At around 230 Euro, the ASRock B850 Steel Legend WiFi is in the mid-price range of AM5 motherboards, but offers a number of features that were not even found in the high-end range 2 years ago. To be honest, we even diagnose the B850 Steel Legend WiFi with a small identity crisis, because strictly speaking it fulfills all the requirements for an X870 label except for USB4. However, USB4 is rarely found in peripherals at the moment and if it is, then only at inflated prices.
With up to 4 simultaneously usable M.2 SSDs with at least Gen4 speed, 2 of which are directly connected to the CPU and the PCIe 5.0 x16 graphics card slot, practically nothing is left to be desired, because wild lanesharing, as is often found on other motherboards, only takes place between the 4th M.2 slot and the 2nd PCIe slot on the B850 Steel Legend WiFi.
The B850 Steel Legend is also at the forefront of connectivity, because with Wi-Fi 7 (6GHz) and 2.5Gbps LAN, you can also travel at lightning speed in your home network, provided you have already updated your home network to the latest version. Up to 20 USB sockets with speeds from USB 2.0 to USB3.2 Gen2x2 (20Gbps) in the form of Type-A and Type-C sockets should also provide users with a lot of accessories with enough power.
Handling is also particularly easy with the B850 Steel Legend WiFi, as all M.2 slots have quick-release fasteners and even some of the massive heat sinks can be mounted with a click. With the ASRock Lite Release, even large graphics cards can be easily removed from the PCIe slot.
The equipment package is rounded off with 6 fan connections and an additional thermal sensor to measure the internal PC case temperature in order to counteract the effects of heat from the ever more power-hungry graphics cardn. Silent PC fans will also like the fact that only passive heat sinks have been installed on the board, as the small fans on VRM or chipset coolers tend to make annoying noises.
Thanks to its high-quality 8-layer PCB, we were even able to overclock the RAM to 8100MT/s and 14 power stages for the CPU are more than enough for the heaviest overclocking orgies of any AM5 processor.
With this excellent overall result, there is definitely no way around the top-equipped B850 Steel Legend WiFi from ASRock in the AM5 mid-range, which is why it easily wins our OCinside.de Purchase Tip Award.
Here you can order the ASRock B850 Steel Legend WiFi at a reasonable price. *Ad
Discuss in our forum and share experiences about the ASRock B850 Steel Legend WiFi …
* The AMD AM5 motherboard test is based on an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, 2x 24GB DDR5-6000 memory modules, Cooler Master 750W 80+ Gold power supply and the following software configuration: Microsoft Windows 11 and Futuremark PCMark10 (available in the Links and Downloads section as a download). All benchmark results serve only as a comparison of the approximate motherboard performance.
Back to the motherboard comparison with all AMD and Intel motherboard reviews !