The AMD B550 Motherboard Overview: ASUS, GIGABYTE, MSI, ASRock, and Others

ASRock B550M Steel Legend

The smaller mATX version of the Steel Legend is, for the most part, similar to the larger version but with the same features in a smaller form factor. We still get the design that comes across as a stainless steel implementation, with RGB LEDs on the rear panel cover and chipset heatsink, but this time the chipset heatsink covers the main M.2 slot rather than the secondary one (and the secondary one doesn’t have a heatsink at all).

The CPU power is an 8-pin and a 4-pin, and the socket area has access to three 4-pin fan headers within easy reach. The DRAM slots are single sided latch designs, and on the right hand side of the board we get an RGB LED header, the 24-pin ATX connector, the USB 3.0 header, two vertical SATA ports, and four regular SATA ports. All the SATA ports in this configuration come from the chipset, with no additional controllers.

On the bottom of the board is another RGB LED header, three more fan headers, two USB 2.0 headers, and another USB 3.0 header. Above this is a PCIe 3.0 x2 slot without a heatsink.

The PCIe slots are configured for an x16 PCIe 4.0 from the CPU, and the other full-length slot is a PCIe 3.0 x4 from the chipset. On the right side of the board is the upgraded audio, which has signal separation, filter caps, and runs a Realtek ALC1200 codec without an additional amp.

On the rear panel of the motherboard, we get a Clear CMOS button, HDMI video output, Display Port, two USB 2.0 ports, a combination PS/2 port, a Type-A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, a Type-C USB 3.2 Gen 2 port, four USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port, and audio jacks.