Review on Motherboard ASRock B550M STEEL LEGEND by Andrey Vasilev ᠌

Name: Motherboard ASRock B550M STEEL LEGEND
Item: Motherboard ASRock B550M STEEL LEGEND
Rating: 5

July 06, 2023

I am amazed at how well the product is made, just magically!

In general, I recommend to buy. If you are not an audiophile, then the motherboard is very decent and advanced in every way. And if you are an audiophile, then you already have a bunch of all sorts of external ADCs and other sound gadgets for digitization.

Updated 1 year ago

Rating has not been changed

The photos I added highlight some of the best parts of my experience.
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Pros

In principle, a very worthy motherboard. AMD Ryzen 7 5800x started up right away, the latest UEFI / BIOS version was already installed, it seems 1.7, which was released just a couple of months before purchase. Everything has been done with care. Power supply 8pin + 4pin - a good reserve for growth, there are more. that the memory frequency can be up to 4722 Mhz. Reinforced pci-e x16 connector for a video card, gold-plated contacts in PCI-E, DIMM and audio connectors, M2 with PCI-E gen.4x16 (for Vermeers and Matiss) - really a bomb (it's a pity that only one drive is supported in this mode ), audiophile "golden" tips in the audio path and "black series" for digital, there is a digital audio output (this is important for me), six connectors for fans and water pumps (except for CPU air cooling, everything else, in fact, can be connect arbitrarily, in the settings you can specify where the chassis fan is, where the pump is, and where the cooling of the water radiator is) . plus all sorts of connectors for the backlight (I don’t know why, but someone probably needs it). The board itself appears to be ceramic. with internal solid copper layers for shielding and heat dissipation. I think it's cool. USB - average (eight on the back, and eight more on the internal connectors). Of the pleasant - one usb Type-C, but otherwise - like everyone else.

Cons

I don’t know, most likely these are not shortcomings, but features, but just in case, know: 1. When turned off, all external connected backlight goes out, but not the backlight of the motherboard. If it is configured, it will always shine for you in the night! Perhaps you just do not have enough nightlight. So for someone it's a plus :) . If you turn off the computer, turning off the key on the computer's power supply, then all the backlight settings go to default (and the backlight is on out of the box and is rather nasty). 2. The heatsink on an NVMe SSD combined with a heatsink on a chipset is nonsense. Firstly, NVMe SSD drives either have their own heatsinks, or there are stickers on the drives just at the place where the heatsink is attached, which cannot be removed. you will lose the warranty on the NVMe SSD (there are stickers on all sides of the drives). Secondly, the gap between the heatsink and the SSD is 2 mm and between the heatsink and the chipset is 5 mm (there are Velcro-thermal pads . which, although they are stuck without a gap, are pressed "in no way" . The average temperature of ssd at I get 46 degrees (perhaps on the contrary, the heat on the SSD goes from the video card). 3. When installing the second M.2, three sata ports on the motherboard will be disabled . in fact, this is a property of processors based on Matisse and Renoir (I don’t know about Vermeers), but it may turn out to be insulting. 4. I did not need it, because 64Gb of RAM is enough for me, but if you install all four DIMMs, then the memory bus frequency decreases. In general, the motherboard has a huge overclocking margin, and everything can be "overclocked" back, but keep in mind . This is also a feature of the chipset . 5. With all the good sounding of the built-in sound card, it picks up pickups from a cell phone along the analog path while searching for cells . Approximately -58 db (which, of course, is not audible to the ear, but can be seen on the instruments . sometimes I digitize vinyl and noticed ). It's annoying. Most likely, my motherboard is just bad with grounding (a new case with very good plastic painting, even stops-platforms for mounting the motherboard . if the paint is torn off, everything can "leave"), but annoyingly.