Motherboard: X870 Steel Legend

My motherboard is the ASRock X870 Steel Legend, a solid mid ranged board.  It has an AM5 socket and DDR5 support, PCIe 5.0, and USB-C connectivity,  so it has what it needs, but not all the bells and whistles. I bought it for $230, and it’s been solid, reliable, and handles everything I need without any fuss.

CPU: Ryzen 9 9550X3D

I bought the CPU for $670 on amazon, a very hefty price tag. The CPU has been amazing, and has proven to be very capable at anything I have thrown at it like high-FPS gaming and 3d rendering. So it is a very powerful CPU, but for the majority of people I would call it overkill for things like watching videos and even gaming. While it does shine at high settings, just not enough to justify the price tag for me.

Ryzen 9 9550X3D Specs:

Socket:  AM5

Clockspeed: 4.3 GHz

16 cores (all performance) / 32 threads

L1 Instruction Cache: 16 cores x 32 KB 

L1 Data Cache: 16 cores x 48 KB

L2 Cache: 16 cores x 1024 KB

L3 Cache: 128 mb

Passmark Rating:

Very good thread rating.

My Thoughts:

The CPU has been awesome to use, running smoothly through basically any task and will definitely be a solid choice for a long time. It handles gaming, video editing, streaming, and multitasking very well. But I would not recommend this CPU for the average person, most people will barely every or never use this CPU to its full potential, and would have a very similar experience with a less powerful one. I believe this is an amazingly capable CPU but I would argue it is too much for most people.

This review is part of a classroom project

The ASRock X870 Steel Legend is a solid choice for what it offers and its price. After purchasing and testing it I would argue it is the perfect choice, not too little, not too much. It has a lot of good features, but it is missing some more premium ones. Just to name a few it has an AM5 socket, DDR5 RAM, and many USB ports on rear I/O panel. The form factor is ATX. So, it does skip a few high end extras, but but it is a very balanced board for people not wanting to spend an arm and a leg.

Now I will dive more into the specs of the motherboard, it has pretty good storage, memory and expansions. Great AM5 memory with 128GB, 4 ram slots, and a max speed of up to 8000MHz overclocked. Also decent storage, 4x SATA III and 3 M.2 slots. For expansions, the motherboard has 1 PCIe 5.0 x16, 1 PCIe 4.0 x16, and 2 PCIe 4.0 x1’s. All these specs show that it is a solid choice for the price.

When you look at the I/O panel, and see all the storage and expansion slots I would say this is a pretty feature rich motherboard. On the I/O panel, we have 2 USB Type-C ports, 5 USB 3.2 ports, 4 USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, S/PDIF port, Wi-Fi connecters, audio jacks, and a BIOS-flash button. That was a mouthful, but that goes to show how feature packed this motherboard can be, it doesn’t have everything in the world but it has what it needs, and more. And, with the Realtek ALC1220 7.1 HD audio, good sound won’t be an issue. Overall, the ASRock X870 Steel Legend has a mix of modern features and performance that match its price point, making it a very solid choice.

References

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X870%20Steel%20Legend%20WiFi/index.asp

https://www.newegg.com/p/3C6-037X-001W6?srsltid=AfmBOoqz-cQiDgfDuRdjzAjFGeg8of9pCRMr04c7N0OpssQ3EWSIJ0jp&scrlybrkr=a944a3a3

https://www.techradar.com/search?searchTerm=steel+legend+x870

Note:  This review is part of a classroom project.