ASRock B450M Steel Legend
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Compact mid-range microATX motherboard with AM4 processor socket for use with AMD processors based on Zen and Zen2 microarchitectures. The manufacturer claims compatibility with a wide range of three-generation AMD Ryzen 3/5/7/9 CPUs (based on Summit Ridge/Pinnacle Ridge/Matisse microarchitectures), APUs with integrated Radeon Vega (Raven Ridge/Picasso) and low-cost Athlon Zen (Raven Ridge) CPUs ).
It is positioned as a product of the middle price category, intended for use as part of basic and mid-level gaming systems. It features a stylish exterior design, support for most popular system and external interfaces, and the use of high-quality components (improved case chokes, durable capacitors). Equipped with a six-phase CPU power subsystem. Thanks to the presence of four slots for installing RAM modules, it supports an impressive maximum capacity of up to 64 GB, which provides additional options for future upgrades. You can connect a high-speed NVMe SSD with M.2 (Socket 3) in PCI-E 3.0 4x mode (up to 32 Gb / s) and four traditional SATA3 devices. The powerful Realtek RTL8111H gigabit network controller guarantees fast data transfer with minimal ping.
Low-cost overclocking
ASRock has three main motherboard lines: Taichi, Phantom Gaming, Steel Legend. The first two include the most top-end products and are aimed more at enthusiasts and hardcore gamers, while Steel Legend belongs more to the middle and even low-cost segment. They took the developments of the Pro4 model as a basis, changed the appearance and redesigned the power stabilizer, finally moving away from the used circuit based on the Intersil controller. Due to the affordable price, this board can be recommended for economical gamers who do not plan to squeeze all the juice out of the system during overclocking.
steel baby
The hero of today's review, ASRock B450M Steel Legend, despite the low-cost price tag of $100, offers more than you expect from it. The advantages of the board include 4 DDR4 slots with support for high-speed memory modules at 3533 MHz (when working with Pinnacle Ridge processors), a pair of M.2 outputs, USB-C (a rare guest in this segment), a high-quality audio codec and backlight synchronization. Plus, one of the PCI-E 16x slots has a metal lining. For a low-cost board, this is already a luxury, but the name obliges. Compared with older brothers, the possibilities here are not so cool: the overclocking settings are modest, the VRM cooling system is simple (although it is rather cold without overclocking), and the processor power circuit is simplified and allows only six-core Ryzen to be overclocked normally. With 8 cores, overclocking will be purely symbolic.
Thoughtful layout
Separately, it is worth praising the thoughtful layout. When you connect a large graphics card, it does not block one of the M.2 slots, as is often the case on micro-ATX motherboards. The free space around the processor socket has been cleared and allows you to mount a cooling system of any complexity and configuration. Plus, the ASRock B450M Steel Legend is well equipped with a set of connectors for connecting an LED strip, including an additional connector for lighting the CPU cooler.
