It's a pretty sad state of affairs when a mid-range Z690 board costs over $300. Even the $500 boards we have seen in this market do not count as high-end. Such price spikes mean that B660 boards have been elevated to fill the gap that has opened up between entry-level boards and cheaper Z-series boards.

Some inexpensive B660 boards are exactly that. But other boards have powerful VRMs and can run the Core i9 12900K at stock speeds; now that B-series boards support memory OC, there is less reason than ever to spend big bucks on a Z-series board.

Which brings us to ASRock's B660 Steel Legend. This is a DDR4 board, with no DDR5 option. This spec alone puts it in the more affordable category and, along with the price of the latest memory technology, will have a significant impact on the total cost of the system.

At the time of writing, the B660 Steel Legend is not yet available in many markets, but with a price of £160 on Scan in the UK and $150 for the micro ATX version on Newegg, the final price will be around $160 or A$280 It can be estimated.

This puts the B660 in the middle of the pricing spectrum, and at such a price it is important not to expect too much. But if you think about it, adding an i5, 32GB of DDR4-3200, and a GPU of your choice should make it the centerpiece of a very affordable gaming system. But the big question is: Will you have to give up many important features compared to a more expensive motherboard?

The B660 Steel Legend is surprisingly very similar to the B560 Steel Legend, featuring a military-themed PCB with white and gray heatsinks. There is a large scattering of RGB lighting on the right side and around the chipset heatsink. They are also extremely bright and overly bright.

One highlight is the inclusion of a PCIe 5.0 slot, which many B660 boards omit to differentiate their feature set from more expensive options. there are three M.2 slots, but only the primary slot has a heatsink. The middle slot only works at PCIe 3.0 x2 speeds; the two PCIe 1x slots immediately separate it from many boards in the same price range in that they allow for the addition of multiple expansion cards.

It's easy to forget we're talking about an inexpensive board, but it's hard to get past the omission of Wi-Fi these days. It also has basic Realtek ALC897 audio. However, the board does include a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 front panel header, which is a nice touch at this price point.

It goes without saying that the VRM on the B660 Steel Legend is basic, but we must remember that we are not dealing with a $500+ motherboard here: the DrMOS VRM with nine 50A phases powers the i9 12900K, and the i9 12900K is equipped with the i9 12900K's own VRM, which has a 3.5V power supply. can power the i9 12900K. Normally we like to report VRM temperatures during stress tests, but the beta version of HWinfo we were using did not report the i5 chip temperatures correctly. It was certainly not the 6°C that was reported. [So we installed a thermocouple on the heatsink, which registered 42°C. Even if the true temperature is more than 10°C higher, it is not a bad result given the relatively thin heatsink; the 12900K will be loaded higher, so if you are one of the few users planning to combine the 12900K with the B660 Steel Legend, proper airflow is would be necessary.

Rear I/O has the usual ports for this price range, but Wi-Fi is obviously omitted; there is one Type-C USB 3.2 10Gb/s port, four 3.2 5Gb/s ports, and two USB 2.0 ports. The fact that there are only seven USB ports The problem is that adding a keyboard and mouse, printer, headset, external hard drive, and phone cable would leave one There is a header for the case, and you can always add a hub, but not everyone wants cables dangling from the front of the case.

There are DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports for Intel's Xe graphics, a PS/2 keyboard/mouse connector, and a BIOS flashback button. there is one 2.5G Ethernet port, controlled by the Realtek RTL8125BG chip It is controlled by the Realtek RTL8125BG chip. Finally, there's audio. The audio codec is a very common ALC897, although we appreciate the S/PDIF for connecting to an external amplifier or DAC. there is Nahimic software support, and the implementation is not bad, but if you want a high-quality audio solution, you will need to look further up the range.

Gaming Performance

System Performance

However, the straight performance of this board was generally good. It often outperformed the highly rated MSI B660 Tomahawk, but as we always say, the difference between similar systems and motherboards is generally small, if not within the margin of error The Steel Legend had no problems with the Core i5 12600K, With the unlikely combination of an RTX 3080 Ti, this board performs as well as a Z690 board with DDR4 service.

The ASRock B660 Steel Legend is a fairly unremarkable board, but at this price point no other board is needed. A board that doesn't cause a fuss is what you really need, as "remarkable" at this level generally means something less positive.

If you want overclockable VRMs or Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, you'll have to pay double or more the price. i5 support for PCIe 5.0 makes this a board for users on a budget. i5 and older DDR4 memory make it a hassle-free i5 and some legacy DDR4 memory, and you have the core of a no-frills, low-budget system.

The B660SteelLegend may not be noteworthy, and perhaps even average, but if you are struggling to afford a GPU, a board like the B660SteelLegend can save you hundreds of dollars, which can then be reallocated to a GPU to add tangible performance to your gaming system. system and add tangible performance.