ASRock B450 Steel Legend Review

If you’re looking for a feature-rich B450 motherboard under £100, the ASRock B450 Steel Legend may be the option for you. Check out what we thought.

Product on Review: B450 Steel Legend
Manufacturer: ASRock
Street Price: GBP £99.99 / USD $109.99 / AU $149.99

ASRock, established in 2002, specialise in the motherboards sector, providing customers seeking high overclocks and solid stability with high-end motherboards for both Intel and AMD chipsets, however, they also design boards for tighter budgets.

Today we look at something sneaking under the £100 barrier while claiming to offer most of the frills you’d expect on something much more expensive. Here’s the ASRock B450 Steel Legend, an ATX form factor motherboard based around AMD’s B450 chipset.

With the Steel Legend we get RGB lighting, on the rear IO shield and the Southbridge heatsink, a pair of M.2 slots, a black and white style with urban came printed onto the circuit board, full 7.1 audio and support for AMD CrossFire X.

At £99, it’s not the cheapest B450 motherboard we’ve tested, but nor is it the most expensive. Let’s see where “middle of the road” gets us in terms of performance.

ASRock on the B450 Steel Legend:

Steel legend motherboards deliver stunning performance and superior aesthetics to rule your own colorful lighting way! ASRock offers a very comprehensive control to perform the built-in RGB LEDs or the connected LED strips, CPU fans, coolers, chassis and any RGB devices smoothly. Devices can be synchronized across the Polychrome RGB Sync-certified accessories as well.

Technical Specifications

Unique Features
ASRock USB 3.1 Gen2
– ASRock USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s)
– ASRock USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s)

ASRock Super Alloy
– XXL Aluminum Alloy Heatsink
– Premium 60A Power Choke
– Nichicon 12K Black Caps (100% Japan made high quality conductive polymer capacitors)
– I/O Armor
– Sapphire Black PCB
– High Density Glass Fabric PCB
– 2oz Copper PCB

ASRock Steel Slot
ASRock Full Coverage M.2 Heatsink
ASRock Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4)
ASRock Ultra USB Power
ASRock Full Spike Protection (for all USB, Audio, LAN Ports)
ASRock Live Update & APP Shop
AMD StoreMI

CPU
– AMD AM4 Socket
– Digi Power design
– 6 Power Phase design

Chipset
– AMD Promontory B450

Memory
– Dual Channel DDR4 Memory Technology
– 4 x DDR4 DIMM Slots
– AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Pinnacle Ridge) support DDR4 3533+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933(OC) / 2667/2400/2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
– AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Summit Ridge) support DDR4 3466+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933(OC) / 2667/2400/2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
– AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Raven Ridge) support DDR4 3466+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933/2667/2400/2133 non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
– Max. capacity of system memory: 64GB**
– 15μ Gold Contact in DIMM Slots

BIOS
– 128Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with multilingual GUI support
– Supports “Plug and Play”
– ACPI 5.1 compliance wake up events
– Supports jumperfree
– SMBIOS 2.3 support
– DRAM Voltage multi-adjustment

Graphics
– Integrated AMD Radeon™ Vega Series Graphics in Ryzen Series APU*
– DirectX 12, Pixel Shader 5.0
– Shared memory default 2GB. Max Shared memory supports up to 16GB.**
– Dual graphics output: Support HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2 ports by independent display controllers
– Supports HDMI 1.4 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096×2160) @ 24Hz / (3840×2160) @ 30Hz
– Supports DisplayPort 1.2 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096×2160) @ 60Hz
– Supports Auto Lip Sync, Deep Color (12bpc), xvYCC and HBR (High Bit Rate Audio) with HDMI 1.4 Port (Compliant HDMI monitor is required)
– Supports HDCP 1.4 with HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 Ports
– Supports 4K Ultra HD (UHD) playback with HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 Ports

Audio
– 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec)*
– Premium Blu-ray Audio support
– Supports Surge Protection
– Nichicon Fine Gold Series Audio Caps
– PCB Isolate Shielding
– Individual PCB Layers for R/L Audio Channel
– Gold Audio Jacks

LAN
– PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
– Realtek RTL8111H
– Supports Wake-On-LAN
– Supports Lightning/ESD Protection
– Supports Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az
– Supports PXE

Slots
AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Summit Ridge and Pinnacle Ridge)
– 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x16 mode; PCIE4: x4 mode)*
AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Raven Ridge)
– 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x8 mode; PCIE4: x4 mode) (If you use Athlon 2xxGE series APU, PCIE1 slot will run at x4 mode.)
AMD Athlon series CPUs
– 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1: x4 mode; PCIE4: x2 mode)*

– 4 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slots
– Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™**

*Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks
If M2_1 is occupied, PCIE4 will be disabled.

Storage
– 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug*
– 2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug
– 1 x Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_1), supports M Key type 2230/2242/2260/2280 M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s) (with Summit Ridge, Raven Ridge and Pinnacle Ridge) or Gen3 x2 (16 Gb/s) (with Athlon 2xxGE series APU and Raven Ridge 2)**
– 1 x M.2 Socket (M2_2), supports M Key type 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x2 (16 Gb/s)**

*M2_2, SATA3_3 and SATA3_4 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.

**If M2_1 is occupied, PCIE4 will be disabled.
Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks
Supports ASRock U.2 Kit

Connector
– 1 x COM Port Header
– 1 x TPM Header
– 1 x Power LED and Speaker Header
– 1 x RGB LED Header
– 1 x Addressable LED Header
– 1 x AMD Fan LED Header
– 1 x CPU Fan Connector (4-pin)
– 1 x CPU/Water Pump Fan Connector (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control)
– 3 x Chassis/Water Pump Fan Connectors (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control)
– 1 x 24 pin ATX Power Connector
– 1 x 8 pin 12V Power Connector
– 1 x Front Panel Audio Connector
– 2 x USB 2.0 Headers (Support 4 USB 2.0 ports) (Supports ESD Protection)
– 1 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Header (Supports 2 USB 3.1 Gen1 ports) (Supports ESD Protection)

Rear Panel I/O
– 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
– 1 x HDMI Port
– 1 x DisplayPort 1.2
– 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port
– 2 x USB 2.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)
– 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection)
– 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection)
– 4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)*
– 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
– HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone (Gold Audio Jacks)

Software and UEFI
Software
– ASRock A-Tuning
– ASRock Polychrome RGB
– ASRock XFast LAN

UEFI
– ASRock Full HD UEFI
– ASRock Instant Flash
– ASRock Easy RAID Installer

Support CD
– Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version), Google Chrome Browser and Toolbar

Accessories
– Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
– 2 x SATA Data Cables
– 2 x Screws for M.2 Sockets
– 1 x Standoff for M.2 Socket

Hardware Monitor
– Temperature Sensing: CPU, MB
– Fan Tachometer: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans
– Quiet Fan (Auto adjust chassis fan speed by CPU temperature): CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans
– Fan Multi-Speed Control: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans
– Voltage monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore

Form Factor
– ATX Form Factor: 12.0-in x 9.6-in, 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm

OS
– Microsoft® Windows® 10 64-bit

Certifications
– FCC, CE
– ErP/EuP ready (ErP/EuP ready power supply is required)

Packaging & Bundle

Obviously, with a name like Steel Legend, they couldn’t use a wood or plastic effect for their packaging, it absolutely had to be brushed steel with an overwhelming silver/grey theme.
The front of the box gives some basic information, but most motherboard boxes are the same in this sense.

The rear, however, is an entirely different story. Here we see any and all information we could ever need.

Unusually, the box is made up of an outer sleeve and an inner, thicker, cardboard box. It’s black with an ASRock logo, nothing more to it.

Inside the box, on top of the motherboard is the following:
– Rear IO shield
– 3x M.2 screws
– 1x M.2 stand off
– 2x SATA cables
– Software setup guide
– Motherboard quick install guide
– Software CD
– ASRock case sticker
– ASRock postcard

Something else which is a little different is that the soft foam packaging protecting the motherboard from damage in transit is locked in place using a cable tie in each corner. Be careful when removing these, the sharp metal snips or scissors that you’ll need could cause damage to the motherboard if a slip were to occur.

Closer Look

Starting with an overview of the board, the snowy camo’ style will certainly find its place in a white system build, with several companies now offering a huge range of white components. Built into the motherboard are 2oz copper inner layers, helping to deliver lower temperatures and better energy efficiency to aid with overclocking. The motherboard conforms to the ATX form factor, measuring in at 305mm x 244mm.

Zooming into the CPU socket and surrounding heatsinks, the power phase delivery zones are well-served by two large heatsinks, finished in a very light silver colour to complement the colour scheme. ASRock have implemented premium 60A power chokes to provide an enhanced and improved Vcore to the AM4 CPU.

To the right of the AM4 socket are four DDR4 DIMM slots, supporting up to 64GB of 3533MHz memory. We also find an RGB header, front USB 3.0 and a pair of PWM fan headers in this corner.

Directly below the CPU is the first of two M.2 slots, capable of supporting both SATA and NVMe drives up to 80mm in length. The M.2 Armor aims to reduce NVMe temperatures to provide optimal performance for longer.

Alongside M.2 storage, the Steel Legend offers a row of six SATA 3.0 ports. To see them laid out across the board like this is unusual but may help with cable management in smaller cases.

Closer Look (Continued)

The bottom-left of the motherboard is isolated via traces in the PCB, improving signal quality and therefore providing a cleaner audio signal for the 7.1 audio connection on the rear IO.

Providing additional connectivity are a pair of PCI-E x16 ports, one of which is steel covered for additional strength. There’s also four PCI-E x1 ports for sound cards and storage controllers.
Finally, at the bottom is an uncovered M.2 port, also boasting NVMe support; this M.2 slot is capable of supporting the entire range of sizes, including 2242, 2260, 2280 and 22110.

While we’re here, it’s worth looking across the bottom edge, there’s ample fan connections, RGB headers, front audio and USB connections and much more.

Finally, onto the rear IO, starting from the left, we get:

2x USB 2.0
1x PS/2
1x DisplayPort
1x HDMI
4x USB 3.1
1x Gigabit Ethernet
1x USB 3.1 Gen. 2 Type-A
1x USB 3.1 Gen. 2 Type-C
7.1 Audio + SPDIF

Test Setup & Software

Test Setup

CPU AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
Cooling Noctua NH-U12S-SE-AM4
Motherboard
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz @ 3000MHz @ 15-17-17-38-58
Graphics AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB
Storage Corsair Force LE 480GB
PSU Corsair RM750X 80 Plus Gold Certified PSU

Benchmarks

Cinebench R15 – CPU/OpenGL Score
x264 HD 4.0 – 1st and 2nd pass encoding
SiSoftware SANDRA – CPU & Memory benchmarks
POV-RAY – CPU benchmarks
TrueCrypt – CPU benchmarks
AIDA64 – CPU benchmarks & Memory
PCMark 8 – Home Suite & Photoshop
3DMark FireStrike – 3D Benchmark
Games – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

Other Software

Temperature Analysis: Aida64 & Ryzen Master
Stress Testing Software: AIDA64 Stability Test
CPU Specification Monitoring: CPU-Z
Performance Monitoring: MSI Afterburner

Benchmarks: Power Consumption

It’s interesting to note the power consumption across all motherboards. Although they are using the same AMD chipsets, energy results can fluctuate between manufacturers due to the features and specifications that are integrated. First of all, for the idle tests the system is cold booted into Windows and no additional applications are executed – the watts are noted on the external energy monitor we use and then the system is loaded with 3DMark FireStrike – watts are again monitored for the duration of the test and the highest rated wattage result is then noted down. Below are the results of this energy test.

Ray Tracing Performance – POV-Ray 3.7

Persistence of Vision Raytracer’s PovRay is a free and open source 3D animator application with versions for computers with different operating systems.

This product allows users to build their custom 3D worlds with excellent quality despite their computer’s hardware. It has adjustable options for levels of radiance, refraction, and reflection. Calculation time may vary depending on the computer model, but PovRay can adapt to many computer builds, and is supported by the open source community.

AES Encryption Performance – TrueCrypt 7.1a

TrueCrypt is a discontinued source-available freeware utility used for on-the-fly encryption (OTFE). It can create a virtual encrypted disk within a file or encrypt a partition or (under Microsoft Windows except Windows 8 with GPT) the entire storage device (pre-boot authentication).

Encoding Performance – x264 HD

Simply put, this test measures how fast your machine can encode a short, DVD quality MPEG-2 video clip into a high-quality x264 video clip. What’s x264, you ask? It’s more or less the next-generation Xvid/DivX codec. I think it’s ideal for a benchmark because the application (x264.exe) reports fairly accurate compression results (in frames per second) for each pass of the video encoding process, and it uses multi-core processors very efficiently.

Processing Features Performance – AIDA64

AIDA64 Product Page

This simple integer benchmark focuses on the branch prediction capabilities and the misprediction penalties of the CPU. It finds the solutions for the classic “Queens problem” on a 10 by 10 sized chessboard. At the same clock speed theoretically the processor with the shorter pipeline and smaller misprediction penalties will attain higher benchmark scores. For example — with HyperThreading disabled — the Intel Northwood core processors get higher scores than the Intel Prescott core based ones due to the 20-step vs 31-step long pipeline. CPU Queen test uses integer MMX, SSE2 and SSSE3 optimizations.

Memory Transfer Performance – AIDA64

AIDA64 Product Page

Memory bandwidth benchmarks (Memory Read, Memory Write, Memory Copy) measure the maximum achiveable memory data transfer bandwidth. The code behind these benchmark methods are written in Assembly and they are extremely optimized for every popular AMD, Intel and VIA processor core variants by utilizing the appropriate x86/x64, x87, MMX, MMX+, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE4.1, AVX, and AVX2 instruction set extension.

The Memory Latency benchmark measures the typical delay when the CPU reads data from system memory. Memory latency time means the penalty measured from the issuing of the read command until the data arrives to the integer registers of the CPU.

Processing Power Performance – Cinebench R15

CINEBENCH can measure systems with up to 64 processor threads. This test scene contains approximately 2,000 objects which in turn contain more than 300,000 polygons in total, and uses sharp and blurred reflections, area lights, shadows, procedural shaders, antialiasing, and much more. The result is displayed in points (pts). The higher the number, the faster your processor.

Bandwidth Performance – SiSoftware SANDRA

SANDRA isn’t always a benchmark that is included in hardware reviews but I believe it shouldn’t be ignored. SANDRA provides a vigorous package that tests your system in a rather large array of benchmarks. There are many aspects of benchmark that can be executed. We will be considering – CPU and memory tests.

Image Editing Performance – PCMark 8 Photoshop

PCMark 8 Product Page

Developed in partnership with Benchmark Development Program members Acer, AMD, Condusiv Technologies, Dell, HGST, HP, Intel, Microsoft, NVIDIA, Samsung, SanDisk, Seagate and Western Digital, PCMark 8 is the latest version in FutureMark’s popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft.

Overall System Performance – PCMark 8

PCMark 8 combines performance benchmarking with battery life measurement and includes tests based on popular Adobe and Microsoft applications. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 will help you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs. It’s the complete PC performance benchmark for home and business.

VR Performance – VRMark

VRMark Product Page

VRMark includes two VR benchmark tests that run on your monitor, no headset required, or on a connected HMD. At the end of each test, you’ll see whether your PC is VR ready, and if not, how far it falls short.

3D Performance – 3DMark

3DMark FireStrike Product Page

Fire Strike is our new showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike will only be available in the Windows editions of 3DMark initially.

Gaming Performance – Rise of the Tomb Raider & Total War: WARHAMMER

It’s important for us to perform a number of game benchmarks as well as the synthetic tests because gamers will want to know if there are any significant benefits. So here we have two recent gaming titles.

Conclusion

Coming in at just under the £100 mark, the ASRock Steel Legend sits in a range where features must be plentiful but gimmicks, such as RGB lighting, are generally regarded as adding no value while costing extra to implement. The Steel Legend seems to find an excellent balance between the two. We get things like USB 3.1 Gen.2 and a pair of M.2 NVMe slots but we don’t get WiFi connectivity or LN2 switches for extreme overclocking, to name just a few.

Performance is, as the graphs show, there or there about, it wins in some tests and loses in others but it’s never a massive outlier which would cause concern. Please also remember that all of the tests, excluding the gaming benchmarks, are synthetic tests designed to find small differences, in real-world use those discrepancies are often much more difficult to detect. The difference between 43199MB/s and 43521MB/s in our AIDA64 Memory Read test would be impossible to “feel” in any applications, for example.

Aesthetically, the ASRock ‘board hits a spot in the market that not many others are currently occupying, using the black and white theme with bare metal heatsinks. This could tie in very nicely with peripherals from a few manufacturers who are now offering their products in black or white.

Something we felt was a little different but absolutely adds to the value of the product was the quality of the packaging. This is usually a single-use feature, but thanks to the foam packing which was directly fixed to the motherboard, it stands a much higher chance of arriving in a working condition; if you’ve ever built a new PC to find that a component doesn’t work, or works intermittently, you will know the pain involved in trying to diagnose and then replace that component.

If we were being picky, we would’ve liked to see WiFi/Bluetooth connectivity on this motherboard. While that would certainly add cost to the production, pushing it over that £100 barrier, it can be very useful or even essential for a lot of users. Front USB 3.1 Gen. 2 would also be advantageous with many chassis now arriving with front IOs equipped to handle USB 3.1 Gen. 2 Type-C speeds.

Overall, the ASRock B450 Steel Legend, we feel, is a great motherboard worthy of your cash, the striking design stands out from the crowd while performance isn’t lacking at all. You also get a pair of M.2 slots which isn’t commonplace at this price point.

Pros
+ Good overall performance
+ Eye-catching design which offers something different
+ Has RGB lighting
+ Has a pair of M.2 NVMe slots
+ Good board layout

Cons
– No WiFi connectivity
– No front USB 3.1 Gen.2

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.
Stay connected with the Vortez Social Media pages:
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Join in with the discussions on Discord