ASRock H470 Steel Legend Motherboard Review

ASRock’s H470 Steel legend is designed to provide years of stable and reliable service with a signature sapphire black PCB dressed with XXL Aluminum Alloy heatsinks. Based around Intel’s H470 chipset, the Steel Legend gives you the performance that life demands. While not designed for overclocking, ASRock’s new Base Frequency Boost bends the rules and allows Intel’s 10th generation processors to achieve maximum performance by running at its highest power state for longer. Add in Dragon 2.5 gigabit LAN, Realtek ALC1200 Nahimic Audio, and technology ready for next generations PCIe 4.0 hardware, ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend gives you the tools to build your own legend. ASRock’s Take on the H470 Steel Legend: Steel Legend represents the philosophical state of rock-solid durability and irresistible aesthetics. Built around the most demanding specs and features, the Steel Legend series aims at daily users and mainstream enthusiasts! Providing a strong array of materials/components to ensure stable and reliable performance. Features: Supports 10th Gen Intel® Core™ processors (Socket 1200) 11 Phase Dr.MOS Power Design Supports DDR4 2933MHz 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, 2 PCIe 3.0 x1, 1 M.2 (Key E) For WiFi AMD CrossFireX™ Graphics Output Options: HDMI, DisplayPort 1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1200 Audio Codec), Nahimic Audio 6 SATA3, 2 Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4 & SATA3) 2 USB 3.2 Gen2 (Rear Type-A+C), 7 USB 3.2 Gen1 (4 Front, 2 Rear, 1 Front Type-C) Dragon 2.5 Gigabit LAN ASRock Polychrome SYNC Quick Specs: LGA1200 Socket – Supports Intel 10th Generation Core Processors ATX Form-Factor 11-phase Digi Power Intel H470 Chipset 4x DDR4 memory slots – Supports 2133-2933MHz, max 128GB non-ECC memory HDMI 2.0 and Displayport 1.4 5Gb Realtek Dragon LAN Dual M.2 slots – support PCIe 3.0 and SATA drives up to 80mm long. Ultra M.2 slot for future use, supports PCIe 4.0 x4 with upcoming Intel processors. A Closer Look Inside the box, you get the following inclusions: Quick Installation Guide Software Setup Guide Steel Legend Postcard Support CD 2 x Serial ATA (SATA) Data Cables Rear I/O Shield Screws for M.2 Sockets Reusable Cable wraps Sticker sheet ASRock ships most, if not all of its motherboards these days zip-tied into a foam sheet. This does a great job of protecting the board, as well as the fragile pins along the edge. ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend occupies the traditional ATX footprint, but angled corners and cutouts keep it from needing the rightmost column of mounting posts, so be sure to watch for extra mounting posts when installing in your case. There is very little to note on the rear of the board. We’ll point out the row of LED’s top left here that light the translucent Steel Legend logo on the edge. While the Rear I/O Shield isn’t pre-mounted like higher tier offerings, it is painted to match the theme. Rear I/O consists of the following: PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port HDMI Port 1.4 (4K/30Hz max) DisplayPort 1.4 (4K/60Hz max) Optical SPDIF Out Port 2 x USB 2.0 Ports (Black) 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 10 Gb/s (Light Blue/Type-C) 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1 5Gb/s (Dark Blue) 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port HD Audio Jacks ASRock also lists ‘2 x Antenna Mounting Points’ in the specifications but the holes are actually in the Rear I/O Shield and do not mount to the board in any way. While this is functional, it would require the end-user to be very careful installing a WiFi solution. The top half the board has Intel’s LDA1200 socket right where you expect it, flanked by four DDR4 slots. The lower half of the board has a single shielded PCIe x16 slot, connected to the CPU, two PCIe X1 slots, and a PCIe x4 (x16 physical) connected to the chipset. Two chipset connected M.2 slots hide under heatsinks, while a CPU connected M.2 slot sits out in the open, for future use as 10th gen CPU’s don’t support this feature yet. There is also an M.2 E-key slot for a WiFi Adapter if you want to install one. On the bottom edge, we have front panel audio, a TPM module header, RGB and ARGB headers, a USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 connector, and hiding up near the second PCIe x16 slot, a Thunderbolt 3 header for add-in cards. Forward of those, we have two fan/pump headers, front panel I/O, a pair of SATA ports, and another fan header. Almost invisible here are four diagnostic LEDs just above the rightmost fan header. These indicate POST issues with your CPU, RAM, VGA, and Boot OK respectively. Along the front edge are another fan header, four more SATA ports, a USB 3.0 and Front Type-C header, and the main 24-pin power. On the top edge are another set of RGB and ARGB headers, two fan headers, and the CPU’s 8-pin EPS and auxiliary 4-pin power connections. The CPU is fed from an 11-phase power system in an 8+2+1 configuration. With the vCore and VSoC made up of Dr. MOS 50A power stages and VccSA using traditional high/low MOSFETs The silver accents are mostly brushed, and help the Steel Legend aesthetics. With power applied, we can see the Steel Legend logo lighting up from below. As most builds will have the main 24-pin power covering this, it may not always be that visible. BIOS ASRock starts you out in the ‘EZ Mode’ of the BIOS. You get a quick rundown of everything in the PC, as well as some basic options like turning on RAID or XMP. Hitting F6 brings you to an advanced mode where all of the settings live. The Main tab is more of a landing page showing basic system specs. The OC Tweaker page is here, but options are somewhat limited given the mostly locked H470 chipset. This is an Intel limitation, not an ASRock limitation. For the most part, all you can really tweak is memory. Speeds are limited to a maximum of 2933MHz, but you can tweak timings and gain some decent performance. The Advanced page lets you dive a little deeper into certain areas like I/O or USB configuration. Each of the advanced pages offers some important but less often needed settings. The tools page is an important one and was our first stop to update our system to the latest available BIOS. We like that ASRock gives you full control of lighting right form the BIOS, no OS or software is needed. The hardware monitor is pretty self-explanatory. You can keep tabs on all system voltages, temperatures, fan speeds, and everything else related here. You can also tune all of your connected fans from here. Most enthusiasts probably won’t use anything in the security tab, but a BIOS password can be set here as well as turning on the Trusted Platform module if installed, handy if you deploy this board in an office or similar environment. Here in the Boot tab, you can configure things like boot order, and even turn off the full-screen boot logo if you prefer to see a quick summary instead. And last but not least the Exit Tab, you can save or discard changes made this session, as well as restore defaults. You can also override boot settings to boot to a different device just this one time. Software ASRock Polychrome SYNC Now you can adjust the RGB LED color through the ASRock Polychrome SYNC Utility. Download this utility from the ASRock Live Update & APP Shop and start coloring your PC style your way! The very first time we can it, it had to update the onboard controller firmware. This was quick, and only happened once, so no worries. Once in, you have quite a few options and effects to choose from. Our ram and even RGB M.2 drive showed up and were easily controllable as well. ASRock Motherboard Utility (A-Tuning) The landing page gives you three operational modes, Standard, Performance, and Power saving. The OC Tweaker page gives you all overclock settings. In this case, the H470 platform only allows some tweaks to voltages. The system info page gives you everything from voltages to fan speeds to clocks speeds and ratios. You can adjust all connected fans from the FAN-Tastic Tuning tab. Live Update & App Shop ASRock’s consolidated Live Update & App Shop is a handy tool to get everything installed all at once. You can grab all of the latest drivers and utilities from one location, as well as some suggested software like Google Chrome. ASRock’s one-stop-shop for grabbing all needed utilities and the latest drivers in only a couple clicks makes system setup a snap. Restart to UEFI With as fast as computers can boot it is difficult to impossible to get back into the BIOS, this handy utility reboots you directly into it. Performance Testing Test Platform: CPU – Intel Core i9-10900K Mobo – ASRock H470 Steel Legend RAM – 32GB (4x8GB) HyperX Fury RGB 3200MHz C16 GPU – Nvidia RTX 2080 Founders Edition SSD – Viper VPR100 RGB 1TB PSU – Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB Gold 750W Chassis – Open BenchTable Cooling – Custom Liquid Loop (EKWB Velocity CPU Block, EKWB PE240 Rad, 1x DDC Pump) All testing is performed at default “out of the box” settings. PCMark 10 PCMark 10 is the complete benchmark for the modern office. It is the ideal test for organizations that are evaluating PCs for a workforce with a range of performance needs. The tests in this benchmark cover a wide range of activities from everyday productivity tasks to demanding work with digital media content. PCMark 10 uses a modular approach to build relevant benchmark tests around common end-user scenarios. A Test Group is a collection of workloads that share a common theme or purpose. There are four test groups in PCMark 10, we use three of them. Essentials: covers the common, everyday ways that people use a PC. The workloads include Web Browsing, Video Conferencing, and App Start-up time. Productivity: measures system performance with everyday office applications. This test group includes Spreadsheets and Writing workloads. Digital Content Creation: This test group's workload reflects the demands of working with digital content and media. The tests include Photo Editing, Video Editing, and Rendering and Visualization. ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend falls just behind it’s smaller but higher positioned Z490 PG-ITX/TB3 sibling. WebXPRT 2015 WebXPRT 2013 uses scenarios created to mirror the tasks you do every day to compare the performance of almost any Web-enabled device. It contains four HTML5- and JavaScript-based workloads: Photo Effects, Face Detect, Stocks Dashboard, and Offline Notes. WebXPRT is run with the latest stable release version of Google Chrome browser, in this case, Version 61. In a productivity test, the H470 Steel Legend holds its own easily over other 400 series boards. CPU Performance Testing Super PI Modded 1.5 “In August 1995, the calculation of pi up to 4,294,960,000 decimal digits was succeeded by using a supercomputer at the University of Tokyo. The program was written by D.Takahashi in collaboration with Dr.Y.Kanada at the computer center. This record should be the current world record. (Details are shown in the windows help.) This record-breaking program was ported to personal computer environments such as Windows NT and Windows 95. In order to calculate 33.55 million digits, it takes within 3 days with a Pentium 90 MHz, 40 MB main memory, and 340 MB available storage.” The Steel Legend does a great job here, coming in just a few seconds behind our other ASRock 400 series boards, and well ahead of the competition. CINEBENCH R15 "CINEBENCH is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer's performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Life of Pi or Prometheus, and much more. CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and OS X). And best of all: It's completely free." The Steel Legend falls right in, In first place in multi-threaded within the margin of error, and a mere 5 points from first place in single-threaded mode. CINEBENCH R20 Cinebench is a real-world cross-platform test suite that evaluates your computer's hardware capabilities. Improvements to Cinebench Release 20 reflect the overall advancements to CPU and rendering technology in recent years, providing a more accurate measurement of Cinema 4D's ability to take advantage of multiple CPU cores and modern processor features available to the average user. Best of all: It's free. Cinebench R20 has very similar results, with the H470 Steel Legend just a couple of points from first place, well within the margin of error. Passmark Performance Test - CPU Mark “Fast, easy to use, PC speed testing, and benchmarking. PassMark Performance Test ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers.” In Passmark’s Performance Test 10, both ASRock boards in our sample set fall a few points behind the others but still do well. SiSoft Sandra – Cryptographic Bandwidth “SiSoftware Sandra provides a robust package of diagnostic tools for testing your system and teasing out its problems--or potential headaches.” The H470 Steel Legend comes in close to the same score as the Z490 Phantom Gaming ITX we tested previously. Black Hole 4.2 Let the beast run and benchmark your system in three different tests (Multithreaded, Single-threaded & 4-Threaded) that will test your CPU to the very limit, and score you among hundreds of other systems that have tested. Multithreaded will test your CPU's efficiency of running more than one thread without major system lag. The higher you score on this one, the more threads your CPU can handle with a comfortable speed. High multithreaded scores generally mean you can render things faster. 4-Threaded tests your CPU's performance in games since most games currently run on 4 threads. Single-threaded evaluates how fast the CPU can handle a single, dedicated thread for processing. We see a similar trend with the Black Hole Benchmark, with ASRock’s boards hanging close together. Workstation Testing Blender Benchmark 2.82 – BMW27 A new platform to collect and display the results of hardware and software performance tests. Aimed at an optimal comparison between system hardware and installations using open source software and testing content in the public domain. ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend comes in a fair bit slower than the Z490 powered options with a time of 2 minutes and 17 seconds. POV-Ray 3.7 Standard Benchmark – CPU The H470 Steel Legend pulls a win here with our fastest time yet. 7-Zip The benchmark shows a rating in MIPS (million instructions per second). The rating value is calculated from the measured speed, and it is normalized with the results of the Intel Core 2 CPU with a multi-threading option switched off. So, if you have a modern CPU from Intel or AMD, rating values in single-thread mode must be close to real CPU frequency. There are two tests, compression with the LZMA method and decompression with the LZMA method. Once the total passes reach 50, the score is taken Most of our scores are pretty similar here, and the Steel Legend slides in just ahead of the Phantom Gaming ITX. System Memory Testing AIDA64 Engineer Edition “FinalWire Ltd. today announced the immediate availability of AIDA64 Extreme Edition 1.50 software, a streamlined diagnostic and benchmarking tool for home users; and the immediate availability of AIDA64 Business Edition 1.50 software, an essential network management solution for small and medium scale enterprises. The new AIDA64 update implements AVX-optimized benchmarks for the upcoming Intel Sandy Bridge processors, adds a brand-new video encoding benchmark, and supports the latest AMD and NVIDIA graphics processors.” Aida64 shows us the weak point of the H470 chipset on ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend. The platform limits memory speed to 2933MHz which has a notable impact on bandwidth and latency vs. 3200Mhz. Passmark Performance Test - Memory Mark - Threaded “Fast, easy to use, PC speed testing, and benchmarking. PassMark Performance Test ™ allows you to objectively benchmark a PC using a variety of different speed tests and compare the results to other computers.” Passmark’s Threaded Memory Mark test shows again, the reduction in performance when running a 10-core CPU with slower memory. SiSoft Sandra – Memory Bandwidth - Aggregate. “SiSoftware Sandra provides a robust package of diagnostic tools for testing your system and teasing out its problems--or potential headaches.” SiSoft again shows what we already know. Synthetic Game Testing 3DMark – Fire Strike "Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today's high-performance gaming PCs. It is our most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today" ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend hangs right in the middle of the pack, even with a bit slower memory speeds, limited by the platform. 3DMark – Time Spy "3Dmark Time Spy is a new DirectX 12 benchmark test for Windows 10 gaming PCs. Time Spay is one of the first DirectX 12 apps to be built “the right way” from the ground up to fully realize the performance gains that the new API offers. With DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, Time Spy is the ideal test for benchmarking the latest graphics cards.” Time Spy shows a bit more impact from the limited memory speed, but not too bad. Unigine Superposition Superposition also shows a predictable drop from the Z490 boards, but it does well anyway. Game Testing Sid Meier’s Civilization VI Originally created by legendary game designer Sid Meier, Civilization is a turn-based strategy game in which you attempt to build an empire to stand the test of time. Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Wage war, conduct diplomacy, advance your culture, and go head-to-head with history’s greatest leaders as you attempt to build the greatest civilization the world has ever known. Civilization VI offers new ways to engage with your world: cities now physically expand across the map, active research in technology and culture unlocks new potential, and competing leaders will pursue their own agendas based on their historical traits as you race for one of five ways to achieve victory in the game. ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend does well in our first game benchmark coming in just a fraction of a millisecond slower than Z490 boards. Far Cry 5 Anything can happen. Everything will. Welcome to Hope County, Montana, land of the free and the brave, but also home to a fanatical doomsday cult—known as The Project at Eden’s Gate—that is threatening the community's freedom. Stand up to the cult’s leaders, Joseph Seed, and the Heralds, as you spark the fires of resistance that will liberate the besieged community. Far Cry 5 does quite well on the Steel Legend with it missing being the fastest average frame rate of our 400 series boards. Far Cry New Dawn Face off against the vicious Highwaymen, led by twin sisters Mickey and Lou, as you fight to survive in a post-apocalyptic frontier set in Hope County, Montana 17 years after the global nuclear catastrophe. Form unexpected alliances, build a deadly arsenal of makeshift weapons using the remnants of the old world. Far Cry New Dawn shows the Steel Legend just a couple of frames behind the much more expensive Z490 boards. Shadow of the Tomb Raider Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be. Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs really well on the Steel Legend and gives us the best frame rate to date for our 400 series boards. Ashes of the Singularity Planet by planet, a war is raging across the galaxy. The technological singularity has given humanity the power to expand further than they ever have before. Now, they compete with each other and their sentient artificial intelligence adversaries for control of newfound worlds. The Steel Legend shows a pretty big lead from the Z490 boards with a more than 10% lead from the higher-priced boards. Metro Exodus Metro Exodus is an epic, story-driven first-person shooter from 4A Games that blends deadly combat and stealth with exploration and survival horror in one of the most immersive game worlds ever created. In Metro Exodus, the Steel Legend regains its honor with it holding the lead over the rest of our 400 series boards. Final Thoughts & Conclusion ASRock’s H470 Steel Legend is powered by Intel’s H470 chipset and while limited when compared to Z490 chipsets, ASRock makes the most of it. If it wasn’t for the H470’s limitation on memory speed, The Steel Legend would likely lead the pack across the board. Even with the platform limitation, the Steel Legend was able to pull wins in many of our tests. While you cant overclock, ASRock’s secret weapon, Base Frequency Boost is designed to eek every last bit of performance out of locked processors. Performance aside, the real stand out is aesthetics. The Steel Legend uses a beautiful black PCB with striking aluminum accents and a white and grey digital camo pattern on the PCB itself. The lighting around the chipset is beautiful. The Steel Legend logo around the main power connector is nice but is almost impossible to display without obstruction from the main 24-pin power cable in most cases. Connectivity is great for this level of board. There are piles of USB available via internal headers, on-board 2.5Gb LAN, and even dedicated areas for adding in Wi-Fi if needed. For $130 on the street, you get a Legendary board that will power your system reliably for years to come.

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