Verdict and Conclusion
I’ve always loved ASRock’s Steel Legend series of motherboards. They’re usually affordable, offers decent performance, and comes with a nice white/silver camo design that gives it great aesthetics. And again, this is true with the ASRock B860 Steel Legend WiFi motherboard.
An affordable motherboard doesn’t mean it lacks features. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The ASRock B860 Steel Legend WiFi features the same 2oz Copper PCB as found on their other Steel Legend series of motherboards. It comes with a decent 14+1+1 Power Phase Design with 80A Dr.MOS for Vcore+GT+SA, as well as 20K black capacitors for enhanced stability and durability.
For cooling, the motherboard features several large Aluminium heatsinks for the VRMs/MOSFETs and chipset for efficient heat dissipation.
During our tests, we used Intel Core Ultra 9 285K processor, along with 32GB of Patriot Viper Xtreme 5 DDR5-7600 ram, Crucial T700 1TB PCIE Gen5 SSD, and the GeForce RTX 4080 Super.
We managed to get decent scores in all of our benchmarks, including a Cinebench 2024 score of 2,288 points for multi core, and 117 points for single core. For PCMark 10, we got an acceptable score of 9,441, and an adequate score of 16,570 for PassMark 11.
For Procyon Video Editing Benchmark, we got a score of 11,735 and a score of 176 for the AI Computer Vision Benchmark. For 3DMark Steel Nomad and Speedway, we got a fairly decent scores of 6,763 and 7,482 respectively. And finally, for Port Royal and Timespy, we got a pretty good score of 18,644 and 27,281 respectively.
Now let’s take a look at some of the features that this motherboard has to offer. For storage, you a total of 4 SATA ports and 1 x Blazing M.2 slot (PCIe Gen5x4) with their Toolless Multi-Layer M.2 Heatsink design and includes a bottom heatsink for effective heat dissipation. You also get 2 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4x4) and 1 x M.2 (PCIe Gen4x2) slots.
Expansion slots include 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 and 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 with a Lite Release Design featuring a spring-loaded latch for easy installation and removal of graphics cards.
For connectivity, you get a total 18 x USB ports and on the back I/O panel, you’ll find the connectors for WiFi 6E antennas, BIOS Flashback button, HDMI output, DisplayPort, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Ports (10 Gb/s), 1 x Thunderbolt 4 port, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports, 3 x USB 2.0 Ports, 2.5 GbE LAN and for audio 1 x optical S/PDIF Out connector, Line-out and Mic-in.
Other features include the 7.1 HD Nahimic Audio, Lightning gaming ports, ASRock’s Polychrome RGB and support for SignalRGB.
For those pondering whether to get a Z890 or B860 motherboard, you have to ask yourself … do you need use all those PCIE lanes offered by the Z890, if not, then the B860 will work just fine. It’s designed for most users who will just want to install a decent graphics card for light gaming and content creation, and may be couple of M.2 SSDs for storage.
You can buy the ASRock B860 Steel Legend WiFi motherboard for arou nd USD $199 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/4hsY2Uu
Final Words:
The ASRock B860 Steel Legend WiFi surprised us all with its overall performance and features, but most of all its price. It’s definitely one of the most affordable B860 motherboards on the market. It’s perfect for users who’s after an affordable next-gen Intel motherboard with great aesthetics for light gaming and content creation.
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