ASRock B365 Phantom Gaming 4 (Intel B365) Motherboard Review

Packaging and Overview

The box is stylized like the motherboard, and the packaging is high quality.

The accessory package includes IO shield, two SATA6Gb/s cables, postcard, driver DVD, and manual.

There are a total of five fan headers on the motherboard. ASRock has a CPU fan header circled in red, it offers up to 1A of power and is PWM mode. The other four headers are rated for 2A each, and will auto-detect if a DC or PWM fan is installed, but you can change the mode manually if you want. The motherboard has a sleek silver/black/red color theme and merges the PCB with the heat sinks. The back of the motherboard is clean.

The rear IO panel features four USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, PS/2 keyboard/mouse port, DisplayPort, HDMI, USB 3.1 type-A, USB 3.1 type-C, 1Gbit LAN, and gold plated 7.1 audio outputs.

The PCI-E layout is simple to understand. The topmost PCI-E x16 slot is wired directly to the CPU and is always x16. The second PCI-E x16 physical (x4 electrical) will downgrade to x2 if either of the x1 slots is occupied. There are four right angled SATA 6Gbps ports.

There are two x4 PCI-E 3.0 M.2 slots with heat sinks. The top one also supports SATA based M.2 drives, but if you use a SATA M.2 drive, it will disable SATA port 0.

The motherboard also features two SATA6Gbps ports that are angled straight up, and they are located at the bottom right corner of the motherboard where we find boot LEDs and front panel connectors. A USB 3.0 internal header is located mid-board.

There is also an M.2 WIFI card slot, so you can add in WIFI later one, and there are three holes in the IO panel to facilitate antenna. At the top right of the motherboard, we find an RGB LED header.

At the bottom of the motherboard, we find another RGB header and an addressable RGB LED header alone with two USB 2.0 internal headers and a COM header. The heat sinks are all screwed to the motherboard.