 All right, what's up internet? Today we're talking about three different motherboards from Acerok and our friends at Acerok were kind enough to lend us these mobos but this is in no way a sponsored post. So we have the B460M Pro, we have the B460 Pro and we have the H470 Steel Legend. And to be honest, it's very difficult to get excited about motherboards. I mean, you know, you're buying a CPU, faster CPU, better. You're an Intel fanboy, you hate the AMD fanboy, how many cores does your CPU have, how many nanometers is the manufacturing process. You know, there are easy things to latch onto if you want to get hyped up about the CPU. Same thing with the GPU. How fast is the GPU? Again, the eternal rivalry between NVIDIA and AMD who's faster, who has the better feature set, whose drivers are more stable. So lots of things to get excited about. You know, very early on if you're buying a graphics card or a CPU. But you're in the market for a motherboard and you know, it's really kind of like yes, the motherboard's important and yes, I want it to be stable but you know, it's kind of boring. I mean, to be honest, I'm an enthusiast, I run hardware sugar so we see a lot of motherboards come through the shop. But on a personal level, it's hard for me to get hyped up about a motherboard. So when doing research for this video, I decided to focus on the specs that would make me excited. You know, what's like, is there anything out of the ordinary? This motherboard is really something, has something unique which the others that we've seen don't have. This won't be like the videos where they just talk about like, oh, this motherboard has this feature set and this motherboard can go x amount of speed. Again, that's boring to me. So this is sort of like a personalized take on all three of these motherboards and what got me excited about them. So very initially, these are all for Intel 10th Gen so these are the LGA 1200 sockets, so the new Intel 10th Gen and all of them come with M.2 Wi-Fi so if you have a compatible Wi-Fi adapter which is M.2, you just take it in there. All of them have a steel reinforced PCIe slot. To be honest, I don't really know if that's just marketing by ASRock if indeed there is some steel lining to the PCIe slot. But to be fair, even just on an initial inspection if you toggle the clip, it does see much sturdier compared to some of the other flimsier plastic PCIe locks or clasps that we've seen. And this is important because usually high-end GPUs are much larger. They are much heavier. So GPU sag is real where over time if you have the motherboard and the GPU is mounted like this then over time it's going to slowly sag down and it might cause damage to the motherboard eventually because there's so much stress on the PCIe slot. So the steel lining or these are much sturdier PCIe slots and they do feel much sturdier when you monkey around with them. Another thing all of these three motherboards have in common which I found super interesting was their base frequency boost or BFB. And basically Astro claims that you can take a non-OC Intel CPUs. Sa Intel naman, the magic letter is K. Kung may K yung Intel CPU malamang pwede niya overclock yan. Like in the example I use the i7-9700K. So that's a non-K CPU. You stick it on these motherboards and they become overclockable via the base frequency boost. And sometimes the performance gains are solid around 10%. Again, this is according to Astrox data. In some instances they claim they can go even 30% faster depending on the CPU that you put in. It does, you know, because it is overclocking you are throwing in more watts into your CPU or you are diverting more power towards your CPU to make it run faster. The base power consumption of an Intel 10th gen is around 65 watts. With the BFB, you're going to be hitting it almost double at 125 watts. But the speed gains are really quite impressive around 10% to 30%. It's a claim. Unfortunately, we were not able to test this ourselves. Not to the fault of Astrox, to the fault of COVID. We got hit by the MECQ. So I'm going to put that out there. I find that very interesting that you can take a non-OC CPU, a non-K Intel CPU and then it basically becomes overclockable if you use these motherboards. And I do want to monkey around with that feature and I want to try that out in the future to see just really how much the performance gain is. But as a feature itself that is quite interesting and quite impressive. And again, you know, with overclocking plus 10% to 30%, that's really getting more bang for your buck and it makes these motherboards an interesting option for those who can be tempted by usual AORUS or Gigabyte or MSI, ASOS, ROG or, you know, tons of other manufacturers but that feature is kind of interesting so it might tempt some people to try Astrox. Another thing I got excited about for all three of these motherboards is that all of them come with not one but two RGB headers. Specifically, one RGB header so that's 12V for pin and one ARGB header so that's 5V 3pin. And this doesn't seem like a big thing so what? It's just an additional header. Usually, most MOBOs now come with at least the RGB header. Usually, I've only seen having both RGB and ARGB header on very high-end motherboards. So it's really nice to see this feature trickling down to less super high-end motherboards and why is it important to me we obviously do a lot of builds here at Hardware Sugar and RGB is super complicated. I mean, I'm not gonna lie a customer wants us to put in RGB and AIO as RGB and the case fans of RGB and then you gotta pipe it into the included case controller for the RGB. All of the different RGB all of those different manufacturers can get really confusing and it's very easy as a builder to think that, oh, it's okay, I can control my RGB using the RGB header. Only to find out later on that, shoot, I got an ARGB product so that's three pin but my motherboard only has an RGB header, which is four pin. Very small thing but if that happens to you there aren't really any immediate good options on the table aside from changing your RGB which can be expensive. So from a builder's point of view it's very convenient to have both ARGB and RGB on the motherboard. Speaking as someone who sometimes gets, you know, configurations and specs wrong it's nice to make it sort of foolproof. I mean, you know, putting both options onto one motherboard is a nice classy move by ASRock and it is very useful for builders. Another interesting thing that all three of these mobos have is that the CPU fan header is also a water pump header. So instead of having a run-of-the-mill you know, air-cooled CPU these boards already come with water cooling in mind. You can use the CPU fan header as a water block header instead. Again, it's an interesting choice. I haven't noticed a lot of motherboards honestly doing that especially for this price range. ASRock is trying to appeal to the enthusiast market that oh, you know, we're trying to do kind of different things with our motherboards. Why don't you check us out? To be honest, we don't do customized water cooling here at Hardware Sugar. I want to do it eventually once we sort of level up our skills but it is nice to know that ASRock is looking to the future and looking to appeal to a more enthusiast level market. One thing I did note with the B460M Pro and the B460 Pro is that on each of these motherboards one of the chokes is slightly I think it's a choke one of the square nibits one of the square components on each of the motherboards is slightly askew and these things are very solid I think it's a choke that square askew is on purpose and I'd be curious exactly why the design is like that it's very subtle it doesn't take away anything from the aesthetic of the motherboards it's just something I noticed while I was, you know, physically inspecting the moobos it seems to be by design it's not defect in the motherboard so if any of you guys know why if this is a choke that kind of squareish thing and if why is it slightly askew on the H470 still legend I didn't notice any of the squares like that it was only on the B460s so again, just a small note that I'm curious about maybe somebody on the internet can help us out figure out why that is like that but again, very minor thing doesn't mar the aesthetics or anything and most people would not probably not notice it so all of the features so far that I've spoken of can be found at all three of these motherboards so what's the difference between these two the B460s because the B460M is basically just a smaller brother of the full-size 80X B460 Pro so what sets the H470 still legend apart from these B460s basically the 470 is third-year Astrock claims that it has a feature called Doctor MOS where it's supposed to intelligently for motherboards and motherboard enthusiasts channeling power is a big thing because you want the right amount of voltage in the right parts at the right time and one of the important aspects of a motherboard is to channel all of that power from your PSU to the correct components and if there's an overvoltage you want it to smooth out that overvoltage so that your components don't get fried and supposedly the 470 has this Doctor MOS feature where it is able to better deal with voltages and things like that according to Astrock it has an 11 power-phase design compared to the B460s who only have a 9 power-phase design to be honest I didn't really look into this feature set so these guys have 9 this guy has 11 overall the 470s being marketed as a third-year motherboard because it can handle all of these vagrancies in voltages better is there a quantitative yes supposedly so these guys have 9 the 470 has 11 is there a big difference between the two maybe I'll look into that for a future video for now I'm just telling you the future spec and maybe you can decide from there what's right for you and I want to end this video lastly on aesthetics something that people don't usually think about when they think about motherboards but as you can see the one that we mounted we mounted the 470s T-Legend into a fractal design R6 a white R6 you can tell that the aesthetic the T-Legend aesthetic yes but overall the design aesthetic of Astrock where they have this kind of silver blended in with the black most noticeably in the T-Legend it really pops and this is not a this is not a so what kind of thing most motherboards come in black and when a customer comes to us and they ask us you know I want something different I want my computer to stand out a lot of the time it's let's change the color on the components so yeah you can get a white motherboard you can get a white case you can get white fans but to be honest it's really quite difficult to get an all white motherboard you have the Arctic series from MSI ASUS also has some motherboards that are white I can't really think about them of the top of my head but they're very difficult to get like the Arctic we can't get that we've been trying to get it and as far as I know the last one we have was a B360 Arctic which is you know very dated in terms of chipset so it is kind of a big thing that these go well nicely in white setups and again that's something that enthusiasts look for I want my PC to stand out I want my rig to be different from all of the rest one way of doing that is finding nice looking motherboards because it does serve as a backdrop for all of your other components we've had a YouTube commenter saying that aesthetics are just aesthetics those aren't really important but for a lot of builders they are and aesthetics just doesn't just mean RGB or what your case looks like it also means how does your motherboard blend in with the other components does it do you want it to pop do you want it to contrast with your CPU cooler or your AIO so one thing I really appreciated and got me excited about the Steel Legend and these B460s is that it looks really good in a white case another motherboard that we can recommend to our customers who are looking for something a bit different something not just the usual black which is quite common for motherboards so I'll end the video with sort of where does ASRock or you know people say ASRock but I call them ASRock for some reason ASRock just seems weird to me but anyway where does ASRock fall in the hierarchy of manufacturers I mean are they as reliable as the brand names the marquee names like Gigabyte AORUS ASOS, MSI and at least for me my initial impression was ASRock was a bit lower tier I mean to be honest than let's say Gigabyte but it seems like over the past couple of years they're constantly trying to level up to get to the same level as more popular names such as MSI, ASOS my appreciation of ASRock is changing over time they do seem to have quality product and more and more customers are actually asking about them why would I recommend an ASRock to you again this is not a sponsored post this is just based on the feedback that I've gotten from customers also the sales we've generated with ASRock products in what use case would I recommend ASRock right now basically I think their quality has reached the standard of let's say an MSI or Gigabyte but what's nice about them is the price point hasn't reached them yet they still sort of feel like they're the underdogs they price themselves accordingly ASRock is good bang for your buck they're not as famous as again the marquee names but these guys are famous because they spend so much on marketing these brands spend a lot so that you know their name ASRock on the other hand is less well known but their quality seems to be they seem to be at least as good if not better and a lot of the more well known brand names and so that's where I would recommend them to sort of you know you're into computers you're building a new rig you're bored with ASOS you're bored with Gigabyte you're like oh let's try somebody new and maybe save a buck or two in the process that's where I would recommend ASRock at this point where they have good quality and they are still underpriced I feel for what you get we've actually started carrying ASRock more in the shop I don't use them yet for my personal build although I am tempted to be honest after seeing these motherboards to try them when you know I come up with my own dream PC although the dream PC might not be Intel sorry it's really hard to recommend Intel right now compared to the feature set and the price set of AMD so I'll probably get a Ryzen and the compatible ASRock motherboard so there you go very hard to get hyped up about motherboards I don't know maybe some of you guys out there get excited about them for me personally not so much but looking over these motherboards actually you know it turned out to be fun the Steel Legend looks quite nice in the fractal design R6 fractal design define R6 the MOBO name is define R6 and yeah I'll definitely consider them in the future so that's it for me about ASRock for now thanks for watching so I hope that these basic tips helped you if you found this video helpful please drop a like and hit the subscribe button for your PC needs consider buying from us hardware sugar at Lazada or on our website you can find links in the description below and thank you for watching see you next video