Conclusion
It's just as fast as much dearer Z590 boards at default speeds...In these days of severe stock constraint and ballooning prices it is heartening to see that a modicum of value and performance can still be found.
The ASRock B560 Steel Legend motherboard is an example of sensibility on every front. It's just as fast as much dearer Z590 boards at default speeds, offers decent connectivity and storage options, whilst not breaking the bank.
RGB implementation could be better and AVX workloads ought to run at full speeds, but that's about it for our list of gripes at £130.
Want in on 11th Gen Core without sacrificing speed or breaking the bank? The ASRock B560 Steel Legend is a good shout.
As fast as Z590 at stock speeds
Memory overclocking
Supports ABT
20GBps USB
AVX workloads run at slower speeds
ASRock B560 Steel Legend
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The ASRock B560 Steel Legend is available from Scan Computers.
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At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
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HEXUS Forums :: 12 Comments
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Tabbykatze
Quite interesting that Asrock has such a disparity on their boards:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJVGghP514E
Their last two B560 videos have been a tad clickbaity IMHO. They literally made a massive deal in the video before,of the B560 motherboards,needing a few clicks in the BIOS to unlock the CPUs,just because the very expensive ones had MCE on permanently. This makes entire sense if you are using a stock cooler on these motherboards and its literally just a few options you need to unlock in the BIOS. Even in my B460 mini-ITX motherboard,all I need to do is select an expanded TDP. There is nothing else I needed to do. They literally went on about how only expensive B560 motherboards ran properly,and then seemingly ignored the £110~£120 ASRock B560 Pro4 in their own charts which ran their Core i7 11700 sample within 100MHZ of the most expensive B560 motherboard they tested.
The problem is that Hardware Unboxed tested a lot of £70~£100 B560 motherboards but seemingly missed all the ones which had heatsinks. For example they tested this $100 motherboard:
https://www.newegg.com/msi-b560m-pro/p/N82E16813144447?Description=msi%20b560%20pro&cm_re=msi_b560%20pro-_-13-144-447-_-Product&quicklink=true
But seemingly forget to add this one:
https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813157978?Description=b560%20asrock&cm_re=b560_asrock-_-13-157-978-_-Product&quicklink=true
That is the mATX version of the ATX motherboard they tested before,and its around £90 in the UK. A motherboard for the same price,with a 6+2 phase VRM with 50A power stages,and reasonably finned heatsinks.
So I am uncertain whether they are being obtuse,when a £70 motherboard with no VRM heatsinks,etc has problems running CPUs. But it was the same problem they themselves showed with AM4 motherboards which had poor heatsinking/no heatsinking.
They are made for horizontal air coolers(like the stock cooler),as they need constant airflow over the VRM. This is why most OEM systems use horizontal air coolers. Most test setups use water cooling so its even worse,as they have no cooling at all.
The take home message is no heatsinking on a motherboard,makes it best avoided!
