The ASRock B450M Steel Legend looks lượt thích the perfect motherboard for a budget AMD Ryzen build, at least on paper. With a cool camo-inspired design, a sprinkle of premium features and a decent I/O options, where"s the catch in this sub-RM400 board? Or is it really as good a khuyễn mãi giảm giá as it is made out to be?


+ unique camo-inspired design+ Excellent layout of headers & ports across the motherboard+ Beautiful onboard RGB lighting+ Good assortment of I/O options+ Excellent bang-for-buck


AMD Ryzen 3000 series has become the new mainstream processor & proven itself lớn be relevant to gamers, professional users and content creators alike. As we are always searching for products that offer the best bang for buck, we constantly ask ourselves what is the absolute minimum we can spend without sacrificing on the unique of the components. Among all the available boards in the market, we were genuinely impressed by what the ASRock B450M Steel Legend has lớn offer, & we just had lớn get our hands on one.

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In the Box

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ASRock is very generous so far và more of the same can be said about its accessories. Other than the usual IO shield, 2 SATA cables và 1 M.2 screw were provided. There are also 2 manual books with 1 of them as thick as a paperback novel. There’s the inclusion of a CD with drivers & utility software too, which we bởi think is somewhat unnecessary but it does work as a backup plan in case you have no internet.


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Appearance

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Off the bat, we were greeted with a camo pattern. Here’s a fun fact: this camo kiến thiết is similar lớn the MARPAT winter digital camo with ASRock’s twist. Be careful as if you drop this board in a snowy environment, you’re going to thua trận it. Jokes aside, the ASRock B450M Steel Legend is quite a quality looking board with a lot of features available only in more premium offerings.

First thing you will see (aside from the very obvious camo pattern) are the three blocks of aluminium which are the heatsinks for the VRMs and also the B450 chipset. This is followed by the two M.2 slots, four RAM slots (a welcoming sight for this price range), two RGB header & one ARGB header, an extra RGB header labeled AMD tín đồ LED Header, a bunch of tín đồ headers, và finally a reinforced PCI-E slot.

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The primary PCI-E 3.0 slot runs at full X16 speed. ASRock has fitted the slot with their Steel Slot reinforcement, strengthening it physically while also discouraging signal interference. The secondary slot is a PCI-E 2.0 X16 slot running at x4 speed. The two PCI Express slots tư vấn CrossFire but it is hard for us to lớn recommend using it nowadays as it since the 5700 series AMD has dropped the support for CrossFire. Above the main PCI Express slot is a PCI-E X1 slot, perfect for stuff lượt thích NICs, WiFi adapters, sound cards or other expansion.

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For internal I/O, other than your usual front panel headers, there’s also one front USB 3.0 header, two USB 2.0 headers, and four SATA 3 (6 Gbps) connectors. One thing that also stands out from the board is the generous amount of fan headers, especially if you consider its size. There are a total of five tín đồ headers here: one CPU fan hâm mộ header, one water pump/AIO fan header, and finally three case fan headers.

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We have a total of four RAM slots here and they, as you might expect, support dual-channel configurations. As usual, depending on which generation of Ryzen you’re using with this board, the max supported tốc độ varies but ASRock claims the ASRock B450M Steel Legend supports up to DDR4-3533+ when running with Zen 2 CPUs. As we are using a Ryzen 3200G for this reviews here, we ran our RAM at the maximum supported tốc độ of 2933 MHz, even though the RAM is rated for 3200 MHz.

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At the back of the motherboard, there is nothing much khổng lồ see except a lone IC chip. The cpu is a PI3EQX1004B1, a 2-port USB 3.1 linear ReDriver™. Designed khổng lồ handle the 10Gbps bandwidth over the USB 3.1 protocol, this cpu is likely used to drive the 2 USB 3.1 port at the back IO.

Rear I/O

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We have quite a good spread of I/O here, with a total of seven full-size USB ports here with most of them being USB 3.0 ports, along with two USB 2.0 ports, và a lone USB 3.1 ports. There’s an interesting addition of USB Type-C here, with it supporting the USB 3.1 protocol allowing for 10 Gbps transfer speeds. There’s also a HDMI port and a DisplayPort here, perfect for those who decided lớn use the IGP. In addition to that, there’s also a combo PS2 port for the ol’ school peeps, 7.1-channel audio with gold-plated ports, & also a Toslink audio jack.

VRM

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The B450M Steel Legend utilizes a 4+2 power nguồn phase design. The PWM controller is an uPI uP9505P, with Sinopower SM4337 on the high-side, with Sinopower SM4336 as the low-side. This VRM kiến thiết is far from high-end but it should handle most, if not all, Ryzen CPUs at stock configuration just fine.

I would generally avoid too much overclocking with this motherboard although you might be able lớn have some fun with it if you allow for sufficient airflow around the VRMs và stick to lớn lower-end CPUs like the 6-core or APUs.

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Audio

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The audio on this board is powered by a Realtek ALC892 7.1 channel audio codec. It sits on separated PCB layers, with further isolation done by separating the left and right channels on different PCB. It also features Nichicon “Fine Gold Series” audio caps.

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Nichicon is known khổng lồ produce good unique capacitor, và the one featured on the board is part of the Nichicon leading Fine Gold MUSE acoustic series. It generates a “brighter” sound signature và rich sound in the bass register with clearer high-end frequency. The word on the mạng internet suggests that enthusiasts vì recommend using Nichicon’s caps in audio devices. While we have no way khổng lồ objectively measure their quality, it gave us peace of mind knowing that ASRock used high-quality audio caps.

Storage

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For storage, the Steel Legend comes with two M.2 slots & four SATA 3 ports. The đứng top M.2 slot is what ASRock called an Ultra M.2, which is essentially a PCIe Gen3 x4 NVME slot with tư vấn for speeds up to lớn 32 Gbps. The lower M.2 slot only supports M.2 SATA drives, and it shares bandwidth with the 3rd SATA 3 port so if either one is in use the other one will be disabled. The SATA 3 ports are angled for easier cable routing, an extremely rare feature in this price range.

Specifications

ASRock B450M Steel Legend


CPU supportAMD AM42nd, 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen processors (AMD Ryzen 2000 and Ryzen 3000 series)1st, 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics (AMD Ryzen 2000G & Ryzen 3000G series)
Power1 x 24-pin ATX1 x 8-pin EATX 12VuPI uP9505P PWM controller (4 + 2 phase config)4 x (1 x SM4337 Hi-side, 2 x SM4336 Low-side) for VCore2 x (2 x SM4337 Hi-side, 2 x SM4336 Low-side) for VSoC
ChipsetAMD B450 (Promontory)
Memory4 x DDR4 DIMM, max. 64GB un-buffered memory
Multi-GPU Support2-way AMD CrossFireX
Expansion slotsPCIe 2.0 x1PCIe 3.0 x16 (x16 electrically)PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 electrically)
Storage4 x SATA 6 Gb/s, supports RAID 0,1,101 x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 (Ultra M.2)1 x M.2 SATA
NetworkRealtek Gigabit LAN
USBRear I/O:1 x USB 3.1 (10 Gbps)1 x USB 3.1 Type-C (10 Gbps)4 x USB 3.0 (5 Gbps)2 x USB 2.0 (480 Mbps)On-board headers:1 x USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) (2 ports each)2 x USB 2.0 (2 ports each)
AudioRealtek ALC892 Audio Codec (7.1-channel HD audio)5 x gold-plated audio jacks (rear)1 x front panel audio connector
Other onboard connectors1 x CPU fan hâm mộ header1 x CPU/Water Pump tín đồ header3 x Chassis fan headers1 x Temperature sensor connector1 x RGB header1 x ARGB header1 x AMD fan LED Header1 x TPM header1 x COM Port header1 x Chassis Intrusion Header
Overclocking featuresN/A
Included accessoriesQuick Installation GuideSupport CDI/O Shield2 x SATA Data Cables2 x M.2 screws
Form factormATX (9.6″ x 9.6″)

up to lớn 4.0 GHz, 12nm FinFETRAM2 x 8GB T-FORCE DELTA TUF Gaming Alliance RGB DDR4, 3200 MHz CL16MotherboardASRock B450M Steel LegendGPURadeon Vega 8 Graphics
1250 MHzStorage1 x 480GB Phidisk The Keeper PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSDCPU CoolingWraith StealthCaseCooler Master NR400PSUCooler Master V750MonitorN/A

User Experience

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With it being a standard mATX board, we found no problem installing the ASRock B450M Steel Legend into our Cooler Master NR400. The experience is as seamless as we hope it to lớn be. The screw areas were all exposed, & the layout of headers are positioned right at the edges of the board to allow easy cable management.

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The 4 slot RAM slots tư vấn a maximum of 64GB. Khổng lồ enable dual channel memory configs, you are recommended to lớn install memory sticks in the A2 and B2 slots. It is likely the max speed supported will dip when all four slots are populated, but the maximum speed of DDR4-3466+ is more than sufficient for all Ryzen CPUs at stock speed.

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The built-in in RGB lights up beautifully when power nguồn is supplied to the board. The RGB colors and patterns can be changes with the ASRock Polychrome Sync software, which enables the onboard RGB light khổng lồ sync with other components, a nice cảm ứng considering the price point of the ASRock B450M Steel Legend.

BIOS

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The last ASRock UEFI bios I used was on the Z77 Extreme 4, which I vividly remember was designed for more advanced users và I spent a good amount of time trying to lớn understand it. It comes as a pleasant surprise the UEFI still retained most the same looks và design. While it is feature-rich, I am generally more comfortable OC in Windows with the Ryzen Master tools available.

Overclocking


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After OC


With the absence of OC presets in the BIOS, we use Ryzen Master to gauge how well this motherboard can accommodate overclocking. We hit 4000 MHz on all cores without breaking a sweat, while the thermal sits at 90°C, the system stayed stable as a rock during our whole 1-hour ức chế test. Over in the GPU department, we were able to push the Radeon Vega 8 Graphics from a stock 1250 MHz to lớn 1500 MHz easily. Và to demo for stability, we ran Furmark for 1 hour.


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Before OC


Conclusion

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Feature-packed & with good build quality, we found this board offered a taste of every feature we want in premium boards. It may not have the beefiest VRM out there, but it does make up for it with other niceties lượt thích the ARGB header, dual M.2 ports, & abundance of tín đồ headers, making the B450M Steel Legend ready for much bigger things than its price suggest.

Priced at around RM359 after discounts, it is less then what we would expect to pay for a board like this. Such value is reminiscent of the great value ASRock offered with their Z77 Extreme 4 motherboard back in 2012. We wholeheartedly recommend the ASRock B450M Steel Legend for your next AMD build.

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We purchased our ASRock B450M Steel Legend from Rextech. Kiểm tra it out on their Shopee store.