The Intel B560 Motherboard Overview: 30+ Budget Models Starting from $75
by Gavin Bonshor on March 29, 2021 7:00 AM ESTASRock B560M Steel Legend
The ASRock B560M Steel Legend is essentially a cut-down version of its ATX B560 Steel Legend, with similar features with a smaller micro-ATX footprint. Going from ATX to micro-ATX, the reduction in size is generally achieved by lowering PCIe slot count, as the PCB lost is almost always from the bottom. Design-wise, it uses a grey, black and white urban camouflage patterning on the PCB, with silver and grey heatsinks. ASRock includes limited integrated RGB LEDs along the right-hand side of the board, which allows users to create an underglow effect.
ASRock includes a single full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, with two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Memory support consists of four memory slots that can accommodate up to DDR4-4800 with a maximum capacity of 128 GB. For storage, ASRock has included two M.2 slots with the top slot operating at PCIe 4.0 x4, while the second operates at PCIe 3.0 x4 and includes support for SATA drives. There is a total of six SATA ports with two along the bottom with straight-angled connectors and four with right-angled connectors, and all feature support with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. For users looking to add Wi-Fi, there's also an M.2 Key E slot as this board doesn't come equipped with a wireless CNVi.
The rear panel includes four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports and two USB 2.0 ports, with an HDMI and DisplayPort video output pairing for users planning on using Intel's UHD integrated graphics. ASRock is using a single Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 GbE controller, with five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF powered by a Realtek ALC807 HD audio codec. Last on the rear panel is a PS/2 combo port which is designed for use with legacy peripherals.
At the time of writing, ASRock hasn't unveiled any pricing information for the B560M Steel Legend.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
FriendlySeaCow - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
The MSI MPG B560I Gaming Edge Wi-Fi has been announced and its features fully released, so you can update that page. Incidentally, there's also a typo in the MSI table, where you have "ATX" instead of "ITX" under the Size Column for the B560I.Looks like a really nice board: https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MPG-B560I-GAMING-E...
Jorgp2 - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Why didn't they enable the full 8 sata ports for this chipset, X299 is dead anyway.Linustechtips12#6900xt - Thursday, April 8, 2021 - link
because who uses 8 freaking sata ports at a time, i think the MAX I've ever used is 4Mr Perfect - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Nice round up. Any chance you'll do something similar for H570? They don't seem to cost much more, but have some additional chipset features.Scour - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
B560 also with 6x SATA, PCIe 4.0 and also on ATX-boards, sound good for me.sheltem - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
According to this Reddit post, the Asrock B560 ITX has pretty good VRM's:https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/lao3ym/z59...
BrokenCrayons - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
Finally some decently priced motherboards are getting attention they deserve! I'm really happy to see and read about hardware in a price segment I would actually buy and use.evilpaul666 - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
The 10/11 series would be so much more interesting if it had ECC support.jrbales@outlook.com - Monday, March 29, 2021 - link
I'm in the process of building a new system for my sister. Bought the ASUS Prime B560M-A at a price competitive with the B460 boards. A very nice mATX board that was nice to work with. One observation and one question. I bought the optional Intel WIFI card & antenna kit to use with the WIFI bracket. On the plus side, it works great and I didn't have to run ethernet cable across the room I was building it in. The negative is that the WIFI bracket has to be attached to the motherboard, using really tiny screws from the rear of the board. That probably took the longest thing in the build as I'd have to try to balance the MB, keep the bracket in place over the holes and the card inserted in the slot, while keeping the tiny screws on the screwdriver long enough to screw in. Now for the question. It involves the first M.2 slot, above the GPU. It's PCIE 4.0. According to everything printed by ASUS, if you use a 10th generation CPU, the slot is disabled, leaving only the second M.2 beneath the GPU. I understand the part about needing an 11th gen CPU to get PCIE 4, but shouldn't the first slot support a PCIE 3.0 M.2 SSD? I'm used to these slots being backward compatible and on my AMD X570 board, you can use either PCIE 3 or 4 SSDs in both slots. Does anyone knows if the B56s0 slot 1 is backward compatible?mobilefrenzy - Tuesday, March 30, 2021 - link
M.2 Slot 1 on B560 and Z590 mobos don't work with 10th gen CPUs, as they don't have the additional PCIe lanes to enable them.