The best gaming motherboards tend to combine high end components with advanced features, particularly for overclocking, and usually come from the likes of Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. What about ASRock? A former spin-off of Asus, ASRock is making a bid for the upper echelon with its new Steel Legend motherboard line.
"ASRock Steel Legend motherboards are built around the most demanding specs and features to provide a wide array of materials, components, and features that ensure stable and reliable performance," ASRock says.
The company goes on to highlight things like "massive and luscious XXL aluminum alloy heatsinks," reinforced PCI Express slots, I/O armor, and of course RGB lighting. Most of that has become fairly common among higher end boards these days, and even some mid-range ones.
ASRock is also touting high quality audio capacitors with signal shielding built into the PCB, and protection from lightning strikes and ESD on all USB, audio, and LAN ports. On the overclocking side, ASRock says its "premium 60A power chokes and Nichicon 12K black caps" keeps things "rock solid."
It's a lot of marketing fluff, and obviously we can't attest to how well ASRock's Steel Legend motherboards hold up to the rigors of overclocking until we've had a chance to test them out. So, we'll reserve judgement until then.
In the meantime, ASRock is kicking things off with a couple of AMD motherboards, including the B450 Steel Legend (ATX) and B450M Steel Legend (micro-ATX). They look decent enough, though performance, reliability, and of course price will ultimately determine their worth. That said, ASRock hasn't indicated how much either board will cost or when they will be available to purchase.
