ASRock announced that it would be displaying Extreme6 Z97 and X99 motherboards at CeBIT with USB 3.1, but it turns out that there is another board that we will be seeing – the X99E-ITX/ac.
This board will could to insanely powerful system in a Mini-ITX case. What ASRock doing so is nothing short of impressive. Never before has Mini-ITX seen this kind of performance.
Now When working on a Mini-ITX board, sacrifices must be made. The board, therefore, doesn’t have the usual eight DDR4 memory slots we see on larger boards, and the storage connectivity is also more limited.
Plus there is the hard fact that Mini-ITX board has only a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot.
On the storage front, there are six SATA3 connectors, two of which can be used to make a single SATA-Express connector. It is unknown if there is M.2 connector, although it is possible that there is one on the backside of the board because there simply is no space on the front.
The board will also come with USB 3.1 and Wireless AC connectivity.
ASRock included a CPU cooler with the X99E-ITX/ac, which is a bit unconventional, but ASRock made the decision because of the space restraints. ASRock has had to use the narrow LGA2011-3 socket, which isn’t compatible with standard LGA2011 CPU coolers, and there aren’t really all that many coolers for the narrow socket on the consumer market.
When the board will be available, exact tech specs, and pricing remain unknown at this time.
