Today, we’ll be taking a look at the ASRock B550 Steel Legend motherboard, which utilizes the accomplished B550 chipset and is suitable for all current 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen processors (AM4), with future compatibility for 4th Gen (4000 series) processors.
The B550 chipset, although a subjacent model to the higher-end X570, has been getting a lot of praise from gamers and mainstream users alike. Especially with the fact that the B550 chipset is cheaper, more affordable and offers PCIE 4.0 support, as well as supporting both the 3rd Gen and upcoming 4th Gen Ryzen processors.
The Steel Legend series of motherboards according to ASRock represents the philosophical state of rock-solid durability and irresistible aesthetics. It’s built around most demanding specs and features, providing high quality components and materials to ensure a stable and reliable performance. These include the Aluminium alloy XXL heatsinks, Nichicon 12K black caps, 2oz Copper, premium 60A power choke, and finally the PCB is made from high density glass fabric!
The ASRock B550 Steel Legend can support memory speeds of up to DDR4-4733+ (OC), and it’s compatible with AMD’s CrossfireX multi-GPU configuration. There’s also the 7.1 CH HD Audio (Nahimic Audio), Dragon 2.5GB LAN, diagnostic LEDs, as well as of course, the ASRock Polychrome Sync and their Super Alloy feature.
If you’re not too sure what the main differences are between the X570 and the B550 chipset, here is an easy chart for comparison. Basically, the X570 offer full PCIE Gen4 support for both the General Purpose Lanes and CPU chipset uplinks, which will allow for faster performance. While the B550 can only provide PCIE Gen3 support for those lanes.
And to be honest, you’ll won’t see that much of a difference in performance between the two. One of the main advantages of the B550 chipset, is that their motherboards are cheaper and attractively priced, while offering similar performance to the X570.
I would like to thank ASRock for providing the review sample. This is a snippet from what ASRock has to say about themselves on their website:
ASRock Inc. is established in 2002, specialized in the field of motherboards. ASRock strives to build up its own brand. With the 3C design concept, “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness”, the company explores the limit of motherboards manufacturing while paying attention on the eco issue at the same time, developing products with the consideration of eco-friendly concept.
ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.
We’ll be testing the motherboard using trusted AMD Ryzen 7 3700X processor featuring 8 cores/16 threads, 16GB of Thermaltake Toughram DDR-3200, along with a Zotac GeForce RTX 2080 AMP Extreme Core. I expect the results to be the same the other B550 motherboards we’ve tested in the past, all except of course the ASRock B550 Taichi … which is currently the best B550 motherboard to date.
We’ve already reviewed the ASRock B550M Steel Legend motherboard (micro ATX version) a few weeks ago, and we were pleased with its performance, features and price. Now let’s see if there are any additional improvements with its full-size ATX version.
Enough talk … let’s begin with a look at the specifications and features on the next page. You can buy the ASRock B550 Steel Legend motherboard
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