ASUS Prime, ROG, TUF, ROG Strix & ProArt… Uhm, What’s The Difference?!

ASUS are a bit of a confusing company to buy from, because they have so. many. different. sub-brands.

ASUS Prime. TUF-Gaming. ProArt. ROG Strix. Oh yeah, and plain ‘ol ROG. What’s the difference? Is one sub-brand ‘better’ than the other? I explore these questions and more in this video.

I also discuss why ROG Strix has various letter designations at the end of their motherboard names (like “X670-E”), and whether you need to buy everything from a single sub-brand or not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONDhaZt2q_g

If you prefer text over video, please read on for the guide/transcript version of this video.

Video Transcript And Guide

Hey everyone, there’s never been a better time to watch this video. Act now and be sure not to miss out on this limited time offer. Kidding. I’m not selling anything. I hate marketing phrases, which is why it’s pretty annoying – and confusing – to see that ASUS sell their products under so many different sub-brands. For example their motherboards are sold as “Asus Prime”, “TUF Gaming”, “ProArt”, “ROG Strix” and just “ROG”.

But what the heck’s the difference? Is one of these sub-brands better than the other?

The short answer is “yeah, kind of”. There IS some logic to ASUS’ chaotic marketing approach, although in reality I think there IS just a bit too much choice here. Let’s dive into some examples though, and we’ll start with recent AM5 Ryzen motherboards.

ASUS Motherboards

Now prices will vary day to day of course, but in general Prime are the cheapest ASUS sub-brand, then you have TUF Gaming, then ROG Strix, and then you have both ROG and ProArt at the upper end. Of course, the prices don’t matter too much though – it’s features and quality that we should be more interested in. What you’ll probably notice is that the three cheaper motherboards I highlighted are all on the B650 chipset, whereas the two more expensive ones are X670 – the more premium and powerful Ryzen chipsets. The X670 chipset usually means a more powerful motherboard, with a better VRM, more PCIexpress lanes and more IO support generally – such as having more USB and M.2 connectors.

Of course, you CAN get X670 variants with TUF Gaming and ROG Strix – they cost more than the B650 ones I covered earlier, but they do exist.

Equally you can get B650 versions from the ProArt sub-brand, although this still works out more expensive than the TUF Gaming and Prime version – for example.

In other words, ASUS Prime and TUF Gaming are usually on the more budget end of the spectrum, with ROG Strix in the middle and “ROG” at the higher end. That’s generally true, but what about ProArt? And also, why does ROG Strix have “E”, “F”, and “A” designations on their ATX board names?

What’s ProArt?

Well, let’s start with ProArt – which is a little more niche and it caters towards creators and designers – hence its name. Many of the better ProArt boards will have improved connectivity than the other sub-brands, such as having USB4 support and 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports. This compares to the Prime board (for example) I covered earlier that is stuck on USB 3.2 and 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet. That’s ‘kinda why ProArt exists: because many content creators and designers will be transferring very large media files, and so they need the fastest connectors available.

YES you can still go out and buy an Asus Prime motherboard that would probably work fine for content creation, but ProArt is usually better and a bit more specialized for design and creation purposes.

A Word About ROG Strix

ROG Strix is a confusing sub-brand because they offer products at the same sort of price as TUF Gaming, but they also have very expensive options – more at the ProArt and ROG end of the spectrum. I don’t know exactly why Asus want to make things so confusing, but in general if a ROG Strix motherboard has an “-E” letter on the end, that’s the best they offer. ROG Strix E is their premium version… it’s not quite as good as ROG or ProArt (in general), but it’ll be better than ROG Strix F and A.

Yep, they exist too – just to confuse us even more. In general, F and A are similar although A usually has more “style”. I could say more on this topic, but even Asus says all this, so I’ll just leave it at that.

ASUS Headphones…

(This section was removed from the final YouTube video, but I’m keeping it here because I think its points are still relevant)

Of course, it’s not just motherboards that Asus sells. When it comes to headphones, Asus sells them under “TUF Gaming”, “ROG Strix” and “ROG” sub-brands and it’s a similar pattern here. TUF Gaming is more of their entry level brand and it has some nice features like virtual 7.1 sound, but the more expensive ROG headphones will have proper 7.1 surround sound channels, and “AI” noise canceling.

So just like ROG motherboards offer more features than a basic TUF Gaming motherboards, the same is true of headphones too.

… And Monitors

(This section was removed from the final YouTube video, but I’m keeping it here because I think its points are still relevant)

It’s a similar pattern with monitors too, with “TUF Gaming”, “ProArt”, “ROG Strix” and “ROG Swift” all making an appearance. In general, TUF Gaming is cheaper than ROG Strix but both cater well to gamers, offering some well priced monitors with some nice features like low motion blur sync, Freesync and Gsync support and more.

THEN you have ROG Swift (not “Strix”, but “Swift”) and ProArt and these are actually more designed for graphics designers and content creators, supporting the full sRGB color spectrum, and true 10-bit colors.

They also often have anti-glare coatings and some are Calman Verified (which is pretty nice), and this ensures that color accuracy is delivered via detailed factory calibration, so that the end user doesn’t end up needing to tune all this when they actually get their monitor delivered to them.

Which Sub-Brand To Buy?

So that sums things up, really. ASUS have a BUNCH of different sub-brands, which is pretty confusing, however there is SOME logic to it. I should point out, though, that you don’t NEED to purchase ProArt products if you plan on being a content creator, for example. I actually have a TUF Gaming motherboard and regularly deal with 4K video files, and it all works fine.

If you were just going to launch a YouTube or TikTok channel and use your phone to record, you wouldn’t really NEED some of the extra features from a ProArt motherboard or monitor. However if you grew really successful and had a proper 6K camera recorder and shot in RAW format, then you might start to see problems if you only had cheaper ASUS products.

All in all though, it’s pretty annoying that ASUS have so many different sub-brands here. I don’t think that they have a genuine need to have 5 or more different types of motherboard brands (for example). It seems like a bit of a “cash grab” to confuse consumers with decision paralysis. There’s also an element of price anchoring here, because ASUS price all their products so that you “know” that ROG is better than TUF Gaming, for example, even if both have X670 versions of Ryzen motherboards which would deliver very similar performance to 99% of customers.

My recommendation to you is not to over-analyze the product choice here too much. If you’re shopping for a monitor, for example, find one that offers the key features that you need – like having Freesync, or 10-bit color. Then choose a handful of products, and look at their reviews as you normally would do.