Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Review and Build for the Steel Legend B760M Motherboard”.
Up on offer today is the b760m still Legend Wi-Fi from ASRock two and a half gigabit Lan, pretty decent rear. I o decent built-in expandability, PCI, 5 storage uh. It takes all the boxes, but what can you actually build with this? Can you rock an I9 3900k or ks in this board? What about an i7? Would this be more appropriate for that it is Micro ATX? We should do a build all right in the Box. You get two safety cables rubber duck antennas. I really wish these were higher end antennas. It really it’s tough when you’re using Wi-Fi 6E, if your main connection is Just Wireless when the antennas are behind the computer, and the reason is because the computer’s made up of metal and radio signals going through the metal case, not really super good. So having a movable Wi-Fi antenna on a little wire is dramatically better than this. It’S always complain about those got a steel Legend postcard from ASRock, our still Legend installation manual and lots and lots and lots of m.2 screws, as this board has of plurality of m.2 connectors. Actually, let’s talk about the block diagram for this motherboard first, because there’s something interesting going on here now when we talk about this board and the steel Legend series from ASRock ASRock is very careful to try to carve a niche out for themselves as okay, you can Buy this board and you can run a high-end CPU with it, but it’s not necessarily going to have all the bells and whistles of a higher end motherboard, but it’s also not going to be a significant cost.
So if you just want a platform for your 12th or 13th generation, CPU yeah, you can run Alder Lake CPUs in this motherboard no problem. So if you see like the 12 700k on sale, you can pick it up and it’ll work great in this. If you prefer not to overclock or even have the ability to overclock, you can also get the non-k CPUs, and I think that’s really where this motherboard shines. Now for the 13th generation Intel has locked down the b-clock overclocking there weren’t a lot of motherboards for Alder Lake.
That would let you do. B-Clock overclocking ASRock had planned to come out with a few boards that had b-clock overclocking so that you could use it with 12 to 13th gen CPUs, but it doesn’t work at all with 13th gen CPU, so that Plucky little I5 12. 400. That I love that you could do b-clock, overclocking and just a couple of boards. All that is pretty much done away with Intel doesn’t want you to do that. They don’t want you to get anything for free.
That CPU was like 130 dollars at one point, and that was the deal of the century. There’S not a deal on the market today, that’s as good of a deal as that I5 12. 400 was a year ago. Why am I talking about that when we’re talking about the steel Legend motherboards, because the steel Legend motherboards, usually these are the right balance to be able to sort of thread the needle on those kinds of situations? If you put a 12 900k in here or a 13900k, it’s going to run hot you’re, going to be at the very edge of what this motherboard is capable of, and I’m very hesitant to recommend that. So I have three I9 13900k CPUs, one of which was supplied by Intel that I do various testing on that sort of thing, and I have one 3900 KS KS the integrated memory controller that CPUs Bend Intel’s been been bending these 13th gen CPUs since day, one They’Ve planned 13 900 KS since day, one and so they’ve been plucking the best CPUs out since the beginning, and that shows in the 3900ks we’re talking about overclockability under voltability, all the other stuff, like that for this platform for underclocking and 3900 KS, it can work. But it’s still going to have worse, vrm, thermals and worse top one percent performance than you’re really going to get I mean Intel is letting you run 320 Watts with a 1300 KS.
All of that background is just to tell you that the ideal CPU for this motherboard is probably the 13700k or the 13900 no K or the 13 700 okay, the 13900 no K, even though it doesn’t have the K. This motherboard will let it run with an extra 100 watts of power indefinitely. It’S the pl1 pl2 stuff that I’ve covered in other videos if you’ve never heard of that before.
Basically, it’s the Intel turbo duration, how long can this CPU turbo? How long are we going to run at 5.7 to 5.9 gigahertz, depending on your overclock, with your kcpu? It’S a function of thermals? How cool you can keep your CPU, which is going to be the most top shelf cooling, your motherboard? How much power can your motherboard deliver and your CPU now this motherboard can turbo, but not indefinitely, and not at that highest 320 watt specification, but 253 Watts 253 watts is also pushing it, which is why the 13700k, with its eight P cores and eight e-cores, is A little easier from a vrm standpoint, most of the time you don’t need the extra wattage unless you’re pushing you’re, also pushing the e-cores for gaming and things like that. You’Re not really using the e-cores as part of the gaming you’re. Only using those performance cores the pcores with your Intel CPU, so for a 13 700k with overclocking with the best cooling, you aren’t really going to lose any performance, and this motherboard is significantly less expensive than your z790 and your your your your other uh, your your Other sorts of motherboards – and it is also true that most of the highest end overclocking features, are reserved for that z790 chipset, Intel and they’re. You know boxing and limiting and checking all the boxes and Ticking all the boxes and then, when you find a way through, like the 12, 500 nope, nope you’re using a processor or you’re using a component that way, we don’t intend nope. I don’t like that with this platform anyway, our m.2 layout, pretty awesome here. We’Ve got our m.2 here at the top, which is connected directly to our CPU, and we’ve got two at the bottom, one of which includes a heatsink and the other. One is just open and then we’ve got our m.2 Wi-Fi. This version of the board does include built-in Wi-Fi 6E, which is awesome, and that is an Intel Wi-Fi solution. Our 2.5 gigabit Nic, that is a real Tech, Dragon 2.5 gigabit Nick and we’ve also got you know our analog audio out and some other stuff.
If you’re thinking wait a minute this rear, i o looks an awful lot like the Sonic, the motherboard another. You know if you’re into Sonic the Hedgehog this is, it should look familiar because it basically is – and I think this is the same six layer PCB and the same configuration the same ddr5 6800 OC Max reported from ASRock. I would certify this motherboard for 6200. 6400. 6000 is safe, 626400 is pretty safe, you probably could run 6 800, but my particular kits of memory and 6400 was a lot easier to get. Working was basically Plug and Play 6800.
I think is pushing it with a six layer PCB and it didn’t work exactly perfectly out of the box but 6200 and Beyond it’s pretty good. So I mean that the memory speed doesn’t even really matter unless you’re getting into like 40, 80, 40, 90 territory or you’re. Looking at this motherboard a year or two on on and there’s something, that’s come out, that’s even faster than the 4090 and you’re saying. Yes, I don’t want there to be a bottleneck, then memory speeds May matter to you. We’Ve also got the dual 8-pin power connector up here at the top suggesting that you could deliver more than 400 watts to your CPU, but really you only have to connect one of those I mean you should connect both of them for stability. If your power supply has the connector, but you really only need one, we’ve also got type c for the front panel 10 gigabit very nice and our dual five gigabit 30 pin header for USB two USB 2.0 headers for any internal peripherals that you’re going to run For SATA ports, which I don’t really see as a problem and ample 4 pin fan headers two at the top two at the bottom and one at the front for RGB.
We’Ve got a single 50 50 header at the bottom and then we’ve got three digital headers. Just as we saw in our Sonic motherboard one at the bottom, two at the front edge of the motherboard, this motherboard also features the embedded DisplayPort connector, which I’ve covered before you may have seen the build that I did in the Lee and Lee Dynamic 011 with A built-in LCD screen, so if you want to do a case mod, where you incorporate a built-in LCD display, you can go out with a special ASRock cable from this to any embedded, DisplayPort 30 pin connector, you know display LCD screen, it’s going to provide Power and Data over a single connector here for that display, my display is 1080p, but you can also run 1366 by 768 or 1280×720 because it’s embedded DisplayPort full HD 60 hertz on that connector is no problem and the cable can be hidden out of the way behind your Motherboard because it’s literally on the rear of the motherboard, an embedded DisplayPort connector, that’s going to run off the igpu. So if you do set that or you set it up and you’ve got an add-in GPU and it’s not working, you will have to enable multi-monitor in the Bios. I mentioned that in some other videos and somebody ran out and bought one of these, and they said oh crap, I can’t get the display to work and it’s like well you, when you put in an ad in GPU it disables the GPU, that’s built into the Cpu by default, you will also need to enable the GPU that’s built into the CPU. You kind of want that anyway, for quick sync, these days that shouldn’t shouldn’t be the default. I think it may not be the default to newer biases, but you want to enable the explicitly make sure that the bio says that your integrated GPU is enabled and your added GPU can be the primary one.
And then you want to make sure that you get your Intel GPU drivers installed, so otherwise, when we’re talking about the 12700k, this motherboard is basically no compromises. You’Re going to run into thermal limits from your CPU cooling solution before you run into Power delivery limits of this motherboard. This motherboard is right on the edge. Asrock has been pretty careful to try to give you the least modern board that you need for the best 13 900k. So you could theoretically run a 3900k on this, but I would recommend that only for gaming workloads and not the most extreme workloads or just forget about the 3900k and go for the 13700k. The 13700k is a better choice.
If you’re more worried about gaming than rendering or anything else anyway, I mean you get 16 e-cores and eight performance cores with the 3900k versus 8 and 8. With the you know, it seems like you’re, giving up eight efficiency cores eight Skylake cores, which really only matters if you’re running lots and lots and lots of background tasks. It does not matter for gaming, so I think a high-end gaming build from this.
It’S kind of a no-brainer and you could actually even get a lesser expensive board. If you are looking at that I5, which is pretty cool 12 cores or one of the other lesser expensive CPUs. You could run the 12 500 in this as well, but it’s not going to give you b-clock overclocking or anything like that, because it’s a newer, chipset Intel’s, really locked down.
They sort of freaked out over that whole b-clock overclocking, because the 12 500 that 100 ish dollars was too good of a deal and they’ve made it basically impossible to get. You got to look at Elsewhere. For you know, the deal of the century type builds, but you know it is what it is now for this build. I got the fractal mesh52 mini and our power supply thermaltake the smart 700. Why? Because this is for someone else, and these are cheap. So this is a 700 watt power supply.
That’S not actually a 700 watt power supply, it’s really only 630 Watts. This is a technique here you got to look at the labels for these 630 watts and the 12 volt side and then 700 Watts total power supply. It’S not really misleading when it says that it’s 700 Watts the same candle over 700 Watts, but you’re limited to 630 Watts on the 12 volt side.
So when you do the napkin math and say how many watts is my GPU at Peak and how many watts is my CPU at Peak those are 12 volt figures only the other stuff like your or m.2. You know that’s not using 12 volts. Well, that’s not always true, generally not 12 volts not get contribute to the 630 Watts part of the wattage it’ll use from the the other, 130 Watts, or so but yeah I mean it’s an inexpensive power supply it’ll, get the job done and we’ll get the job Done with two pcie connectors on a shared cable, that’s all you get no 4080, no 40, 70..
6600, maybe 67.50 from AMD, maybe but again, 13 700k. For the cooling, it’s our MSI core, liquid s240. Why? And it’s got a screen. It’S got some bling. If you’re doing a build like this Pro tip, spend the money on a better power supply or GPU or literally anything else, but hey this was on sale, so it didn’t really cost anything. Personally, I think it’s easier to install the mounting hardware for the CPU.
First. Basically, we pop out our little piece of plastic and we screw in the little screws that it comes with and then we’re good to go for that part of it and our motherboard’s ready to mount there’s a simple joy that comes from doing something with your hands. Like this, so for this build, we have to be careful a 240 millimeter cooler in the top with this motherboard, because the memory sits so high. Your Corsair Dominator memory is not going to work. It’S too tall. Oem memory works fine, but I’ve got some just generic crucial memory in there that doesn’t have a heat, spreader or anything else.
Plenty of clearance, for that so got ta, be careful with these bills, and if this is your first time building and it’s like – oh, I picked all these parts and I just changed one thing: uh, you got ta double check, all your measurements. Now I could put the radiator in the front, but then that’s going to limit the width of my GPU as well, which is not an ideal situation, pretty good bundle overall, pretty reasonable, build quality and considering the costs costs sort of factor in heavily when you’re, considering Complexity to build the trade-offs for what you’re getting real Tech ALC 897 audio. It might be nicer to have a little bit better audio for gaming. The 897 is pretty long in the tooth at this point, but it gets the job done. I’M one of this level. One has been a quick look at the steel Legend, z760m Micro, ATX Micro ATX is sort of the new ITX.
I like Micro, ATX for builds. I like that the pcie slot is located here, so you can use this with a four slot. Gpu totally awesome. You do have the single PCI expressed by one slot if you’re rocking a dual slot GPU, but you know it is what it is all right. I’M signing out. You find me in the level one forums .