Question Does anyone have experience with the ASRock B450M Steel Legend?

[nekminnit]

This motherboard came out recently and I haven't seen any reviews on it. Has anyone used it to share their experiences? Thanks

 

[Darkbreeze]

No reviews, and has only been out since January, so it's unlikely you'll find many, or any, members who have purchased one yet. Also, since it's so late in the game for the B450 chipset, with newer chipset boards on the near horizon, it's not terribly likely you WILL see that either.

Anandtech breaks down the boards features, although it's not a review in any stretch of the imagination, here, and there is some good commentary afterwards.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13902/asrock-unveils-b450-and-b450m-steel-legend

Seems it has mediocre audio codec, only a 6 power phase VRM configuration, so it's not going to be a very good overclocking board, DOES have four DIMM slots, which is unusual for an mATX board these days although some do have them but a lot have only two. Has two M.2 slots which is nice on an mATX board especially if you plan to use a small enclosure and want to eliminate drives taking up space, however one of them ONLY supports SATA M.2 devices unlike what has become common now with dual PCI M.2 support on both slots.

Overall, probably a decent budget option, if you don't plan to overclock and don't care about higher end audio codec onboard. ASRock makes quality boards, but you can probably get a much better board for 20 or 30 bucks more.

 

[nekminnit]

No reviews, and has only been out since January, so it's unlikely you'll find many, or any, members who have purchased one yet. Also, since it's so late in the game for the B450 chipset, with newer chipset boards on the near horizon, it's not terribly likely you WILL see that either.

Anandtech breaks down the boards features, although it's not a review in any stretch of the imagination, here, and there is some good commentary afterwards.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/13902/asrock-unveils-b450-and-b450m-steel-legend

Seems it has mediocre audio codec, only a 6 power phase VRM configuration, so it's not going to be a very good overclocking board, DOES have four DIMM slots, which is unusual for an mATX board these days although some do have them but a lot have only two. Has two M.2 slots which is nice on an mATX board especially if you plan to use a small enclosure and want to eliminate drives taking up space, however one of them ONLY supports SATA M.2 devices unlike what has become common now with dual PCI M.2 support on both slots.

Overall, probably a decent budget option, if you don't plan to overclock and don't care about higher end audio codec onboard. ASRock makes quality boards, but you can probably get a much better board for 20 or 30 bucks more.

I have been waiting for this board to become available in my country for a month(still not here). Do you think I should wait longer or go for the MSI B450M Mortar or ASRock B450M Pro4?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Is there an aesthetic concern, or does the color/visual scheme not really matter?

What country are you IN? Brasil?

 

[nekminnit]

Is there an aesthetic concern, or does the color/visual scheme not really matter?

What country are you IN? Brasil?

I would prefer the board to look nice which is why I am currently leaning towards the MSI Mortar instead of Pro4 due to RGB/overall look. The Steel Legend also has a nice RGB/camo look, it's not available though (Australia).

 

[Darkbreeze]

Does it need to be a microATX motherboard? Does you case not support a full size ATX motherboard?

 

[MasterBlaster22]

I have one, an AsRock B450-M. I think it's, solid for the price. I got one on Amazon for like $79.99 I believe. I don't have any problems overclocking, the voltages seem to be holding up fine right now. It's really good looking for the category that it is in. It has some very well done LED lights in/under the heat spreader for the chipset, and under the main I/O shield "thing." I put a ryzen 5 2600X in there, and then I tested it with voltages going all the way up to 1.4~ish. However, I can get an intermittent boost from like 1.0 volts to 1.35 and an intermittent overclock ranging from 3.9Ghz to 4.1Ghz - just using Ryzen Master Utility. Therefore, I didn't leave the bios setting for the chip pegged at 1.4~ish, I switched it back to automotron AMD control because it was dooing pretty darn good for a small budget board anyway. So... I would say I'm pretty happy with that.

There is a thing with the dual M.2 drives. Apparently, you can only use one of them. Or, I have not figured out how to use the second one yet. (maybe it's being used by something else.)

The first thing that I did, was just put together the rig WITHOUT ANY SATA cables connected, with dual Crucial M.2 NVMe storage, one in each of the M.2 slots.
It never did find the second one, never shows up on the Bios or in Windows disk manager. People say that it is suppost to be able to run as SATA in that case, but I can't get it to show up as anything... well, let me take that back and refine my statement a little, it does "show up" in ONLY the Bios, but, when I get to windows, I can't find it anywhere!! So, there is something here that I must be missing.

Would I get it again?? Yes-! The board was under $90.00 and it's pretty darn good for that price otherwise.

 

[Darkbreeze]

This thread is two months old. Pretty sure they've either moved on or bought a board by now.

 

[MasterBlaster22]

But... you never Know

 

[Darkbreeze]

Fair enough. So long as you understand that we pretty vigorously expunge Necro posting. So you're right on the cusp. At about three months, we'd probably shoot you a warning for posting to an abandoned thread if you were not one of the original participants of the thread and there has been no further replies to the thread in all that time. Just be aware.