We’ve reviewed serveral Z690 motherboards over the past few months. Most offered offered exceptional performance but they can be pricey, especially for the ones that support DDR5 ram. Luckily, Intel have recently released a more affordable mainstream chipset, the B660. And now we’re seeing more and more manufacturers introducing their B660 motherboards aimed at the mainstream user who wants to use their existing DDR4 ram with the latest technologies.
Today, we will taking a look at the ASRock B660 Steel Legend Motherboard. This motherboard uses Intel’s B660 chipset and is suitable all of Intel’s latest 12th Gen Alder Lake processors on the LGA1700 socket. It supports DDR4 ram with memory speeds of up to DDR4-5000 (OC), and comes with 1 x PCIE 5.0 x16 steel slot, 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16, and 2 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slots.
The motherboard features all the benefits of their Steel Legend series, offering rock-solid durability and irresistible aesthetics with its black/white/silver camo design. It’s aimed at daily users and mainstream enthusiasts who wants stability and reliable performance at a decent price.
For storage, it comes with 6 x SATA3 ports, 2 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4) and 1 x M.2 (PCIe Gen3) for SSDs, and features the Dragon 2.5G ethernet and M.2 Wifi connector for LAN connectivity. What’s more, it comes with all of ASRock Steel Legend features such the 9 Phase Dr.MOS Power Design, 6-layer PCB, as 7.1 channel HD Nahimic Audio, and of course ASRock’s Polychrome RGB.
Intel B660 Chipset
The Intel B660 chipset is aimed at the mainstream market so unfortunately, it does not come with CPU overclocking, but it does offer memory overclocking. It also comes with 4 x DMI 4.0 lanes, up to 6 x PCIe 4.0 lanes and 8 x PCIe 3.0 lanes.
It also supports up to 4 x SATA3 ports for SSDs, and a maximum of 12 USB ports (2 x USB3.2 Gen2x2, 4 x USB3.2 Gen2x1 and 6 x USB3.2 Gen1x1). Other features include the support for WiFi 6e and 1 gigabit LAN. Overall, the B660 chipset is more than enough for most users and gamers who’s after an affordable motherboard supporting all the Intel 12th Gen Alder Lake processors.
Since DDR5 ram is still quite expensive (twice the price of DDR4 or more), it makes no financial sence to upgrade the motherboard, chip and ram just so that you can use Intel’s 12th Gen Alder Lake processors. So with a B660 chipset based motherboard, supporting DDR4 ram is a no-brainer, and allows many users with existing DDR4 ram to easily upgrade to a LGA1700 mothebroard.
The only disadvantage of using a B660 motherboard, is the lack of CPU overclocking and a lower amount of PCIE 4 & PCIE 3 lanes. However, you can still perform some memory overclocking.
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 will be testing the motherboard using an Intel Core i9-12900KF featuring 16 cores/24 threads, 16GB ADATA Spectrix DDR4-3600 ram, a Radeon RX 6500 XT, along with Adata Legend 840 1TB PCIE Gen4 SSD. I’m expecting the ASRock B660 Steel Legend to offer some decent performance, and should site below the H670 chipset, with the Z690 being at the top.
OK, let’s dive straight in and start by taking a look at the specifications and features in our next page.
You can buy the micro ATX version – the ASRock B660M Steel Legend
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