I. Introduction
If you want to use the 12th generation intel processor, it is certainly indispensable to wear a suitable B660 and Z690 motherboard. But considering the high price of the Z690 motherboard, the B660 motherboard that is close to the people is the mainstream choice. Moreover, many B660 motherboard materials are also very good, and it is very easy to cope with i5 and even i7 motherboards.
In a large number of B660 motherboards, there are several boards that are particularly famous, not only excellent materials, but also very good experience in all aspects. Among these well-known B660 motherboards, ASRock's B660M Steel Legend Motherboard is the most interesting one, and you can see some very interesting persistence and ideas, after all, since the ancient Huaqing out of the demon board.
Moreover, this generation of ASRock B660M steel legend motherboard got rid of some shackles and went light, which makes this motherboard perform better in some aspects.
ASRock B660M Steel Legend Motherboard Unboxed
▼ The packaging of the motherboard is very familiar, silver white carton.
▼ On the front, there is the model and name of the motherboard, and a large "S" LOGO, which represents the motherboard series of ASRock Steel Legends.
▼ On the back of the package, a lot of information about the motherboard is introduced, including interfaces, extensions, materials, and so on.
▼The accessories in the package are very rich, in addition to the motherboard, there are SATA cables, cable ties and other accessories.
▼In addition, ASRock also comes with a small specially painted keycap, which is very careful.
3. ASRock B660M Steel Legend Steel Legend Motherboard Appearance
▼ The appearance of the motherboard is very beautiful, the board PCB is painted, and the front is covered with silver-white metal heat sinks.
▼The left and upper side of the motherboard are covered with metal heat sinks to ensure the stable operation of the power supply circuit.
▼ The topmost M2 slot of the motherboard has metal heatsink cover, and the south bridge part also has metal cover.
▼ The upper left corner of the motherboard, the auxiliary power supply socket of 8Pin.
▼ The metal heat sink on the processor power supply circuit has a beautiful coating and shape, which can play a certain decorative effect at the same time, but also increase the contact area with the air to ensure heat dissipation.
▼ The memory slot supports DDR4 and has four bars.
▼ There are two lighting sockets in the upper right corner of the motherboard, both of which are 5V three-pin ARGB lighting sockets.
▼ The right part of the motherboard has the name "Legend of Steel", and there is a lighting effect design here. There are two chassis front sockets under the power socket of the motherboard, a normal USB3.0 Type-A and a Type-C.
▼ The motherboard is closest to the processor of an M2 interface has a metal cover, the closest to the processor of the PCIe slot supports PCIe5.0, there are metal reinforcement packages outside, providing a certain shielding interference effect at the same time, but also effectively improve the strength of the socket, to ensure life.
▼ There is also an M2 interface under the main PCIe slot, which is used to connect the wireless network card, and there are two PCIe X 1 interfaces below.
▼ The metal heatsink in the south bridge part is also very beautiful, and there is also an M2 interface below, which supports PCIe4.0 x 4 and SATA.
▼ The lower right corner of the motherboard has six SATA3.0 interfaces, four side mounted and two vertical.
▼ The various interfaces at the bottom of the motherboard are still very rich, from left to right, the audio interface, the 5V three-pin ARGB lamp socket, the 12V four-pin RGB lamp socket, the 4Pin fan socket two, the USB2.0 interface two, the TPM module socket, the SATA3.0 interface two and the chassis jumper socket.
▼ In terms of IO interface, this board has two USB2.0 interfaces, a PS/2 interface, an HDMI interface, a DP interface, four USB3.0 interfaces, a 2.5G LAN port and six audio interfaces.
▼ The back of the motherboard is relatively simple, there is no chip.
▼ There is a column of LED lamp beads on the left side of the back of the motherboard, and there is a light effect design here.
▼ The audio circuit part of the motherboard and the other circuit parts of the motherboard are physically separated, reducing interference and improving the signal-to-noise ratio of the audio part.
ASRock B660M Steel Legend Motherboard Disassembly
▼ The motherboard must be disassembled to see, ASRock's board, the material has always been very good.
▼ The cover on the front of the motherboard has been removed and looks good.
▼ The material used in metal heat sinks is quite thick, not only has a complex modeling design and air circulation holes, but also uses a very thick material.
▼ After removing all the metal heatsinks, you can see the paint on the front of the motherboard PCB, which looks good.
▼The material used in the power supply part looks very good, and the power supply Mos uses DrMos.
▼ The auxiliary power socket of the processor adopts a single 8Pin design, and on the left and right sides are several Nikeacon FP12K capacitors for voltage regulation filtering, which are good.
▼ The power supply interface is the PWM control chip, silk screen printed RT3628AE, this master control is from Ricktek, the maximum support 8 +1 dual channel PWM control signal output.
▼ There are five phases of power supply on the left side, the upper four phases use DrMos, silk screen printing SIC654, the maximum stable output current is about 50A, mainly responsible for the power supply of the Vcore part, or very good.
▼The lowest phase of power supply is the upper and lower bridge design, the double upper bridge, the double lower bridge design, mainly responsible for the AUX part of the CPU power supply. The upper bridge silk screen printing 4508, the maximum stable output current is about 80A, the lower bridge silk screen printing 4373, the maximum stable output current is about 70A.
▼The upper side of the power supply is the same color DrMos, all of which are SIC654, and the maximum stable output current is 50A.
▼ One of the rightmost DrMos is responsible for the power supply of the Vgt part, the four on the left is the Vcore part of the power supply, and there is a single-phase PWM controller in the lower right corner of the DrMos on the far right to provide the PWM control signal. The Vcore power supply of this board is true 8 phase power supply, all using DrMos, single-phase power supply at about 50A; Vgt power supply one phase, single-phase power supply at about 50A; AUX power supply one phase, upper and lower bridge design, double up and down, upper bridge 80A, lower bridge 70A, not bad.
▼ In addition, there are two phases of power supply under the processor, which is responsible for other parts.
▼ The motherboard's 4Pin fan socket supports speed regulation, and a separate driver IC provides support.
▼ Memory-powered single-phase design, double upper bridge, double lower bridge, are SM4337.
▼ There are two chips behind the front USB socket of the chassis, the bridge signal above, and the 5452E below is the Type-C power supply controller, providing complete Type-C channel configuration functions.
▼ The south bridge chip of the motherboard looks very small, and the right side is a phase of south bridge power supply.
▼ There is a chip behind the HDMI interface of the motherboard for video output signal conversion.
▼ Network card master control chip, familiar RTL8125B.
▼ There is a large chip underneath, the ASM1074, to provide support for the USB interface on the rear of the motherboard. There is a NUC121ZC2 microcontroller chip in the lower left corner, ARM architecture, which mainly provides support for the motherboard lighting effect.
▼ The audio chip is the ALC897 of the small crab, and next to the golden can is the Nikkicom audio capacitor.
▼Silk screen NCT6796D is the monitoring IC of the motherboard, which is used to detect the parameter information of the motherboard.
▼ There is a silkscreen Flash Back chip on the right side, which is used for the motherboard chipless brushing BIOS. This function is still very easy to use, and it is more convenient and stable to update the BIOS.
▼ There is a signal bridging chip next to the M2 interface in the lower right corner, and an ASM1061, the former is used to support NVMe solid state, and the latter is used to support SATA solid state.
▼ In addition, there are four Debug indicators next to this M2 interface, which indicate the CPU, DRAM, VGA, and BOOT respectively, which is convenient for quick troubleshooting.
▼ The back of the motherboard is empty, there is no chip.
5. ASRock B660M Steel Legend Motherboard installed
▼ Look at the power supply specifications of this board is very good, 8 phase Vcore power supply, and the same color of 50A DrMos, test processor here on the use of 12700K, see how the effect is.
▼ Here the motherboard is directly installed inside the MSI Blade 100R chassis, and the water cooling uses MSI's Frost K360, which can easily press the 12700K.
▼ The graphics card is Yingchi's RTX3070Ti HOF Pro graphics card, and the front fan cover of the graphics card is very beautiful, with a pure white design.
▼ The video card is installed horizontally by default, and this card of Yingchi is designed with three slots, the weight is very powerful, and it is necessary to add a graphics card bracket at the rear.
▼ Boot, light up at once, the whole machine effect is still very beautiful.
▼ The left power supply of the motherboard, the power supply on the upper side and the M2 interface part are covered with white metal heat sinks, and the overall appearance looks OK.
▼ The right part of the motherboard has a lighting effect design, which supports the synchronization of the lighting effect software.
▼ MSI Frost K360 water-cooled appearance is very beautiful, there is a small screen on the water-cooled head, and the cold exhaust fan supports light effect synchronization, speed control, automatic start and stop, etc.
▼ The screen at the top of the water cooling head can display a lot of content, text, pictures, GIFs, hardware parameters, etc., and the playability is very good.
▼ Cold exhaust fan supports ARGB lighting effect synchronization, the value is very beautiful, and in G.I mode, this water-cooled cold exhaust fan supports start and stop, and will stop the fan at a lower load, which is very interesting.
▼ The test power supply is MSI's MPG A850GF power supply, and the sticker on the side of the power supply is very beautiful, with the classic MSI Dragon Shield LOGO. In addition, in other aspects, this power supply has passed the 80Plus gold certification, all-Japan capacitors, 10 years warranty, the overall is still very stable.
▼In terms of details, the 8Pin auxiliary power supply line of the motherboard is designed for a single 8Pin, which is lower and more stable under the condition of high load of the graphics card.
▼ Yingchi RTX3070Ti HOF Pro graphics card has beautiful ARGB lighting effects on the front and sides, and the vertical and horizontal mounting effects are very good.
▼ The appearance of the MSI Blade 100R chassis is still very beautiful, this chassis is equipped with four ARGB lighting fans, and the front of the chassis has a large area of side-through glass, which has a great texture.
▼ Look closely, on the side of the side of the glass, there is a large number of grille designs, giving the chassis interior plenty of intake.
▼In addition, there is an ARGB light strip in the upper part of the power supply compartment, which looks very beautiful.
ASRock B660M Steel Legend Motherboard Test
▼ The whole machine configuration at a glance, the processor is 12700K, the graphics card is Yingchi's RTX3070Ti HOF Pro, and the motherboard is ASRock's B660M steel legend.
▼ Simple run a test, the whole machine score of 178W, processor 85W, this score is completely no problem, ASRock's B660M steel legend allows the 12700K processor to easily run to the highest performance.
▼ Daily standby, room temperature is about 17 ° C, daily standby situation, the temperature of the processor is about 25 ° C, very low.
▼ In the case of daily standby, the temperature of the power supply heat sink on the left side of the motherboard is about 22.8 °C, and the temperature of the power supply heat sink on the upper side is about 21.1 °C, which is very low.
▼ Simple run a CPU-Z pressure test, the processor power consumption is about 140W, the large core turbo frequency is 4.7GHz, the processor temperature is 62 °C, or quite stable.
▼ After ten minutes of testing, the left side of the motherboard is powered at 26.8 °C, and the upper side is supplied at 26.5 °C, which is very low. The temperature performance of this power supply heat sink is somewhat outrageous, indicating that the heat generation of the Mos part is very small, and there is no pressure in operation.
▼ Single-baked FPU test, processor power consumption is about 180W, processor large core turbo frequency 4.7GHz.
▼ Continuous roast chicken for about 15 minutes, the temperature of the processor is stable at 79 ° C, the continuous power consumption is about 182W, and the processor's large core Turbo frequency is about 4.7GHz, which is very stable. ASRock's power supply performance of this B660M steel legendary motherboard is still very good, there is no pressure to cope with the silent frequency of 12700K, and there will be no frequency reduction and power consumption for a long time.
▼ The temperature of the left power supply radiator of the motherboard is 29.9 ° C, and the temperature of the heat sink of the upper power supply is 30.3 ° C, which cannot be said to be no pressure, but can only say that the heat is very small.
7. Summary
ASRock this B660M steel legend motherboard is still very good, the whole is a very good B660 motherboard, to cope with the silent frequency of i7 12700K without pressure, even from the temperature performance of the power supply part, it seems that there is no use of full strength. After all, the power supply of the true 8-phase 50A DrMos, the theoretical maximum output power consumption can go to about 400W, to cope with 12700K of about 200W, or no problem.
In addition, the Vcore and Vgt power supply parts of the processor use the same color DrMos, and the material is still very good. DrMos is a conventional up-and-down bridge Mos, Driver are integrated together an integrated Mos, because of its integration together, its internal trace is shorter, lower internal resistance, so in the case of the same output current, the heat generation will be significantly reduced, for the stable operation of the Mos is a positive effect, good.
For those who want to experience the 12th generation intel processor, this board is still very worth buying, after all, 12700K in the 12th generation processor, is a very cost-effective model, with this board to use no problem.
By the way, ASRock's board is still equipped with M2 Wifi interface as standard, which is convenient for expanding wireless network cards. However, there are only two M2 slots, and the other one is not covered by metal heatsinks, and the maximum support is 2280 specifications. If you can cover metal heat sinks, the maximum support of 22110 specifications is better. Or, give another PCIe x 4 interface.
Thank you!
The End