The first motherboards released for AMD's AM5 processors were expensive flagship models based on an X-series chipset, the X670. Though the one-step-down B650 chipset has roughly half the connectivity of X670, it covers the necessities; if you can get by with fewer USB ports and storage drive connections, a B650 motherboard can save you a lot of money. A variant on the platform, the B650E, also guarantees a PCI Express 5.0 x16 slot, perfect for anyone looking for a long-term board that can support future graphics card releases. The ASRock B650E Steel Legend WiFi lists for $269.99 but is often available for around $250, making it one of the least-expensive AM5 boards with a PCIe 5.0 x16 card slot. If you don't insist on PCIe 5.0 graphics (there's no major real-world benefit to it today), though, the same outlay can get you a better-equipped B650 motherboard or possibly one of the lower-end X670 boards, whose extra features and connectivity make this Steel Legend a tough recommendation for the money.

The Board Design: Shades of the Taichi

As part of the Steel Legend line, the ASRock B650E WiFi sports the company's typical gray and white digital camouflage pattern on both the printed circuit board (PCB) and surface components. This pattern mixes with ASRock's usual diagonal stripe cues in both graphic silk-screening and cuts in the voltage regulator module (VRM) heatsinks. RGB lighting illuminates the window over the rear input/output (I/O) area and the underside of the chipset heatsink.

The PCB is eight layers, the same as the ASRock X670E Taichi reviewed here last month and nearly all of ASRock's AM5 motherboards. Also like the Taichi, the B650E's memory and expansion card slots are surface-mounted instead of through-hole. The rear I/O shield is integrated and uses a unique mounting system that lets it slide a little bit in every direction, making an easier fit in a case even if every mounting point isn't perfectly aligned.

The B650E Steel Legend WiFi uses a 16+2+1 phase design on the VRM and has two 8-pin power connectors at the top right of the board. This isn't as large as would be desirable for a top-end overclocking board, but is sufficient for the upper mainstream systems this board targets. Likewise, the VRM heatsink is ordinary segmented aluminum; no heat pipes connect the aluminum blocks, and no active cooling is present or necessary.

The four DIMM slots are reinforced, feature electrostatic discharge protection, and use half latches on the top side only. The board officially supports RAM speeds up to DDR5-6600, as well as XMP and AMD EXPO, and holds up to 128GB of memory. We used our Kingston DDR5-6000 EXPO kit in our test build, achieving EXPO speeds with no negative issues.

Expansion and Storage

Earning the "E" suffix of its B650E designation, the board's top PCI Express slot supports the 5.0 x16 spec and connects to the CPU. Three spaces below the main card slot is another full-length slot connecting at 3.0 x4 speeds. Though the B650E configuration would allow this slot to operate at up to 5.0 x4, it would require much costlier traces to support the higher frequencies. Oddly, ASRock dropped it all the way to PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0, which would have made it more serviceable as an NVMe expansion slot instead.

Speaking of NVMe, the primary M.2 connection is found above the main PCIe card slot, beneath a stacked-height heatsink that's much better than the typical thin strip. As with all AM5 boards, it runs at PCIe 5.0 x4 through the CPU. All eight of the chipset's PCIe 4.0 lanes are used for two additional M.2 connections, located under the long cover strip below the chipset heatsink and the second expansion card slot. All three M.2 slots can fit up to Type-2280 (80mm) drives and use thermal pads on only the top sides of the drives.

For older SATA drives, you get just two forward-facing 6Gbps ports, both on the leading edge; the other two chipset lanes for SATA are used by the network controllers. If you are still wedded to using multiple optical drives, or are upgrading a PC and transferring over multiple platter drives or 2.5-inch SSDs, the B650E Steel Legend may not be for you. For most basic users, building a PC with just a drive or two, this SATA limitation shouldn't be an issue.

RAID 0 and 1 are supported for NVMe and SATA drives. The NVMe drives can run in RAID 10 mode if you use an NVMe expansion card to mount a fourth drive, but that requires giving up the graphics slot or using the much slower 3.0 x4 slot.

A Look at the Rear I/O

HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4 ports can be found on the back if you will rely on the newly abundant integrated graphics on Ryzen 7000 CPUs, or are troubleshooting a faulty dedicated graphics card. A total of eight USB ports are available: The top two are USB 2.0, one of them next to the BIOS Flashback control button and rimmed in a black border to designate it as the Flashback port. The four ports in the middle are 5Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports. Under the RJ-45 jack are two 10Gbps ports, one Type-A and one Type-C.

The previously mentioned network controllers are a Realtek Dragon 2.5Gbps Ethernet and MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E/Bluetooth 5.2 combo card. An external antenna is included in the box, though it uses double-sided adhesive foam for mounting instead of a magnetic base. (I prefer the latter.) Two 3.5mm jacks, one line-out and one mic-in, provide audio connections, along with one S/PDIF port. Onboard audio is handled by the Realtek ALC897 codec, an aging chip that's still adequate for mainstream uses.

Internal Connectors and Headers

This board provides five additional USB headers. Midway down the front edge, below the ATX power connector, are a 5Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1 header and a 20Gbps USB Type-C header. A second USB 3.2 Gen 1 header and two USB 2.0 headers are along the bottom edge, along with a 5-pin Thunderbolt header that requires a separate Thunderbolt add-in card.

For cooling, the B650E Steel Legend has six 4-pin fan headers. Two are at the top right corner, intended for CPU cooling. Three of the remaining four are along the bottom edge, with the last just below the SATA ports. The first CPU is limited to 1-amp (A) current, but the rest can be set to water-pump mode to deliver up to 2A.

If you'd like to dress up the board with additional lighting, a 4-pin 12V RGB header is at the bottom left corner. It's compatible with ASRock's Polychrome Sync system. Three other 3-pin addressable RGB headers are available, one on the bottom edge and two at top right.

The front-panel headers for power and reset are in their usual place at lower right, which is also where you'll find the audio header. Other connections include a Trusted Platform Module header and a clear CMOS jumper. At the top right, in lieu of an alphanumeric debug display, is a color-coded POST status LED array.

The Build Experience

As with most modern motherboards, nothing really stands out as either easy or overtly difficult when building a system around the B650E Steel Legend. The VRM heatsink doesn't intrude on the two EPS12V power connectors, making them easy to reach. The integrated backplate on the CPU socket makes cooler mounting safe and secure. The screws for the M.2 heat shields are semi-captured; it would be nicer if the M.2 slots themselves had some sort of quick mounting clips for the drives, instead of using the typical loose M.2 micro-screws that are so easily lost.

On the negative side, the fan-header layout could be more accommodating. Three of the six fan connectors are along the bottom edge of the board and not terribly usable in many typical tower-case build scenarios. The two CPU fan headers in the top right corner work well for top- or front-mounted radiators. Having only one header on the front edge of the board can be limiting for those who want extra front intake fans. None of them is conveniently located for rear exhaust fans above the rear I/O panel.

ASRock provides a graphics card support bracket in the box, but it's far from a universal solution. It mounts to the front edge of the motherboard using the normal standoff mount points. (Longer screws in a both fine and coarse thread are included, as well.) A sliding support strut with a rubber pad then attaches to this frame and can be moved up and down to brace the underside of the GPU cooler.

The support bracket has three significant limitations, however. First, the way it attaches puts it across the SATA ports and also extends into the area most cases use for cable management holes and grommets. It's possible it won't even fit in your case of choice, or if it does, it will limit how well you can route cables inside. Second, the brace won't work with shorter GPUs, as a graphics card needs to be at least 265mm long to even reach the support ledge. (This may not be a major issue since shorter GPUs are typically light and don't need extra support.)

Finally, the support strut can't move up high enough to make contact with the card itself; it's meant to make contact with the cooling shroud on double-slot cards. Though the MSI GTX 1070 card we used in our build is long enough to reach the support bracket, its cooling shroud doesn't extend to the very corners and hence couldn't make contact with the support bracket. If your GPU cooler doesn't reach the very bottom of the card, or if you use a liquid-cooled GPU with thin water blocks, you may run into similar problems.

A Brief Look at the UEFI

Apart from the Steel Legend color pattern used in the UEFI background, the BIOS interface is the same as the X670E Taichi's. No EZ Mode is provided to gather the most often-used settings into a single page. While this expert-only mode makes sense for a high-performing tweaker board like the Taichi, it's not ideal for a mainstream product like the Steel Legend line.

As with the Taichi, RAM overclocking makes up the bulk of the OC Tweaker section. Standard JEDEC, Intel XMP, and AMD EXPO profiles are all supported.

Ten preset slots are available to store and recall system settings, and you can export presets to and import them from USB drives. Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) presets and submenus for custom RAM profiles, timings, and external voltage are also available.

The Advanced tab governs integrated components, storage, USB, and PCIe configuration. As with all ASRock boards, the UEFI supports full 1080p resolution when it detects a compatible monitor instead of retro 1,024 by 768.

For settings to control core clocks, Infinity Fabric, PBO, and CPU voltage, use the Advanced section, but be prepared to see a warning each time you access one of these features.

The H/W Monitor section provides system temperature and fan speed controls. Fans can have a five-point curve, either created manually or automatically with the Fan-Tastic tool. Fans can be configured to key off CPU or motherboard temperature and set to PWM and voltage operation mode.

Extra Utilities

If the Auto Driver Installer feature is enabled in the UEFI, you'll get a pop-up notification in Windows the first time a network connection with internet access is detected. This launches a small utility to automatically download any drivers detected as missing. The app will not volunteer to download or install any of ASRock's other utilities, however. You'll have to download those manually.

Another provided utility is the App Shop, which scans your system and shows available applications and driver updates. A-Tuning (listed as Motherboard Utility) gives you access to most overclocking features and fan control.

Polychrome Sync allows customized RGB lighting and synchronizes patterns among the motherboard and other peripherals connected either directly to the motherboard (such as RGB RAM) or through the addressable RGB headers. The Nahimic Audio control allows you to tune your sound with graphic equalizers and even overlay a visual indicator of where sounds are coming from in games.

As this board uses a Dragon network controller, you can use the companion app to manage network access on your computer and create basic Quality of Service (QoS) rules to prioritize the network traffic most important for you.

Verdict: This Steel Cuts Too Close to the Bone

A cynic might look at the ASRock B650E Steel Legend WiFi and call it underwhelmingly average. It ticks the usual boxes with decent if not elaborate support for current computing hardware. Its power management, VRM, and RAM overclocking are adequate for stock clocks on premium CPUs and XMP/EXPO profiles on RAM, but it certainly isn't a top-tier enthusiast platform. Similarly, the storage support is satisfactory for modern drives, with M.2 slots for NVMe drives running at 5.0 (one slot) and 4.0 (the other two slots) speeds. The inclusion of just two SATA ports and an aging audio codec are minor disadvantages that will turn away some, but they are not major drawbacks, and network and USB connections are up to par except perhaps for the absence of ASRock's Lightning Gaming ports.

"Stable" and "reliable" doesn't have to mean "boring" and "unimaginative." Dependable consumer products at reasonable prices are always welcome. The question is whether the B650E Steel Legend WiFi can stand out in the crowd of other $250-or-so AM5 motherboards. Its main attraction is the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, which is more common on boards costing $300 or more, and the inclusion of a GPU support bracket is also a nice touch with monstrous triple-slot graphics cards becoming more common.

But if you don't see a 5.0 x16 slot as necessary, almost any B650E board will have a hard time justifying its price premium over a non-E platform. We've only just passed the point where a PCIe 3.0 x16 connection can be saturated by a GPU, and elite B650 boards with bigger power regulation circuitry and fresher 1200- and 4000-series audio codecs are available for similar prices. All of them have at least one 5.0 x4 connection for an NVMe drive. For that matter, roughly the same outlay will buy you a mainstream X670 motherboard with double the storage and USB connections of B650 models.

The B650E Steel Legend WiFi is far from a bad choice; if PCI Express 5.0 graphics are your thing, it might even be the current AM5 value king. But if fifth-generation PCIe isn't a critical factor for you, this Legend is merely ordinary.