Closer Look
ASRock Z790 Steel Legend WiFi motherboard arrived in a retail package which is well described as all ASRock motherboards. The package is like other ASRock series but is kept in a black-silver (steel) urban camo theme. The exterior tells us about the key features and specifications of the motherboard.
Inside the box is a motherboard, user’s manual, SATA data cables, cable stripes, a graphics card holder, M.2 screws, and also a WiFi antenna. It’s everything we may need for the installation, and even some more.
We are already used to the Steel Legend looks as it’s a quite popular series on Funky Kit. As long as the design is eye-catching, it’s similar to previous Steel Legend motherboards, so there are not many surprises. Everything is where we expect it to be, so it’s easy to install and manage additional components like M.2 SSD or PCIe cards. Heatsinks are quite large and cover all the components that need additional cooling. Only one of the M.2 sockets doesn’t have a heatsink.
The first M.2 socket, with a significantly larger heatsink, is designed to support PCIe 5.0 SSD. PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSDs are not available yet but should appear in the upcoming weeks, so we are ready for what the future brings.
The motherboard has no additional fans, but used heatsinks are enough to keep everything cool. The chipset heatsink and IO cover have an RGB backlight that can be controlled with ASRock Polychrome Sync software. Besides that, RGB devices can also be connected to motherboard headers.
The Z790 Steel Legend WiFi has a pre-installed IO shield. It’s already a standard in higher gaming series motherboards. In this generation, there is only a WiFi version of this motherboard. I feel it’s a step forward for ASRock as WiFi controllers are quite cheap, and most users expect it to be on board with higher series motherboards. The Steel Legend series, the same as most other ASRock motherboards, has an M.2 WiFi socket, so we can always upgrade our WiFi card if anything new appears on the market and will be faster or provide additional features. So far, the AX WiFi and the current Bluetooth seem to be solid standards for longer.
The motherboard has a 16+1+1 power phase design, so stronger than the last generation. It’s more than enough to support top series processors like the i9-13900K and overclock them high. On our 13700K processor, there was no problem reaching 5.7GHz on all P-cores, but I will tell you about it later.
The Steel Legend WiFi also has a Dragon series LAN. The Realtek 2.5Gbps LAN promises better results than on standard series cards, but being honest, I haven’t seen any significant difference compared to other 2.5Gbps controllers.
I’m not sure if it’s a shortage of audio chips or a matter of prices, but the same as some other brands, ASRock is using an older ALC897 codec, which we could see in cheaper motherboards in the last few years. I would expect at least ALC1220 in a motherboard like Steel Legend.
The Steel Legend WiFi supports up to 128GB RAM in four 32GB memory modules. The motherboard supports a maximum of DDR5-6800. This is the actual maximum we could keep stable. As far as it seems high, then on the market are already DDR5-8000 memory modules. Many competitive motherboards pass DDR5-7200, and I’m not talking about top series motherboards. The same maximum clock was on DDR5-6400 Hynix M-die and DDR5-6800 Hynix A-die modules.
Below are some photos of the working setup. There were no problems with the compatibility of various CPU coolers, RAM, or graphics cards. Also, storage devices work at full speed.
One more great feature is ASRock’s BIOS/UEFI, which I will describe on this review’s next page.
