ASRock first introduced their Steel Legend motherboards back in January. This new series from ASRock is meant to give users great stability, a boatload of features, and a attractive design, all while keeping the price quite low. These boards feature ASRock’s “Full Spike” ESD protection for the USB, Ethernet, and audio ports, as well as utilize 60A power chokes and Nichicon 12K black capacitors. The board we are taking a look at today is the B450 Steel Legend which is an the ATX model out of the pair (B450M Steel Legend is M-ATX). As you can guess this board leverages the AMD B450 chipset and besides the features we already mentioned this board makes use of a 6-phase power design, has dual M.2 slots, USB 3.1 gen 2 support, has ASRock’s “Steel Slot” on the PCI-Express x16 slot, and of course you are getting RGB on the board too! With all of these features can you believe this board is just over $100?! Read on as we take a look!
Special thanks to ASRock for providing us with the B450 Steel Legend Motherboard to review.
Features
– AMD AM4 Socket
– Supports DDR4 3533+ (OC)
– 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, 4 PCIe 2.0 x1
– AMD Quad CrossFireX™
– Graphics Output: DisplayPort, HDMI
– 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec), Nichicon Fine Gold Series Audio Caps
– 6 SATA3, 1 Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4), 1 M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x2 & SATA3)
– 2 USB 3.1 Gen2 (Rear Type-A+C)
– 6 USB 3.1 Gen1 (2 Front, 4 Rear)
– Realtek Gigabit LAN
Packaging
The B450 Steel Legend comes in a nice retail box. On the front it lets us know we do indeed have the B450 Steel Legend and it lists some of the main features.
Flipping over to the back we have a breakdown of many of those features as well as an I/O overview and full list of specifications. I think you would have more than enough information on this board from the box to make an informed purchasing decision.
Getting everything out of the box we have our I/O shield, 2 SATA cables, quick installation guide, software setup guide, driver and software CD, ASRock sticker, and screws for the M.2 slots.
X470 vs B450
You might be wondering what the difference is between AMD’s X470 and B450 chipsets.
The only thing really different about the two chipsets is that you’ll only get a single PCIe x16 interface and fewer USB 3.1 Gen 1 and SATA ports. The important thing is that you still have the ability to overclock your processor as well as having AMD’s XFR2 and Precision Boost Overdrive.
