Asus is taking lessons learned from the AM4 era and has significantly improved the ROM capacity of its latest AM5 motherboards. In a blog post, the motherboard maker announced that its new Strix Neo AM5 boards feature a 64MB ROM, double the capacity of previous AM5 variants. The extra capacity is intended to support future Ryzen CPU releases for the AM5 platform, but in the meantime, Asus is using it to pre-install Wi-Fi drivers.
The four new boards getting the boosted ROM capacity are all ROG-branded, including the ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFi7 Neo, ROG Strix X870E-A Gaming WiFi7 Neo, ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi7 Neo, and the ROG Strix B850-A Gaming WiFi 7 Neo. Asus first showed these boards off at CES 2026.
The AM4 generation ran into problems during the Ryzen 5000 series launch, where motherboard BIOS ROMs did not have enough capacity to support all Ryzen CPU generations (at that time). This forced board makers to make sacrifices in CPU support and/or motherboard UEFI features that were not critical to board functionality (such as fancy BIOS graphics and RGB controls in the BIOS). To remedy this, board makers introduced new 400- and 500-series motherboards with 32MB ROMs instead of 16MB.
Gigabyte and now Asus are seemingly preparing in advance for the same issues to occur with AM5. Up until now, there have been no issues with Ryzen compatibility on AM5 motherboards, so doubling the ROM capacity now will give these new AM5 boards plenty of headroom to support future Ryzen releases without making any serious sacrifices elsewhere. For now, though, both board makers are using the extra space to add pre-installed WiFi drivers, something which will come in handy now that Microsoft prevents users from installing Windows 11 fresh without a Microsoft account.
The Strix Neo series adds a variety of extra quality-of-life features beyond just having a bigger 64MB ROM. These boards come with the Asus Q-Release system, which makes it easier to remove big, beefy GPUs without having to squeeze your hand between your CPU cooler and GPU to unlock the PCIe latch.
Asus has also added a super handy optimization to the PCIe slots that allows Strix Neo owners to run the main PCIe 5.0 x16 slot at full speed with two PCIe 5.0 M.2 drives and a whopping three additional PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs installed. Asus is doing this by sharing the PCIe bandwidth between the second M.2 slot and USB4 ports. Speaking of USB ports, the new Neo lineup also includes three internal USB 2.0 headers to accommodate the growing number of integrated devices PC builders are now including, reducing the need for internal USB hubs.
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