AMD Ryzen fans were asking us as soon as we were done visiting AMD booth at CES this year, did we see any mITX motherboards on display. And I did. but it has taken some time for them to get in us Team Red fan girls and boys. Today, we have great news from Asus, they announced a pair of mITX gaming boards with premium features. ASUS has apparently been working and said the following:
“Mini-ITX boards are among the most difficult to produce. Their diminutive 6.7” x 6.7” dimensions leave little real estate for slots and ports, let alone the extra features that make ROG unique. We’re not willing to compromise your experience for a compact footprint, so it takes some time and creativity to make everything fit. But it’s worth the effort, because our new Strix X370-I Gaming and Strix B350-I Gaming motherboards for Socket AM4 raise the bar for small-form-factor Ryzen builds. They match the cutting-edge features of their full-sized siblings, including liquid-ready cooling and addressable RGB lighting, and they combine an M.2 SSD heatsink and amped-up audio on an innovative riser card.”
Both motherboards both feature a 6-phase VRM design, which ASUS says is the same as their full-sized AM4 motherboards, with memory support of up to DDR4-3600. One-click overclocking is provided via the ASUS “5-Way Optimization technology”, which can calibrate fan curves in addition to tuning CPU speeds. When comes to powering those fans, there are three PWM fan headers, one of which is configured by default for a liquid cooling pump.
In the interest of space, as the sound card (S1220A codec) and M.2 slot (PCIe Gen 3 x4) are part of a shared riser card:
Both boards sport ASUS Aura Sync RGB lighting effects, as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi solution with 2×2 antenna and integrated Bluetooth.
Connectivity includes a pair of USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports and four USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports, Gigabit LAN, and multi-channel audio on the rear panel, with 4x SATA ports, the M.2 slot, and headers for both USB 3.0 and 2.0 onboard.
The ASUS ROG Strix X370-I and B350-I Gaming motherboards will “be available starting late-October in the United States with pricing to be released in the coming weeks” according to ASUS.
