Gadgetory

earlier in the year when we're at CES in Las Vegas in the US we're at the asrock suite and I was having a look through all their different motherboards and this one caught my eye this was the B 450 steel legend now it comes in a micro ATX version as well but the biggest thing here is that they've redone the ascetic completely with a new digital camo print but of course with all the motherboards that come through takia city I'm gonna run it through its paces with things like VRM temperature tests as well as testing out the onboard audio to see if it's really fit for someone who just wants to get into gaming and do a bit of overclocking but before we do that let's take this thing out of the box snap some b-roll and then put it on the test bench so now all the testing is done and there's mediocre point about this board and then there's some really good points first we'll get the mediocre out of the way the vrm itself it's a four plus two phase design they've put about a hundred and forty grams worth of heat sinks on both but since they're a split system you're only really getting seventy grams of heat sink on the four phases which connects to the CPU for the MOSFETs they're using SM for 336 and sm for three three sevens on the low and high side and for the chokes they got 60 amp solutions from magic and then on the caps we're talking 12 K Nietzsche con solutions but when it all comes down to the vrm we can have X amount of phases all this fancy stuff but I like to just put it through the real-world paces so we had the risin seven 2708 core solution 16 threads we overclocked that to 4.1 gigahertz with a water cooling solution and here we had temperatures that on the rise in CPU that were absolutely fine but the vrm temperatures themselves with the IR camera got over 90 degrees I believe I read up to 97 degrees so it was okay that this was in a 26 degree ambient controlled environment by the way so they could get worse if we're on a really hot day in summer but basically if you're overclocking on this motherboard you've all definitely in my opinion want to put a cooling solution like a 12 centimeter fan or something like that over this four phase design just so it'll stay cool and it won't go near throttling as for me personally when I see 90 degrees on my IR camera or higher that's sort of like a warning level I'd like to stay below that for 24/7 usage then when it comes to the BIOS asrock do a great job of implementing a simple UEFI it's very easy to use and you can overclock with ease but one thing that I have noticed is that they've improved the RGB software quite a lot you've got 13 different patterns to choose from and since you can control this now with the addressable RGB headers you can link up all the rest of your licenses we've done here in the background and then control that via the actual bias itself so you don't even install any software fully controllable by the BIOS so basically I like what they've done with the polychrome solution this time around on the steel legend now onto some other important things with this board you get USB 3.1 gen2 which I believe is up to 10 gigabits per second transfers I think there's a new fan named for it nowadays that people pointed out in the comments that's just completely over my head I'm just gonna keep sticking to the USB three USB 3.1 USB 3.1 gen2 it's pretty easy to understand right you keep going up in speeds but that aside we tested out the USB 3 speeds they were absolutely fine tested out the onboard real technic solution that was fine up till about a hundred and thirteen megabytes per second just constantly it wasn't dropping out at all so that's a reliable solution if you used to use that in a home network or an ass and then on top of that the audio this is where things get very interesting for the B 450 still legend simply because they've used the realtek al c8 9 - which is lower in number than the ALC 1220 and you'd probably think that it's inferior and yes it would be but is it that inferior to the point where someone would really notice it in the real world when I put it through all the stress tests here it performed phenomenally well it's some of the best onboard audio I've seen and that's the thanks to the niche econ gold caps that they've used on the onboard audio solution itself so you can have the best DAC in the world but if you've got crap components connected to that DAC then your audio is going to sound crap but the good thing is here they've used a relatively good onboard codec and they've coupled that with good componentry so the end result was pretty much no drop off below 10 Hertz I think I measured not even a one decibel drop off under 10 Hertz which means your base is gonna come through very clearly very loudly on either your headphones or analog out speakers but then we moved through the frequency response curve and that was relatively flat the whole way through as well no imbalances so this solution is going to serve you well for audio listeners if you're playing competitive games or if you're listening to music and you're on a budget on top of that the crosstalk levels were phenomenal all the way up to the volume level of a hundred there was no leakage on either left or right channel and we're talking about - 80 decibels of crosstalk which is very good the stereo listeners however one thing I did notice between the left and right channels was there's about a 1.5 decibel difference in the balance but this was easily corrected by just dropping the volume level of the right channel in window down to 90 versus a hundred on the left and now with the audio itself as rock have decided to Double Down so the audio outs really good but then the audio ends equally as good that's your mic import where I tested it and they're not using noise suppression so your voice is going to come through very clearly and this is all the way up to plus 20 decibels volume level over 80 after that it did start to introduce some noise but these levels will be fine for pretty much any mic headset out there so if you want to stream on a budget this motherboard is definitely gonna be one of those components you may wish to consider so with all the important testing out of the way here is the conclusion time and the most important thing I believe with a be 450 motherboard and that is the price or the value and this is where they've got two variants they've got the micro ATX version the B 450 M still Legend and that's coming in at 90 USD and I think I even went on sale for 80 USD in Australia you can get it for around 139 ozzie dollars and at these prices it's a solid board as we saw with the tests everything checks out and even if you want to overclock you can do that definitely with a six-car gonna have no problems but when it comes to an eight-core and you're going for those higher 4.2 gigahertz overclocks for example you definitely want to get a fan over the vrm just for longevity but in relation to my rise in 720 700 that thing just tops out at 4.1 giga it's it's just generally a bad chip I've even tried it on the ERG board here as well as a Taichi board and it's the same thing my 2700 X so it goes up to four point three gigahertz that's really good so I didn't really get lucky there but bass if you're overclocking 6 cores find a core you will want to get some extra cooling on that vrm heatsink though everything else on this board checks out and it checks out in a really good way the onboard audio is phenomenal both the mic in and the audio out ports you've got great connectivity on the back ample amount of USB 3 ports USB 3 out dual nvme slots as well for installing nvme drives and on top of that you've got a really nice aesthetic and you've got RGB off the north and south which is addressable and you can control it within the bus without needing any extra software so in my opinion the $90 M solution is an absolute win but then they've got the full-size version which is a hundred and ten US dollars so this is where for that extra twenty dollars I believe you're getting an extra to one speed PCIe gen two lanes as well as converting that bottom 16x Gen 2 slot on the micro ATX version to eight gen 3 on the full size version so others extra PCIe slots worth it to you for 20 bucks for me personally probably no but if you really want the aesthetic and the full-size ATX board then that option is there but I guess that's about it for today's review of the be 450 still legend from asrock definitely checks out and also let us know in the comments section below what you think of that digital camo look I'm definitely liking it I put it in a build here and it's looking pretty schmick but as always love reading your thoughts and opinions down in the comment section below and if you enjoyed this one be sure to hit that like button if you want to cop some merch some techie air city merch link is in description below as well as the Instagram link I'll put that in the description below as well where I'm posting up some cool behind-the-scenes stuff as well as stories I'm getting into that lately too if you enjoy the content enough sub buttons their bell buttons there if you want to see the videos the moment they drop without a side I'll catch you in another video very soon we've got that P 106 testing we're going to retest that so stay tuned for that see you in the next video peace out for now B we can have all the fancy components we can have 20 million phases if you want but if you're going for the full-sized version that's coming in to 110 dollars so it is $20 more and for that price I believe you're just getting to 1x lots of PCIe gen 2 + + + 1 PCIe gen3 16 slot - we'll all the impasse so now with all the important testing out of the way comes the most important price with a be 450 motherboard decent vrm that will take good care of sick scores and if you're on an eight-core just grab a fan whack it over that vrm and you should have happy days even then but the I do like what they've done with the build quality to setting the RGB control and also the bling okay through it again studious you