If you were shocked by the pricing of the best Z490 motherboards, you might want to check out the more affordable B460 chipset-based motherboards; they don't have the luxury of the $500+ Z490 boards, but at least you won't sacrifice any vital organs Not to be outdone, the ASRock B460 Steel Legend is one such affordable B460 motherboard. If you don't mind overclocking or running super-fast DDR4 memory, the B460 board is worth a look.

The ASRock B460 Steel Legend is a mid-range B460 entry with a great name: at US$120, it is what one would call a mid-range B460 board. Looking over the specs, we can see that $120 is well spent on a few key areas. An M.2 slot with heatsink, an e-key M.2 slot for an optional Wi-Fi card, a front USB Type-C header, RGB on board, plus two RGB headers and two ARGB headers.

There are a total of six fan headers around the board; the PCB's Urban Camo silk screen may be a bit fussy, but the heatsinks have a nice matte finish. Very sturdy. Metal. And as you can see at a glance, it is one of the few motherboards that is not just rectangular.

The increased power demands of 10th generation CPUs generally means that motherboards must feature improved VRM designs, and the B460 Steel Legend does very well in this regard as well. It features a 9+1 phase VRM powered by a single 8-pin EPS connector. Each stage can supply up to 60 A. Keep in mind that the B460 motherboard does not allow overclocking, so the VRM will not be subjected to the same extreme loads as an overclocked Intel Core i9 10900K on all cores.

Logically, not many users would combine a B460 board with a 10900K, but no one wants their board to become a savory smoke fest. Better to be cautious, because we are using an Intel Core i5 10600K, which unfortunately is limited to DDR4-2666, while Core i7 and i9 processors support DDR4-2933. Intel, I know you want me to buy a Z490 board, but that's a bit .......

Rear I/O is inevitably a basic aspect. Add a keyboard and mouse and you are already down two. Add a keyboard and mouse and you are already down two ports, add a printer and you are left with one more port, add an external hard drive and you are left with two more ports. We are really pleased to see 2.5G Ethernet penetrate to the low end of the market. Gigabit is a 1999 thing; the lack of Wi-Fi is disappointing, but we can live with that; don't expect too much from a $120 board.

To test performance, we compared the B460 Steel Legend to the superior MSI MAG B460M Mortar WiFi and Asus TUF B460M Gaming WiFi. We also threw in the MSI MEG Z490 Ace with memory set to DDR4-2666 to get a feel for the relative performance between the new Intel chipsets; the ASRock performed particularly well, with the B460 B460 Mortar WiFi outperforming the MSI MAG B460M Mortar WiFi and the Asus TUF B460M Gaming WiFi. Overall, the B460 board was the fastest of the B460 boards, impressing with benchmarks that responded well to higher bandwidths; Steel Legend (seriously, what a boss name) applies aggressive memory subtiming when left in auto configuration.

While the B460 motherboard does not allow overclocking by multiplier, there is a cheeky way to overclock a 65W non-K CPU: the B460 Steel Legend has what ASRock calls BFB or Base Frequency Boost, and Asus and MSI have similar features adopted a similar feature. This allows users to increase the power limit of the 65W processor and maintain a base clock several hundred MHz higher than the default for extended periods of time.

We can see how the 10600K non-K CPU power limit works when applied to the 10600K: the 10600K boosts to 4.5 GHz on all cores except under prolonged load, whereas the simulated 10600 briefly drops to 3 If you have a non-K processor and proper cooling, give it a try. Base clocks for all cores are suitably boosted.

The ASRock B460 Steel Legend will appeal to buyers who are not so interested in bells and whistles but want a solid ATX board that can run 10th generation CPUs without bursting a gasket. The relative performance of this board to a high-quality Z490 like the MSI ACE shows that it depends on feature set, overclocking, and memory support. However, tweaking the base frequency boost is also a great option. Thanks to the ridiculous B460 memory limit, this board is also fast. It may not meet all requirements, but you're always missing something at this end of the market.

It has a powerful VRM, 2.5G Ethernet, and plenty of expansion and connectivity options. This is a great board for a low-budget RGB-oriented build. At this price, it would be even better with integrated Wi-Fi. However, the ASRock B460 Steel legend remains highly competitive and we highly recommend it. We might even say that it shows off its steel; with Wi-Fi, it would even be a legendary product.