sufficient to run a 65W / 125W CPU at stock settings
another difference between the B660T and the B660GTN is the "hardware" BIOSTAR used... the B660GTN had some nice looking metal PCIe slot and blackisch CPU socket... but better appearance does not always mean better quality! the B660T-SILVER comes with quality sockets from LOTES while I didn't find any known manufacturer name on the slot/socket that were used for the B660GTN...
next up, let's have a quick look at the BIOS/UEFI... and honestly there is not much to say... everything works well enough out of the box, after setting your fan curves and XMP memory profile, but if you are looking for some nice overclocking features, that is not a board for you...
I even found a bug that my i5 12400 would be locked down to 400Mhz if I'd try to set custom PL1/PL2 wattage levels... so better keep everything at AUTO
now comes the best improvement BIOSTAR did against the B660GTN: my GPU finally fits and the I/O shield does actually match with the I/O case cutout!
final words: the closest competition in terms of price and features is currently the AsRock H670M-ITX/ax and unless you already have a WiFi module for the BIOSTAR board lying around, AsRock would probably be the overall smarter choice for a medium budget build...
last but not least... BIOSTAR gives you a 4 year warranty if you register your board online - now I hope it will really last that long
