1. MSI Unveils New Mini-ITX B350 AM4 Motherboard |
Hopefully the expression ‘better late than never’ rings true, because MSI has finally unveiled their first Mini-ITX AM4 motherboard, the B350I PRO AC. Aimed at the small form factor PC market, this new model definitely has a more conservative aesthetic than most of MSI’s larger AM4 motherboards, but it is also going to be easier on the wallet.
With this welcomed announcement, MSI now joins ASUS, ASRock, Biostar, and Gigabyte in offering a full stack of AM4 motherboards ranging in sizes from Mini-ITX to full ATX. Given the popularity of the AM4 platform this fleshing out of the lineup took much longer than expected, but thankfully that time has now come.
Designed for AMD Ryzen or 7th generation A-series APUs processors, this B350I PRO AC model is based on the mainstream B350 chipset, which is a perfect choice for a Mini-ITX motherboard since the fact that the B350 chipset only supports a single graphics card is not actually a limitation on such a tiny motherboard. Furthermore, the B350 chipset is significantly cheaper than the X370 chipset, which ultimately benefits consumers since they aren’t paying for capabilities that aren’t required.
Given that this petite motherboard has to support power-hungry eight-core processors, it has been designed with an impressive 9-phase VRM consisting of six phases for the CPU cores, two phases for the SOC, and a large single phase for the dual memory slots that support speeds of up to DDR4-3200. While the specific VRM components are a mystery to us at this time, the power chokes with integrated heatspreaders look fairly high-end, lending some credence to MSI’s “Military Class components” slogan.
As is the case on most AM4 Mini-ITX motherboards, this model has four SATA 6GB/s ports that support RAID 0/1/10 and a single full-speed M.2 PCI-E x4 slot that supports SATA and NVMe solid state drives. This M.2 slot is located on the rear of the motherboard, which is also a common design choice on these space-constrained models.
source: https://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/76893-msi-unveils-new-mini-itx-b350-am4-motherboard.html
2. ASRocks Debuts Micro-ATX X399 & X299 Motherboards |
Over the last few years, ASRock have proven themselves masters at building compact motherboards by daring to design small form factor models that other manufacturers won’t even attempt, such as the X99E-ITX/ac which is the world’s first and only X99 LGA2011-3 mini-ITX motherboard.
Today’s announcements are not quite as petite, but they are still impressive. Starting off with the world’s first Micro-ATX X399 motherboard, the X399M Taichi.
Although the TR4 socket that houses ThreadRipper processors is far too large to allow the creation of a Mini-ITX motherboard, those wanting the power of AMD’s high-end desktop platform in a smaller than ATX form factor finally have an option. Actually, calling it a mere ‘option’ is downplaying ASRock’s engineering accomplishment since this motherboard is actually quite incredible.
Not only does X399M features an 11-phase CPU VRM – just like the flagship Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming model that we reviewed earlier – but it has three full-speed PCI-E x16 slots, three full-size M.2 slots, one U.2 port, and eight SATA 6Gb/s ports.
That is just the tip of the iceberg, since this model also has a debug LED, power and reset buttons, a clear CMOS button, RGB LED lighting, a light strip header, a Realtek ALC1220 onboard audio solution, two front-panel audio header, two gigabit LAN ports, onboard Wi-Fi, USB3.1 Gen2 Type A+C ports and up to 16 additional USB ports. This level of features far exceeds what we are used to seeing on even high-end ATX-sized motherboards. We definitely look forward to getting the X399M on our test bench.
source: https://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/76908-asrocks-debuts-micro-atx-x399-x299-motherboards.html
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