The ASRock Z790 Steel Legend: Affordable, Well-Equipped, and Good-Looking
The ASRock Z790 Steel Legend is an affordable, well-equipped, and good-looking Z790 option that’s priced around $230. It’ll be of interest to those looking to build a mid-range rig that still looks the part. It’s a full-size ATX motherboard that supports Intel’s 12th and 13th-generation processors.
Pricing puts the ASRock Z790 Steel Legend in competition with the likes of the Asus Z789Z and MSI MZ789, among others. It offers plenty of storage options, including five total M.2 sockets and eight SATA ports. Fast networking and integrated Wi-Fi 6E, DDR5 support up to DDR5-7200+(OC), and a unique eDP port for internal displays are also highlights.
Regarding hardware, the Z790 Steel Legend compares well against the competition, with features like 16 phases dedicated to Vcore power delivery and copious amounts of storage. However, when it comes to performance, the results are around average. There are no worrisome or out-of-line results, but you won’t get any particular boost either.
ASRock Z790 Steel Legend Specs
The ASRock Z790 Steel Legend specs are as follows:
Where the Steel Legend excels is in the amount of phases for power delivery. It has 18 total, with 16 dedicated to Vcore and a Renesas RAA229131 PWM controller. This is still less than the amount available on premium motherboards, but it’s more than enough to power a mid-range CPU.
ASRock Z790 Steel Legend Features
The ASRock Z790 Steel Legend features are as follows:
The Steel Legend looks good on paper, but it’s when you put it side-by-side against the competition that it feels a little more competitive. The Asus Z789Z may offer slightly faster memory support and a Wi-Fi 6 module, but it doesn’t have as many M.2 sockets or SATA ports.
Likewise, the MSI MZ789 is slightly faster and has more M.2 sockets, but it lacks in the storage department again. This time, it only has two SATA ports and no M.2 sockets for comparison. The Steel Legend also has integrated Wi-Fi 6E, making it a solid choice for those who don’t want to fork out for a discrete card.
ASRock Z790 Steel Legend Performance
Our ASRock Z790 Steel Legend benchmarks don’t reveal anything particularly concerning. There isn’t anything that stands out as exceptionally good or bad, with most of the numbers landing around the middle of the pack.
It’s worth noting that our results are a little lower than the average score in our database, with a -2.9% variance compared to the average. This is partially due to the motherboard being tested with a refreshed AMD CPU, but the individual results don’t reveal any out-of-line figures.
