ASRock B450M Steel Legend Socket AM4 ATX Motherboard review

ASRock B450M Steel Legend Socket AM4 ATX Motherboard review

ASRock B450M Steel Legend Socket AM4 ATX Motherboard review

Specifications
CPU - AMD AM4 Socket
- Digi Power design
- 6 Power Phase design
Chipset - AMD Promontory B450
Memory - Dual Channel DDR4 Memory Technology
- 4 x DDR4 DIMM Slots
- AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Pinnacle Ridge) support DDR4 3533+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933(OC) / 2667/2400/2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
- AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Summit Ridge) support DDR4 3466+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933(OC) / 2667/2400/2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
- AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Raven Ridge) support DDR4 3466+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933/2667/2400/2133 non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
- Max. capacity of system memory: 64GB**
- 15μ Gold Contact in DIMM Slots

*For Ryzen Series CPUs (Raven Ridge), ECC is only supported with PRO CPUs.
Please refer to below table for AMD non-XMP memory frequency support. For more details, please refer to the QVL on ASRock's website.
BIOS - 128Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with multilingual GUI support
- Supports "Plug and Play"
- ACPI 5.1 compliance wake up events
- Supports jumperfree
- SMBIOS 2.3 support
- DRAM Voltage multi-adjustment
Graphics - Integrated AMD Radeon™ Vega Series Graphics in Ryzen Series APU*
- DirectX 12, Pixel Shader 5.0
- Shared memory default 2GB. Max Shared memory supports up to 16GB.**
- Dual graphics output: Support HDMI and DisplayPort 1.2 ports by independent display controllers
- Supports HDMI 1.4 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096x2160) @ 24Hz / (3840x2160) @ 30Hz
- Supports DisplayPort 1.2 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096x2160) @ 60Hz
- Supports Auto Lip Sync, Deep Color (12bpc), xvYCC and HBR (High Bit Rate Audio) with HDMI 1.4 Port (Compliant HDMI monitor is required)
- Supports HDCP 1.4 with HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 Ports
- Supports 4K Ultra HD (UHD) playback with HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 Ports

*Actual support may vary by CPU

**The Max shared memory 16GB requires 32GB system memory installed.
Audio - 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC892 Audio Codec)
- Premium Blu-ray Audio support
- Supports Surge Protection
- Nichicon Fine Gold Series Audio Caps
- PCB Isolate Shielding
- Individual PCB Layers for R/L Audio Channel
- Gold Audio Jacks
LAN - PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s
- Realtek RTL8111H
- Supports Wake-On-LAN
- Supports Lightning/ESD Protection
- Supports Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az
- Supports PXE
Slots AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Summit Ridge and Pinnacle Ridge)
- 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slot (PCIE2: x16 mode)*
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE3: x4 mode)
AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Raven Ridge)
- 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slot (PCIE2: x8 mode) (If you use Athlon 2xxGE series APU, PCIE2 slot will run at x4 mode.)
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE3: x4 mode)
AMD Athlon series CPUs
- 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slot (PCIE2: x4 mode)*
- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE3: x4 mode)

- 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 Slot
- Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™

*Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks
Storage - 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug*
- 1 x Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_1), supports M Key type 2242/2260/2280 M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s) (with Summit Ridge, Raven Ridge and Pinnacle Ridge) or Gen3 x2 (16 Gb/s) (with Athlon 2xxGE series APU and Raven Ridge 2)**
- 1 x M.2 Socket (M2_2), supports M Key type 2230/2242/2260/2280 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module**

*M2_2 and SATA3_3 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the other one will be disabled.

**Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks
Supports ASRock U.2 Kit
Connector - 1 x COM Port Header
- 1 x TPM Header
- 1 x Chassis Intrusion Header
- 1 x Power LED and Speaker Header
- 1 x RGB LED Header*
- 1 x Addressable LED Header**
- 1 x AMD Fan LED Header***
- 1 x CPU Fan Connector (4-pin)****
- 1 x CPU/Water Pump Fan Connector (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control)*****
- 3 x Chassis/Water Pump Fan Connectors (4-pin) (Smart Fan Speed Control)******
- 1 x 24 pin ATX Power Connector
- 1 x 8 pin 12V Power Connector
- 1 x Front Panel Audio Connector
- 2 x USB 2.0 Headers (Support 4 USB 2.0 ports) (Supports ESD Protection)
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Header (Supports 2 USB 3.1 Gen1 ports) (Supports ESD Protection)
Rear Panel I/O - 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
- 1 x HDMI Port
- 1 x DisplayPort 1.2
- 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port
- 2 x USB 2.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection)
- 1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s) (Supports ESD Protection)
- 4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Ports (Supports ESD Protection)
- 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
- HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone (Gold Audio Jacks)
Unique Feature ASRock USB 3.1 Gen2
- ASRock USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s)
- ASRock USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s)
ASRock Super Alloy
- XXL Aluminum Alloy Heatsink
- Premium 60A Power Choke
- Nichicon 12K Black Caps (100% Japan made high quality conductive polymer capacitors)
- I/O Armor
- Sapphire Black PCB
- High Density Glass Fabric PCB
- 2oz Copper PCB
ASRock Steel Slot
ASRock Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4)
ASRock Full Spike Protection (for all USB, Audio, LAN Ports)
ASRock Live Update & APP Shop
AMD StoreMI
Software and UEFI Software
- ASRock A-Tuning
- ASRock Polychrome SYNC
- ASRock XFast LAN
UEFI
- ASRock Full HD UEFI
- ASRock Instant Flash
- ASRock Easy RAID Installer

*These utilities can be downloaded from ASRock Live Update & APP Shop.
Support CD - Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version), Google Chrome Browser and Toolbar
Accessories - Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield
- 2 x SATA Data Cables
- 2 x Screws for M.2 Sockets
Hardware Monitor - Temperature Sensing: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans
- Fan Tachometer: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans
- Quiet Fan (Auto adjust chassis fan speed by CPU temperature): CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans
- Fan Multi-Speed Control: CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis/Water Pump Fans
- CASE OPEN detection
- Voltage monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore
Form Factor - Micro ATX Form Factor: 9.6-in x 9.6-in, 24.4 cm x 24.4 cm
- Solid Capacitor design
OS - Microsoft® Windows® 10 64-bit
Certifications - FCC, CE
- ErP/EuP ready (ErP/EuP ready power supply is required).

PC was kidding here with something new from asrock the B 450 M steel legend so from the steel legend series of motherboards I've got here an AMD version the micro ATX sized specifically and well it has lots of different support and features which we're gonna look at more in detail first things first let's open up the box and see what's inside we've got as you can see here the quick installation guide so all about the hardware and how to install it software set-up guide of course for the asrock utilities and tools that it comes with here in this CD ok very

handy and of course we've got here an additional piece of literature on the memory modules installation configuration I have here two screws for the MDOT two nvme SSDs that you can install for example and there's some SATA cables as well as you would expect coming in the box so you've got two of those and nice IO shield plate that you'll install at the back of your case you can see right there there's a heavy-duty one very nice graphic design on it take a closer look at that and that's pretty much it in the box so let's go ahead now look at the specs on this baby

you can see here the cpu type obviously different a.m. for rise in CPUs and older ones as well that's the beauty about this supporting the B 450 chipset you're going to be able to really push to the limit some of the Rison series cpus up to 35 33 megahertz overclock on memory on the ddr4 so that would be nice to see i'm gonna do a part two video and overclock some memory and see how high we can get 64 gigs of that maximum by the way now when it comes to those

expansion slots there's three PCI Express slots you can see there are 3.0 the first one 16x second one eight and then the third 4x but of course depending on the configuration the second PCI slot might run at 4x okay so keep that in mind there on those specs and 4 SATA 3 connectors as you can see right there mentions also the one ultra m2 socket which is nice and one regular MDOT - socket for your nvme SSD as well further down the list we've got the onboard video

chipset should you get an integrated graphics type of processor otherwise let's look at the audio chipset there the ALC 8/9 to the realtek supporting 7.1 channels of audio terrific and the realtek RTL 11 1h which is that your Gigabit LAN right there on that one okay and at the back of the case we're gonna look at all of these input and output ports again I like the fact that they've added the USB 3.1 generation to Type C okay a lot of new boards supporting that these days and asrock spares no expense on that including all of these other connectors relating to

your RGB headers right whether you have addressable RGB or RGB I do like the fact that this board supports obviously setting up your color coordination with the polychrome sync and you know having all your different components synchronized together with whatever color combo and effects that you want and they talk about that here at the back of the box as well one thing that I like to point out as well as those huge aluminum alloy heat sinks on the VRMs there at

the top okay those are very nice lightweight very solid construction that got a stainless steel look to this board obviously you can see here the layout pause the screen at any time if you want to see this more in detail but we're gonna do a flyby now on the board so again you've got your nice alloy heat sinks at the top there you can see them on the side with a steel legend going across very nice great graphics on that and the stainless steel look and feel is very nice as well you've got your PCI Express slot there with the metal cover and well what can I say I mean a

m4 socket this takes you a long way not just older generation CPUs but new orleans as well the quality capacitors and construction is always something that I look for in a board right we want to be able to overclock easily things and that is evident here we've got lots of fan connectors lots of support for our water cooling and your all-in-one liquid cooling solutions so that's really good no problems with insufficient amount of fan header so I'm happy to report that that was good to see so again the Nietzsche con feingold capacitors is a nice addition ok so I like the fact

that the steel legend has higher quality capacitors on there the ultra m2 socket there is nice and you've got to m2 so you have room to grow at the bottom there you've got all the different headers there for your USB or audio and there's those golden capacitors that I was telling you about those higher quality ones and like I said it's good to see that asrock is adding that now at the back here you've got your two USB regular is with the ps2 port you got display port HDMI you've got USB 3.1 you got the type C that I mentioned a second ago your your Gigabit LAN

and your audio ok so very nice and here's a look at the back of the board in case you're wondering about that one as well ok so when it comes to installation I've got a combination of Coolermaster hardware that I'm gonna make work here when it comes to the RGB the lighting the addressable RGB all of that stuff from the asrock be 450m steel legend board we're gonna slap in there a rise in v cpu and i did research on a cpu that needs you know some considerable tweaking according to people that it's very difficult to get to a 4 gigahertz or even higher

without increasing the voltage over one point 4 volts which i think is kind of insane I mean I don't want to unnecessarily start running this at one point 4 or 5 volts you know just to get the 4 gigahertz so I'm really going to be showing you here overclocking that CPU now here it is the board installed after I put in the i/o plate you can see how nice this looks in there with the rise in v cpu I've put in the 1500 X okay that's the CPU in there I put a VIPRE I'm got two SSD you can see it right there and the Coolermaster liquid cooling and it looks beautiful I'm gonna be

adding two sticks of memory in here I'm just installed one just for now just to get things up and running so you can see it hassle-free no errors no problems getting this up and running I tell you it was a breeze I'm very happy to report that now I'm gonna do a separate video on installing the liquid cooler and all of that stuff this is specifically to talk about the steel legend and its features now when it comes to the RGB you can control some of the lighting effects through the UEFI you know the bias itself or through the software now in the bias you can see

here the risin 5 1500 X has been overclocked to 4 gigahertz how well I just set the frequency the megahertz there to 4,000 left everything pretty much on auto increase the voltage though to 1.38 1 as you can see and put the load line calibration to its highest level which is 5 level 5 other than that I left everything else at Auto and I changed the CPU configuration to disable the cool and quiet so that there's no throttling going around so it's consistently running at 4 gigahertz at one point three eight one volts not at one point four five volts like I've seen all these other

reviewers going crazy increasing the voltage unnecessarily maybe they had bad motherboards I don't know what it is but on this board on the asrock B 450 M hassle-free overclocking to 4 gigahertz from 3.5 gigahertz which is the default so I was really pleased didn't have any problems it's it's you know not crazy overclocking it's smart overclocking right and this board makes it happen what can I say I mean the quality components and construction obviously makes it easy now when it comes to full load temperatures well 60 degrees Celsius you know

roughly is the maximum that it achieved at 4 gigahertz running full blown you know that's pretty darn good and on idle roughly about 25 degrees Celsius to 28 it just depends on your ambient temperature how hot your room is right but that gives you a good idea I mean I ran the tests here to make sure that I could try to make this thing to hang and it was just not hang stable like a rock now here are some more benchmarks that show basically running at 4 gigahertz and how it compares to these other CPUs so you can see how well it's showing this

processor on the asrock B 450 mm steel legend very impressive results considering that I didn't really have to do anything to overclock it it was very easy so I don't know what other people were complaining about the 1500 X and not being able to get it to work under 1.4 vaults it's working just fine here are some more benchmarks on the CPU mark 11190 as you can see how it lies and compares with with respect to the other CPUs it's it's it's lying right in between the Intel Core i5 and the Intel Core i7 so very nice very solid results they're consistent you can see

here that it compares to Intel Core i7 4790k I guess or a 770 you know not bad not bad at all I mean you could also overclock through the software they asrock a tuning software here does allow you to do overclocking through that as well so if you're not comfortable going through the UEFI screens and setting that up you could do it through here of course for me I prefer going through the bias through the UEFI screens instead but I like the system info I like the the fan auto-tuning feature they call it the fantastic tuning and that allows you also to set things to turn

on at certain levels and well like I said at the beginning I love the fact that we're still using the am for socket so brand new board latest generation still can use older chips or the latest chips so that's great overclocking 2 3 5 3 3 megahertz on the memory is something that I love I love to see that working and I'm gonna try it next in part 2 you can see here also the PCI Express slots lots of movement there for upgrading and great overclocking results thanks to these power chokes the quality capacitors and construction that come with this board you can see here that

it kept temperatures down and well the RGB LEDs are terrific I mean you saw the colors there they were really nice everything color coordinated running basically right now on a rainbow mode but I'm going to do a separate video on the on the water cooler here and setting up the the fans of this case on this cooler master case so we can have a separate walkthrough on how to

configure all of that as well but the board itself solid construction great results definitely recommend it from asrock comment below let me know what you think about this board is it something that you're interested what is it that you'd like to see from asrock and this board and what are the features that you like the most I like to think is rock for providing it .

ASRock B450M Steel Legend Socket AM4 ATX Motherboard review

is why this latest motherboard from asrock might surprise you you might have seen all of their new phantom gaming products launching in the last six or so months but phantom gaming isn't the only new series of products that they're releasing we're back with a new motherboard Monday except it's motherboard Monday on a Tuesday in this outing we're checking out the brand-new asrock be for 50 M still legend micro ATX motherboard that supports first and

second generation rising CPUs let's check it out , just before we start this review I just want to make it clear that our motherboard Mondays review I heart really reviews they're just overview so you can get an idea of the feature set and what actually physically comes in the box when you buy a brand-new motherboard let's do it all right it's motherboard Mondays on a Tuesday with the B 450 M still legend from Ezra alrighty let's see what we got in here we have

an installing memory modules or name for boards I guess this makes sense since AMD boards are usually more sensitive to different types of memory what they've got here the software setup guide that tells you how to set up the software I'm guessing I'm not sure what software it's in reference to there's 2 m2 screws because the board actually supports to m2 drives as well what else we got in here we have C this is a bit of a mystery box so here we go here we go this circular

plastic disc with all of the drivers on it to make your board work I have a suggestion for as rocky a soggy it might do it actually putting these on a USB stick that'll be a lot nicer all right now what else we got oh we've got a postcard um if you want me to send you this postcard in the mail drop a comment down below and the first person to do it I guess I'll send this postcard to all right what do we got else we got in here I think that's it this is the manual this is one of the thickest manuals I've ever seen it's the thickness of a paperback book it is seriously on another

level for manuals and actually this is a good thing because having thick manuals is nice he is that new digital camo looking i/o shield it is gorgeous I cannot wait to build with this motherboard everything about it just looks really really cool I love I love digital camera what can I say alright next up we've got these solder cables this is for plugging in your hard drives into your motherboard it's got two of them included so you can connect two hard drives up but

obviously the board will support more drives than that we're about to get into that so just hang on a minute last but not least the pizza of resistance the B 450 M still legend this is a micro ATX sized motherboard so this is design for smaller form factor but not like totally small form factor systems and now let's take a closer look first off we've got the front panel audio connector next up is an addressable RGB header yes it has addressable RGB and an analog RGB header you

have two USB 2.0 headers so you can connect up things like a EOS or front panel USB to PWM fan connectors so you can connect your fans straight into your motherboard and last but not least the front panel connectors for the switches and the lights and all of the things on the front of your system next up is for solder connectors so you can connect up to four side of hard disks a USB 3.0 header and a 24 pin power connector so you can power your motherboard there's another analog RGB connector so you can connect the lighting from your cooler this is actually

in a really good position and two more PWM fan connectors one for a pump and the other for a CPU fan you could see the improvements over the B 450 M pro 4 with a massive vrm heatsink this is a lot bigger than it was on the previous generation before 50 M pro 4 and an 8-pin EPS CPU power connector like I mentioned the board supports 2 m dot 2 drives the ultra M 2 is only nvme and the other supports nvme and solder m dot 2 drives it's got 2 by 16 size PCIe slots however the top one is 16 x and the lower one is 4 x this board also supports crossfire however I

feel that it might be a little bit tight if you try with this board it supports dual channel ddr3 modules it supports four modules in total with the maximum overclock of 35 33 megahertz it's got a standard am 4 socket which supports first generation and second generation Rison including every single rise in CPU and AM for CPU you could possibly imagine it also includes standard cooler mounting for every aim for socket and will support most am4 coolers on the market if not all of them all right let's take a look at what's on the rear i/o first up you've got

two USB 2.0 ports and a ps2 port you've got DisplayPort and HDMI four USB 3.0 ports you've got Gigabit Ethernet a USB 3.1 gen2 type-c port and a Type C port and 7.1 audio with optical output as well you're getting a lot of i/o on a really affordable board let's take a cinematic look , my first impressions of this board are all pretty positive it seems as though they took the formula from the asrock beef 450 empro 4 they

improved on the vrm cooling and they gave it a brand new look seriously how cool is that new digital camo look I'm really really diggin this new design we've got a full build with this board coming in the next week.

450 motherboards the us-rok be 450 still legend keep watching to find out more okay so on today's video we'll be taking a look at the house rock p450 still legend this is the full ATX version we did actually review the micro ATX version a little while back which sure you can check out from the review up here if you wanted to but today we're going to take a look at the full ATX one which actually gives you a few more features a little bit more flexibility and for me

bang for the buck this pretty much takes the win so let's start with a brief tour of the packaging then we'll go through the unboxing process and then at the end I'll give you my final thoughts so packaging wise asrock have done really well on this this looks really nice it's a nice glossy box to it not the usual kind of cardboard stuff although there is a cardboard inner carton but the actual presentation of this I feel is fantastic as you can see it's got the digital camo print

on here which is also reflected on the motherboard itself but we'll take a look at that a little bit later some of the features of the board so it supports HDMI as pretty much you'd expect polychrome sync so if you're into addressable RGB this is a definite win also we've got support for most of the AMD rising chips and also some of the other lower end chips that are currently on the market and it's also one thing which we'll get onto a little bit later but this board

generally does support pretty much every chip that you can possibly buy at the moment for the m4 platform so moving right into the back of the box it goes into a little more detail about what we've got here so it goes into quite a lot of detail about the polychrome sink and the RGB lighting effects there are RGB lighting effects actually on the i/o shield and also on the Southbridge here so again if you're into your RGB this is definitely a winner also given to tell you about the full coverage MDOT to armor which is included out of the box also it says about

the Nishikawa 12k caps which are used for the audio solution to actually make it to be a fantastic audio solution for both inputs and outputs also goes on to discuss the premium 60 and chokes which we used on the board this is a four plus two phase setup for the V RM so essentially it's a four phase the plus two is you don't really take that into consideration so yeah this is suitable for pretty much every chip out there but if you look in overclocking or doing

some kind of dry ice situation this isn't the board for you you really do need to look a bit higher up the product stack but for most people for overclocking of six core CPUs four core CPUs no problems whatsoever eight core CPUs is where it starts to get a little bit iffy with these VRMs maybe you want a little bit more extra cooling around that area bugging if you're just going to be using out-of-the-box solution and using precision boost overclock then you should be

absolutely fine it also goes on to discuss the USBs so we've got some USBs on there plenty of USB gen 3 stuff going on type a and type C again we'll take a look at that in more detail when we take it out of box which we're gonna do right now ok so inside the box we get another inner box with a Carson with all of our motherboard and accessories so let's go through the accessories and see what we actually get so there is a memory installation guide to tell you

which channels to use if you're using dual channel RAM or cord channel you get a pair of SATA 3 6 gigabit per second connectors one straight and one right-angled you get your digital camo print IO shield you get an MDOT to drive stand off the other one which is included on the board already so you don't worry about that one too much you get a as roll postcard which if you want to send some someone a postcard then that's pretty hard l guess you get the asrock

driver DVD with all the kind of software and all the bits and pieces generally most people won't be using this so it's there if you need it you get a rather large quick installation guide in multiple languages you get a pair of m2 or and then a drive retaining screws there is the B 450 still legend set up guide for software last but not least we get the motherboard itself ok so here is the board itself and in my opinion this is a really pretty board it's got a lot going on color

scheme noise this is relatively neutral it should fit in with most build schemes you've got quite a lot of silver quite a lot of white and quite a lot of black in there a bit of grey so it will fit in with most systems even if you're going for a color build maybe a red or blue or green or something that this is going to tie in quite nicely and the whites actually will reflect the RGB lighting effects should you be using them ok so let's take a tour around the motherboard and look at the connectivity and our options so in this top corner we've got our 8 pin or 4 pin supplementary

CPU power connector next this we've got a rather large heatsink over our second part of the face for the V RMS there is actually quite a lot charge he sink attached to the vrm solution here with our four port hair and support hair isn't the best it does work it does do the job but they do get slightly warmer with your 8 core or higher CPU so obviously do better and mine like I said previously but otherwise looks very nice and is a relatively good solution especially again

this is a relatively budget be 450 board so moving along slightly more we've got our connection at the top here for our 12-volt RGB and also there are two fan headers so if you're using an all-in-one or you've got additional fans in the front of your case nice and easy way to hook up those extra fans the fans actually do control things like the PWM or DC monitoring so you can control them quite easily both in the BIOS and in the us-rok software maybe then we've got our 4 RAM slots which is nice to see this board will support up to 35 33 megahertz in RAM with

certain overclock on certain CPUs if you want more details on what CPUs and also what Ram are supported for those CPUs check out the links in the video description you can see what will work with your particular setup moving down we've got our 24 pin power connector in pretty much usual space and thank from that we've got our USB 3.0 front panel header connection on this session we've got all of our SATA interfaces so if you're connecting a SATA Drive then

you've got six ports to choose from there now the SATA and the nvme or MDOT two drives do share certain links so do bear that in mind if you're using the secondary nvme or MDOT to drive slot here you will lose the ability to SATA ports three and four conversely if you're using the NDOT to drive in the top position you will lose the ability to use the PCI Express forespore here which is normally used for crossfire and that kind of thing so do bear that in mind so

moving down to the very bottom we've got our i/o panel control area so nice and easy to get to and in the usual place where you'd expect it to next that we've got some additional connections for power and also for speaker so if you're using a BIOS speaker to detect BIOS bolts that kind of thing then you can plug back in here next up we've got another pair of fan headers which again really nice to see next that we've got our CMOS reset and our five volt addressable RGB

header so if you want to synchronize your 5 volt addressable RGB in your case or with fans etc then you can hook it up there and then you can have it synchronize with the on-board goings-on as well which is really nice next up we've got a couple of USB 2 headers so if you want to add on a couple of extra USB 2 ports over for the front or for the rear two options there and move it alongside we've got our comm port which pretty much no one's ever going to use but it's there

should you need it next like we've got a 12 volt RGB header so if you're into your 12 volt you can actually mix and match with this board so if you've got a 12 volt RGB setup or if you've got a 5 volt address with large be set up you can't have a mix and match and control them both in the software I have them so they're relatively well synced obviously 12 volt RG being you won't get things like the chase or the kind of the flow effect but you can get a very close

approximation to that next one up is our TPM header or trusted platform module again most people probably never going to use that next that we've got our audio output so if you're using front panel audio headset microphone that kind of thing you can plug that into that header and our next like we've got our gold cups the Nishikawa 12 case which again like I said before uses very very high quality capacitors to give you really good sound and both for inputs and outputs the audio is taken care of by the realtek 892 chipset which isn't the greatest chipset but

certainly this chipset with these capacitors actually makes for a really effective solution so moving on to our PCI Express ports we've got two PCI Express x ones then a times four which is in the guise of a time 16 slot another couple of a PCI Express x ones and then we've got our main PCI Express x 16 version 3.0 so lots of connectivity options there we've also got another fan header just in this top section here so if you've got a rear fan mounted which most of us

tend to then it's a nice easy way of accessing it so that is pretty much it for the bits on the board there is actually another header here next to the BIOS chip which is for programming the boss this isn't a user thing this is purely for programming at the factory another nice feature is this board actually comes with a little sticker on it telling you which BIOS provision is actually installed out of the factory this particular board comes with version P 3.20 so this is one of the

latest model so you should be absolutely fine with sticking pretty much any chip in straight out of the box so let's take a look at the rear i/o now the rear i/o is pretty decent got quite a lot going on here so we've got two USB 2.0 ports we've also got a combination nice stroke keyboard ps/2 connector next up is our display ports then there's an HDMI now the DisplayPort and HDMI are only for use with processors which have an onboard graphics solutions such as APU so 200

GE 3200 G that sort of think these if you're using a discreet graphics card will be disabled so you can count those out of the equation if you're building first system and you've got everything kites up and you try plugging in your monitors into there and you don't get any display plug it into your graphics card and you should be absolutely fine moving then we've got our USB 3.0 so these are actually USB 3.1 JEM one next up we've got USB 3.1 gen2 so that's a type A and a

type-c connector we've also got our land theater with the support of the Gigabit LAN and is using the realtek eight one one one eight chipset which is a derivative of the PCI Express one next up we've got our audio jacks now these are gold-plated jacks and also we've got our speed if obstacle so you can connect up to a same processing system like 7.1 surround sign that kind of thing but if you want to use a traditional analog 7.1 surround system you can do that as well so

you put your earphone your microphone and your line jacks and those extra two connectors are for your Center and your subwoofer speakers so pretty much all types of the speaker setups are cater for pretty easily straight at the box ok so there we go there is a brief tour around the board and the connectivity personally I think this is a great board and it serves as a fantastic option at the moment in the UK you can pick these up which I feel is actually a fair price for this particular type of board a lot of

flexibility lots of connectivity addressable RGB which I'm a firm favor of but also gives you options for using older RGB technologies twelve volt systems that kind of thing the only whole back of this particular board that I really am aware of is the vrm solution which again this price point is very common across the board if you're planning to use a rosin line processor realistically you should be aiming a little bit higher at the product stack maybe even heading 4

and X 5 7 c chipset but for those of us using 6 cores or a course or even 4 cores this boards can be absolutely fantastic that's going to give you a little bit of room to grow as well it will support the latest and greatest chips just don't expect to be overclocking them to astronomic Heights so all in all I think this is a fantastic board but please do let me know in the comment section what you think of it but in the meantime I'll be Mike this is my sandbox on reviews and I - and hopefully we'll catch you in the very next review thanks for reading .