Visual inspection
The B450 Steel Legend uses the B450 mid-range chipset, and a blend between arctic and digital camouflage directly applied on the black PCB. The VRM and chipset heatsinks are painted in a light silver shade, alongside the I/O panel plastic cover. The basic color combination of this motherboard is black, white and gunmetal silver.
The power delivery system used with the B450 Steel Legend is a 4 + 2 phase design, with Sinopower SM4337 MOSFETs and 60 AMP chokes. Unfortunately, I was unable to remove the VRM heatsinks to show the MOSFETs and other components. Both heatsinks have screws with thread locker applied. While thread locker is being used in PC screws, in this case, the factory must have applied more by mistake.
The Phase controller used on this motherboard is the well-known uP9505P manufactured by uPI Semiconductor. This is a Multiple Phase Buck Controller that can work in 4/3/2/1 + 2 phase configurations. In the case of the B450 Steel Legend, it is running in a 4 + 2 phase configuration.
The CPU power is delivered through a single 8 Pin connector located on the standard spot, the upper left corner of the motherboard.
The VRM components of the motherboard are cooled by two heatsinks manufactured from a single solid piece of aluminum. The overall shape of these heatsinks has been used before on other ASRock motherboards. In addition, fins are present on the back of these heatsinks to better cool the VRM.
The motherboard features 5 (five) 4-pin fan headers: starting at the top of the board, the first two headers are placed on the upper right corner of the RAM slots. The next fan header is located under the I/O cover, on the left of the first M.2 slot. The last two headers are placed on the lower edge of the motherboard, next to the front panel pins.
On the right there are the four memory DIMM slots that support a maximum of 64GB. The rated speeds available are starting at 2133MHz and go up to DDR4 3466+(OC).
The motherboard has a single internal USB 3.0 header, placed below the DIMM slots.
The B450 Steel Legend is a mid-range motherboard; however, it still features a metal reinforced PCIe express slot, in this case, the main x16 slot.
The SuperI/O chip installed on this motherboard is a NuvoTon NCT6779D-R, this is responsible for the system management. In this motherboard’s case, the chip is installed above the audio system, and next to the PCIe slots.
The audio system has as its center piece, the Realtek ALC892 chip and four Nichicon made electrolytic audio capacitors. As is the standard, the audio system is isolated from the rest of the PCB to reduce interference.
In terms of fast storage, B450 Steel Legend is equipped with two M.2 slots for PCI-E M.2 SSDs. The first one is located under the CPU socket and is covered by a preinstalled heatsink. The second M.2 slot is placed below the chipset heatsink, and above the lower edge of the motherboard.
The standard storage on the B450 Steel Legend is composed out of six SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors. These are not stacked, but are placed one next to another, they also support RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10. Two of these SATA ports are controlled by the ASMedia ASM1061 chip.
On the backside, we have the I/O panel.
The I/O panel is as follows (from left to right):
– 1x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
– 1x HDMI Port
– 1x DisplayPort 1.2
– 1x Optical SPDIF Out Port
– 2x USB 2.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)
– 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection)
– 1x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection)
– 4x USB 3.1 Gen1 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)*
– 1x 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)
It’s a pretty sweet board I picked one up after my am3 caught fire and it’s a beautiful board with the rgb and the steel look and runs my ryzen 7 fast