ASRock X670E Steel Legend Wi-Fi Review: Well Connected

Our next (and potentially one of the last) AMD X670 reviews on our current review platform, is ASRock’s X670E Steel Legend Wi-Fi. We’ve looked at the full gamut of Steel Legend boards from Intel and AMD, with our X670E the last of the bunch. For its $299.99 price, you get the familiar black, silver, and gray appearance, four M.2 sockets, and four SATA ports, PCIe 5.0 support (slot and M.2 socket), dual NICs and integrated Wi-Fi 6E. Finally, you also get a quality audio solution.

As this platform has matured, ASRock released five SKUs in X670 flavor. There’s the top-of-the-line Taichi and Taichi Carrara ($479/$499), the mid-range Steel Legend we’re looking at now, and two additional budget X670 offerings, the PG Lighting and Pro RS ($259/$279). If you’d like a smaller MicroATX or MiniITX form factor, you’ll have to look at the B650 chipset or lower in the product stack to A620 boards. Overall, ASRock AM5-based motherboards a broad variety of features and price points.

In our testing, the X670E Steel Legend was average to above average in most tests. It did well in the Procyon Office suite and the actual gaming tests, where it was the fastest we’ve seen (though admittedly not by much). The VRMs are more than capable of handling long-running multi-threaded functions, too. Ultimately, there are no concerns with performance out of the box.

Below, we’ll dig into the details of the board and see whether it deserves a spot on our Best Motherboards list (it certainly has a chance!). But before we get into our testing and board details, we’ll start by listing the specifications from ASRock’s website.

Specifications: ASRock X670E Steel Legend Wi-Fi

Inside the Box of the ASRock X670E Steel Legend Wi-Fi

Inside the box, on a cardboard partition on top of the motherboard, are a few accessories to help get you going without a trip to the store. You get two SATA cables, four screws/standoffs for M.2, the Wi-Fi antenna,  and the user manual. ASRock also includes a graphics card holder you can attach to the motherboard to support heavy video cards.

Design of the ASRock X670E Steel Legend Wi-Fi

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ASRock describes the Steel Legend as a “philosophical state of rock-solid durability and irresistible aesthetics.” Targeting mainstream enthusiasts, the black 8-layer PCB gives way to large silver heatsinks with black-and-gray (almost camouflage) design elements that are also stenciled on parts of the board. The Steel Legend branding is present on the chipset and the left VRM bank, though, unlike other Steel Legend SKUs, it doesn’t light up.

Speaking of RGB LEDs, the X670E Steel Legend sports two strips. One runs along the heatsink on the bottom of the board, while the other lives on the bottom, under the SATA ports on the right edge, lighting up the Steel Legend branding on the chipset heatsink. The LEDs are bright, and the colors are saturated, presenting quite a light show inside your chassis. Overall, we like the neutral look; it blends in with most build themes, but the board won’t win any awards for its appearance.

Focusing on the top half, the left VRM heatsink has a lot of mass and surface area and can keep the MOSFETs below running well within spec. On top is the ASRock and Steel Legend branding, along with a mention of the chipset. Above the heatsinks are two 8-pin EPS connectors (one required) to power the processor.

Before we move right, we run into the first (of six) four-pin fan headers, this one just below the left VRM heatsink. The placement may look curious initially, but it’s great for any fans on the rear of your chassis. All fans support PWM- and DC-controlled devices. The CPU_FAN1 outputs up to 1A/12W, while the rest handle up to 2A/24W. There is plenty of power for fans or even a custom water loop with several fans and a pump.

Moving past the socket area, we find four reinforced DRAM slots with a single locking mechanism at the top. Memory support is listed up to a smoking fast (for AMD) DDR5-7600, with a capacity of up to 192 GB. We didn’t have any issues with our DDR5-5600 or DDR5-6000 kits, but our Temagroup DDR5-7200 kit didn’t want to play nice, even though a faster (7600) kit with higher capacity is listed. Stick with kits on the memory QVL and you’ll be fine.

Above the memory slots are two more 4-pin fan headers. Next, we spy the first two 3-pin ARGB headers (you’ll find the other ARGB and single RGB header along the bottom edge). Control over these devices is handled through ASRock’s Polychrome Sync application.

Continuing our tour down the right edge, we run into the 4-LED Post Status Checker. These four LEDs, labeled CPU, DRAM, VGA, and Boot, light up through the POST process. If there’s a problem in one of those areas, the LED remains lit, giving users a general idea of where the problem is. Next, we run into the 24-pin ATX connector that powers the board, a 19-pin front panel USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) connection, and a front panel USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) Type-C connector.

The VRMs on the X670E Steel Legend consist of 19 total phases, with 16 dedicated to Vcore. Power feeds from the 8-pin EPS connectors, down to the Renesas RAA229628 20-phase PWM controller, then moves to the 16x 60A Intersil ISL99360 SPS MOSFETs. The 960A available certainly isn’t the most powerful we’ve seen, but it handled our flagship Ryzen 9 7950X chip without concern, as we’ve seen on other boards with the same configuration.

On the bottom left, the audio section is visible in all its glory. You see the Realtek ALC1220 codec and three yellow capacitors dedicated to audio. You won’t find Faraday cages or fancy DACs/Amps, but the audio solution is good enough for most users.

In the middle of the board are three PCIe slots (two full-length and one x1) and four M.2 sockets. Starting with PCIe slots, the top connects through the CPU and runs up to PCIe 5.0 x16. The bottom full-length socket connects through the chipset and runs up to PCIe 3.0 x4. These two slots support AMD Crossfire if you’re still into multi-GPU setups. The tiny open-ended x1 slot also sources lanes from the chipset and runs up to PCIe 3.0 x1. Be sure to understand your hardware needs with these slots and if the PCIe 3.0 speeds limit them.

Located in and around the PCIe slots are the four M.2 sockets. The top socket, M2_1, connects through the processor and is your PCIe 5.0 x4 (128 Gbps) socket. The rest connect through the chipset and run at up to PCIe 4.0 x4 (64 Gbps) speeds, with all sockets supporting up to 80mm modules. There are also four SATA ports located along the right edge. The SATA ports and M.2 sockets all support RAID0/1/10 modes. In all, plenty of storage is available, especially M.2.

Across the bottom of the board are several exposed headers. You’ll find the usual, including additional USB ports, RGB headers, and power/reset buttons. Below is a complete list from left to right.

• Front panel audio
• 4-pin RGB header
• 3-pin ARGB header
• 5-pin Thunderbolt AIC connector
• (2) System Fan headers
• Clear CMOS jumper
• (2) USB 2.0 headers
• System fan header
• Speaker header
• System panel header

The rear IO plate on the X670 Steel Legend, like most others above the budget range, comes preinstalled on the motherboard. It sports the same black, white, and grey background against black labels we’ve seen on like-branded boards. Here, however, there are 12 total USB slots on the rear IO. You get a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) Type-C port, a USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Type-A port, six 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports and four USB 2.0 (480 Mbps) ports – plenty to go around. For video, we spy the familiar HDMI and DisplayPort ports, while for networking, there are two ports: one 2.5 GbE and the other 1 GbE. TheWi-Fi 6E antenna connections are also present. Last, the audio stack consists of two analog ports and an SPDIF.

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