Gadgetory

about a month ago here on the channel we took a look at the B 450 steel legend from asrock and that was on the AMD side of things where the board had everything you'd want from a board at a good price point the bling the audio the neck USB 3 ports everything checked out except it wasn't really intended for overclocking the still legend on the XIII 90 series wants to stick to that trend coming in with a hundred and $45 USD MSRP the Ozzie price tag I will update that in the description is slated for a June release this year though of course as with every motherboard here around tokyo city we're gonna take it through all the paces for you guys gonna be testing it out with a ninety nine hundred k and even though as we all can for me not to really overclock it i'm still gonna do just that and give you guys the details so straight away going over the vrm details they're using niche akan 12k caps as well as SMD 60 amp chokes a pwm controller that consists of the up9 five to one and then for low side MOSFETs are using Sinnoh power for three three six forty amps and then on the high side Sinnoh power for three three seven thirty-five amps with a six plus two phase power design the heatsink itself is actually a smart design covering the input and output on the top down look and also providing heat dissipation for the vrm on the six phase side delivering power to the CPU testing this out with a ninety nine hundred k with stock settings showed the vrm to go up to about fifty five degrees on the heatsink then about 84 degrees when we had the ir camera on board this is using up about 95 watts four point three gigahertz this was in a twenty seven degree ambient controlled environment however when we did step it up to a manual overclock of five gigahertz which does juice a lot of power going up to around 190 watt cpu drawer alone we saw the vrm throttle the cpu after about four minutes without a fan over the vrm and the heatsink though surprisingly once we added a 120 millimeter fan over this BRM the temperatures then went down even at five gigahertz drawing double the power at 74 degrees on the MOSFETs and 43 degrees on the heatsink so you can see how much of a difference adding that 120mm fan on budget Z 390 motherboards can make a big difference so with the vrm it's just as asrock states it's not really intended for overclocking though if you do want to overclock don't forget a decent fan and have it placed over that vrm and whether things get a lot better when we move over to things like the onboard audio whether using the realtek ALC 1200 and although it's not the 12 20 it did post some very impressive figures since everything along that onboard audio line is very good the caps included and we saw a roll-off here of only 0.2 decibels from 10 Hertz the 20 Hertz and then underneath that 1.6 decibel roller so it's gonna be great for powering mid rage headphones and still giving good clarity in the bass the rest of the frequency response was pretty flat very good numbers and then looking at the crosstalk figures even at a hundred volume level we saw the crosstalk going under 80 decibels at full volume so these were impressive numbers across bought on the output though when it comes to the audio input that's your mic input we saw again some pretty good numbers when I tested the mic and at full volume 30 decibels it was like showing a little bit of noise so they weren't using noise suppression but when we dropped that down to 80 volume even at plus 30 dB the noise was virtually non-existent so basically if you want to get into streaming on a budget you've already got a microphone and you don't need noise or not that much at all then this is going to be a great starting mic out port moving on to the onboard net the speeds here were very consistent staying at around 108 megabytes per second when I was doing a consistent file transfer across my network USB 3 speeds checked out with my SSD maxing out at 367 megabytes per second however on the rear input and output they are indeed changing that terminology and we'll quickly go over here at the top they've got the option to mount an MDOT to Wi-Fi key which is in the middle of the board and then below that you've got USB I know it is originally three but now it's called 3.2 gen one and then down below that you've got USB 3.2 Gen 2 which is original USB 3.1 type a and type C they're basically getting speeds of 10 gigabits per second double of that of USB 3 and then you've got USB 2 ports 2 of those as well if you wish to maybe do a hackintosh build and you need that USB to support you've got your 7.1 manual out as well as an optical out and then besides that you get a ps2 hybrid and also display an HDMI out to there going through the rest of this motherboard is standard ATX size though on the side there is like a edged cutout that's a sort of a stylish look to go with that camo paint job on the board itself you've also got m2 armor at the top and bottom where one of those m2 ports is PCIe gen3 4x speeds but you've also got an MDOT 2 which supports Asada connectivity testing out temperatures with the m2 armor does indeed not only add to the aesthetics but also helps keep the temperatures down on those precious SSDs and it's especially a good thing if you want to do video work with a motherboard like this though now the things I do like about this board is the four SATA ports and also two down the bottom for cable management options as well as the USB 3s you've got two of those one at the site and also one down the bottom and you've got two 12-volt RGB headers and an addressable five volt which can run through the actual BIOS so you don't need to install any software in the bias itself you got the polychrome RGB option to control the RGB with some new effects although there was a typo in there but besides that the BIOS works really well it's your typical asrock bias with easy mode in advanced mode all the features you'd want for overclocking and even the option to update the bus itself via an rj45 internet connection they lost in the bus itself you gots different overclocking profiles and the fantastic tuning software which works really well it's really simple to be used and you've got five PWM controlled fan headers on the board itself one up north two in the middle and two down south and then lastly RGB LEDs are all underneath the right-hand side of the motherboard as well as underneath the chipset heatsink which is located towards the south of the motherboard so now we've gone over everything with this board it's time for the conclusion with the z3 90 still legend and I think it's hit all the marks that asrock intended it to hit and that's basically if you're not into overclocking but you want everything else at a pretty good price point of 145 USD then it definitely does hit the mark of course if you want to get a ninety nine hundred K go crazy with overclocks and I'd suggest stepping it up to something better from as rocks are in line up they've got the Taichi but also on that note if you don't want to overclock and you want to get a fancy water cooler you want the RGB you want that Camel ascetic really good onboard audio and everything else that just really checks out with this board then I can give it the all okay around here though one thing I will critique was I'd possibly like to see maybe Thunderbolt add it in as I know there are people out there that want to get Thunderbolt as cheap as possible and still want to get bling blings so that would have been about the only thing really to critique about this board but other than that the aesthetic looks really good and I do like it how they've laid out the options with the USB front outs and also the solid ports so they're thinking about cable management in modern builds and the RGB you can control that with in the bias itself as opposed to some other RGB software which can hit performance even to that of 2% on a high-end build on your CPU that's what things like the IQ and also Zeus's software so it was nice to see the bass control chipset that doesn't affect performance what so ever any guys that's it for the z3 90 steel legend from asrock if you guys enjoyed this review then be sure to hit that like button also let us know in the comments section below do you think it is a legend at its price point yes or no love reading your thoughts and opinions as always and I'll catch you guys in another tech video very soon also if you enjoying the content around here sub button in the Bell button there down there somewhere and also if you want the inside scoop check us out on Instagram check yes city you know catch you guys in another video very soon peace out for now bye you