ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 motherboard test

The Fatal1ty series from ASRock is very well known and appreciated among computer users. The company has just sent me a Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 model for AMD processors for testing. How will it turn out in the tests?

The CD is packed in a black cardboard box. Together with it, we receive an instruction, screws, an end cap, a board with drivers and two SATA cables. The add-ons are therefore completely standard and in this respect the album does not stand out in any way. The warranty is 36 months.

The record looks ordinary. It is all black and is distinguished by gray heat sinks and a small backlight. Its exact dimensions are 305 mm x 224 mm. The manufacturer used the B450 chipset compatible with all Ryzen. The power section is 9-phase and cooled by heat sinks. An 8-pin plug takes care of the additional power supply to the processor.

By default, there are four slots for RAM on the right. The board supports up to 64 GB of memory with speeds up to 3200 MHz. The connectors are golden, so information should flow at maximum speed. The board also supports XMP profiles, with which it has no problems. The Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 has two PCI Express x16 slots and four PCI Express x1 slots. The first one is specially reinforced and no card should bend or break it. Cards can also be combined in Quad CrossFireX or CrossFireX.

The Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 has one Ultra M.2 (2242/2260/2280) and one M.2 (2230/2242/2260/2280/22110) connector. Both support PCI Express Gen3 x4 drives. There are also four SATA 3 connectors supporting RAID 0, 1, 10 and two SATA 3 ASMedia ASM1061.

The network card is Realtek RTL8111H, which supports 10/100/1000 Mb / s internet. The sound card is Realtek ALC893 and it supports Creative Sound Blaster Cinema 5. It also has various technologies that are supposed to influence the quality of the music. However, you should not expect outstanding quality.

The board has the following connectors: 1x RGB LED, 1x LED, 1x CPU 4pin, 1x CPU / Water pump 4pin, 3x 4 pin for other fans, audio connector, two USB 2.0 and one USB 3.1. I am missing buttons for booting the board or the POST message display. But this is not the price level to see such extras.

On the back, the manufacturer has placed one PS / 2 connectors, one D-Sub, one HDMI, one DisplayPort 1.2, two USB 2.0, one USB 3.1 Gen 2, one USB Type-C 3.1 Gen 2, four USB 3.1 Gen 1, one RJ- 45 and outputs from the music card. The number of connectors is right and it should be enough for everyone. Only the number of audio connectors could be greater to connect better speakers.

What about the rest of the stuff? The manufacturer boasts of StoreMI technology support, the ability to synchronize the backlight with the board and the good distribution of electronics on the board. In fact, nothing that we would not see in the competition.

BIOS and software

The BIOS is very simple and even resembles those from a few years ago. There are basic options for changing the settings, but there is even no easy mode for less advanced users. Some things are also hard to come by. As you can see for yourself, even taking screenshots doesn’t work completely properly and they are getting delayed. This applies to any button operation from the keyboard – at first I thought it didn’t work. The board allows you to change the backlight, but you have to enter the colors manually. Already Biostar has it better resolved. This is definitely one of the less well thought out BIOSes I have dealt with.

Of the software, only Polychrome Sync should be mentioned. I have already described them before while testing the Z390 Extreme4 board, so I refer you to the review.

Test platform

Tests and summary

Let’s start with the USB and SATA tests. Only USB 2.0 and USB 3.1 Gen 2 fared well, the others are much weaker than the competition. This is especially true for the performance of a SATA connected disk where the result is poor. The other results are already good. This applies to RAM as well as gaming performance on this test platform. The network card works well in games – the ping is low and it gets the most out of the link. The music card, as expected, does not knock you down. It is not bad, but neither is it outstanding. So you don’t have to connect high-quality speakers to it.

Summary

ASRock Fatal1ty B450 Gaming K4 costs about PLN 430. The album is not a bad choice, but it does not stand out from the competition. The test results, in addition to SATA and USB 3.1 Gen 1, are good and in games the board will do its job. The network card is also good and the music is average – in this type of discs, there is no reason to count. The big downside of the board is the BIOS, which is one of the weakest I’ve dealt with. The design itself is also completely plain. In general, the album does not stand out from the competition, so it will be a good choice as the construction of other manufacturers.