In my experience, building white-themed rigs on a budget used to be a total nightmare, but ngl there are some great options now that dont cost like $300. I've done a ton of Micro-ATX builds over the years and honestly ASRock is basically the king of the budget-white aesthetic right now. Here's what I recommend for staying under $160: 1. For AM5, the ASRock B650M Pro RS WiFi is an absolute steal at around $140-$150. It has clean silver/white heatsinks and even a white-ish PCB, which is super rare at this price point.
2. If you're going Intel LGA1700, check out the ASRock B760M Steel Legend WiFi. It’s usually around $155 and looks really premium with that digital camo-white vibe.
3. Another solid Intel pick is the MSI MAG B760M Mortar WIFI II. The silver heatsinks look great against white RAM, tho it sits right at that $160 limit. I've learned you dont need those overpriced 'designer' boards to make the build pop... just go with heavy silver accents and it'll look sick. gl!

Re: "Tbh I totally agree with the point about..." - yeah, reliability is everything and honestly, focusing only on the looks can really backfire. It totally reminds me of when I tried helping my cousin with his first "aesthetic" white build last year. We were so hyped to get everything matching, but it turned into such a massive ordeal. Unfortunately, we ran into so many issues that had nothing to do with the actual parts list:

• The white thermal paste we used was way messier than expected and got everywhere.
• One of the white cable extensions was faulty and kept causing random restarts.
• We spent like four hours just trying to get the RGB to sync up properly. It was so frustrating because we had all these beautiful parts like some Corsair Vengeance RGB DDR5 32GB 6000MHz White just sitting there while the system refused to post. He got so fed up that he almost threw the whole thing out the window, which would have been a very expensive mistake. We never even figured out if it was the board or just bad luck with the parts... just a total nightmare.

Seconding the recommendation above! Honestly, ASRock has been the MVP for budget white builds lately. In my 10+ years of building, I've noticed they're one of the few brands that dont charge a massive premium just for a different color of paint. It's honestly such a relief compared to how things used to be. WARNING though: you gotta be careful about "fake" white boards. A huge mistake I see beginners make is buying a board that looks white in photos but is actually just a standard black PCB with a couple silver heatsinks. In a compact mATX case, that dark PCB is gonna stand out like a sore thumb against your white components. You really wanna look for the boards that have that grey or white patterned silkscreen across the whole thing to truly hide the underlying board color. Also, from a technical perspective, don't sacrifice your VRM quality just for the aesthetic. Some of those lower-end white boards look pretty but have zero cooling on the power phases, which is basically a recipe for thermal throttling if you ever upgrade your CPU. I’ve used several of their silver-themed AM5 boards recently and I'm super satisfied with the performance—they handle mid-range chips like a champ and the BIOS is actually really solid these days. Just double-check if the board has an integrated I/O shield too. Having a silver pre-installed shield makes the back of the case look way cleaner than those cheap tin ones that poke your fingers lol. Good luck with the build, white rigs are a vibe!!

Tbh I totally agree with the point about not getting distracted by just the aesthetics. I learned that the hard way with my last compact mATX build—I was so obsessed with finding a white PCB that I completely ignored the actual power delivery specs. The board I ended up with looked amazing, but the VRMs were basically garbage and lacked decent heatsink coverage. Whenever I’d hop into a heavy gaming session, the MOSFET temps would skyrocket and cause some nasty thermal throttling because the heat couldn't dissipate in such a tight space. It's honestly not worth the 'aesthetic' if the board can't handle the power draw of a modern chip without crashing. Now, I spend way more time looking at the phase count and component quality than the actual color. For a small case where airflow is already a bit restricted, you pretty much need to prioritize a board with solid power phases and reliability that won't cook itself under load. So basically, just make sure you’re checking those technical specs alongside the color scheme!