Today, we’ll be taking a look at the ASRock X870 Steel Legend WiFi motherboard. This is one of the first all-white motherboard on the market featuring AMD’s X870 chipset.
It supports all of AMD’s Ryzen 7000, 8000 and the latest 9000 series of processors on the AM5 socket. It features a 14+2+1 Power Phase design, 8-layer, x2 Copper PCB, and 80A Dr.MOS for VCore for excellent stability and reliability.
Expansion slots include 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and 1 PCIe 4.0 x16 slot. You also get 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots supporting AMD’s EXPO memory modules with speeds of up to DDR5-8000+.
For storage it comes with 4 x SATA ports, 2 x Hyper M.2 PCIe Gen4x4 slots, and 1 x Blazing M.2 PCIe Gen5x4 slot featuring their tool-less M.2 Heatsinks design, for quick-release and easy installation of SSDs.
As far connectivity is concerned, you get a total of 18 USB ports (9 rear, 9 front), 2 x USB4 ports, WiFi7 and 2.5GB LAN.
Other features include Realtek 7.1 HD Nahimic audio, HDMI output, support for Bluetooth, and ASRock’s Polychrome Sync.
On the back I/O panel, there are 4 x USB2.0 ports, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, 4 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 2 x Super Fast USB 4 Type-C ports.
Other features include the Realtek 7.1 HD Nahimic audio with WIMA caps, a total of 21 USB ports (12 rear, 9 front), WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. And finally, you also get the latest USB4 ports and 1 x 5GbE LAN for super fast connectivity.
AMD X870 Chipset
For high-performance customization, build your PC with an AMD X670 motherboard for AMD Ryzen™ 9000, 8000, and 7000 Series processors. Fully overclockable, with USB 4.0 onboard, faster dual-channel DDR5 memory support, AMD EXPO™ technology and PCIe® 5.0 support for NVMes, set yourself up for extreme gaming and creating with an X870 motherboard.
Here you can see the main difference between the X870 and the X870E chipsets. The X870 will have a total of 36 useable PCIE lanes, while the higher end X870E will have a total of 44 useable PCIE lanes, and support for more higher speed USB ports.
Why are PCIE lanes important? Well, the number of PCIE lanes in a slot or connection determines the available bandwidth for data transfer between the motherboard and the expansion card. More lanes generally mean higher data transfer rates and better performance. For the X870, there’s a total of 36 PCIE usuable lanes versus 44 PCIE lanes for the X870E.
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 ASRock X870 Steel Legend WiFi Motherboard with the world’s fastest consumer processor – the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor, along with 32GB of Patriot Xtreme 5 DDR5-7200, Crucial T700 PCIE Gen5 SSD, and a GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card.
We’ve already seen what the ASRock’s flasgship X870E Taichi motherboard can do, so let’s see how the ASRock X870 Steel Legend WiFi fare in our tests.
OK, let’s start by taking a look at the specifications and features in our next page. You can buy something similar – ASRock X870 Pro RS WiFi for around USD $291 from Amazoon – https://amzn.to/3XMZmsD
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