ANTONY LEATHER’S
Customised PC
Case mods, tools, techniques, water-cooling gear
and everything to do with PC modding
MODDING / OPINION
Gigabyte’sX570-I
AorusProWiFiis
thebestX570mini-
ITXboardwe’ve
tested,butit didn’t
blowusawayAsus’ROGStrix
X470-IGaming
ischeaperthan
a mini-ITXX570
board,andhasa
greatfeaturesettooI
s mini-ITX too small
for X570?
Last month I reviewed two
new mini-ITX motherboards – the first
models to use AMD’s X570 chipset.
However, neither of them blew me
away, with Gigabyte’s X570 Aorus Pro
WiFi only just scraping an award. This
situation has left me disappointed for a
number of reasons.
Firstly, mini-ITX is usually where the
innovation happens. You only have to
look at previous models to see some
interesting ways of cramming high-end
audio, M.2 ports and heatsinks into a 170
x 170mm PCB. Mini-ITX motherboards
were the first ones to have M.2 ports on
the rear of the PCB – an idea that’s since
been adopted on some micro-ATX
boards to save space. With X570,
though, while the ASRock X570
Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3
does have an innovative layout,
it comes at the expense of
one of the two usual M.2
ports you’d expect to see
on premium mini-ITX
motherboards.
Similarly, the
Gigabyte X570-I
Aorus Pro WiFi has
a large fan-equipped
heatsink and two M.2 ports,
butit hasjustonesystem
fanheader. What’s more,
that heatsink and fan
combination didn’t offer
particularly good cooling for
our M.2 test SSD, or the
motherboard’s VRMs for
that matter.
The ASRock board, of
course, had other issues too.
They include a pitiful number
of rear USB ports and the
lack of a modern fan control
suite in the EFI, although its
innovative approach of using
Intel socket mounting holes
did mean its VRMs were exceptionally
cool. These issues all feel like backward
steps for a form factor that’s usually at
the cutting edge of design and there’s
one common factor – the X570 chipset.
This toasty bit of silicon has caused
problems elsewhere, with noisy fans
and high idle power consumption.
It makes for an
unwelcome hotspot on
mini-ITX motherboards,
where PCB real estate is
always at a premium. I was
especially disappointed with
ASRock’s design, since the
company managed to squeeze
three M.2 ports onto its X299E-ITX/ac motherboard, using a vertical port
as well as two rear-mounted ports.
Why could it not have used a similar
design here?
Gigabyte’s fan control suite in the EFI
is excellent too, yet despite charging
over £200 for its board, putting it firmly
into premium territory, it includes just
one system fan header. Again, I’d like to
have seen a daughterboard offering
additional fan headers, and at this price
I’d definitely expect to see heatpipes
linking the VRMs. A bigger chipset fan
would also help to boost cooling, as the
included one just isn’t large enough.
The other option I tested was Asus’
new Crosshair VIII Impact board. It’s a