ASRock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming K4 AM4 Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

This may be one of the more “budget” focused boards, as it uses the B350 chipset, but it’s certainly not lacking in features. The Fatal1ty branding means it’s a gaming board too, so it comes with the usual black and red theme that’s so often associated with PC “gaming” hardware. That being said, this is a great looking board, so it’s sure to compliment your system build.

The board uses the AM4 socket and comes pre-installed with the stock AMD mounting clip bracket. Of course, these can be unscrewed to fit your own AM4 compatible cooler too.

The board is powered by the usual 4+4 pin and 24-pin power cables, as seen below. There’s some robust looking caps and chokes around the CPU socket, and a small VRM cooler on each side, which doesn’t look particularly big, but they’re aluminium and look like they should still do a good job of shifting some heat from the hardware.

There are four DDR4 DIMM slots on the board, with support for DDR4 3200+ (OC) (Ryzen CPU) and 2400 (A-series APU).

The board has a good selection of connectors, and you’ll find two flat mounted SATA ports and a USB 3.0 header near the middle.

Further down, four side-mounted SATA ports, bringing the total to 6 x SATA 6GB/s.

Aside from SATA, you’ll also find 2 x M.2 ports, giving you plenty of options for expanding your storage, and there’s more than enough connectors here for your average gaming build.

Durable armour design on the top PCI-e slot is certainly welcome, especially with modern graphics cards being pretty darn heavy.

The audio hardware isn’t anything extreme, but there are a few durable caps here with a breaker trace on the PCB to separate the signal from the primary hardware.

Along the bottom, you’ll find the usual connectors, such a few fan headers, USB 2.0 pins and a jumper for the BIOS reset; a button would be better, but at least it’s in an accessible place.

Around the back, you’ll find plenty of USB connections, including a USB Type-C port. Audio ports are a little limited, but more than enough for most users. There are three display outputs too, although they’ll require you to have an AM4 APU as Ryzen has no iGPU; at least you have the option there should you change the CPU in the future.

Around the back, not a whole lot to see apart from the universal AMD backplate for the cooling mount.