ASRock has just announced a range of new motherboards, featuring the Z790I Lightning WiFi and the B760I Lightning WiFi Mini-ITX. These are both great news for the industry, as I don’t think we see many mini-ITX boards these days, and while not as popular as they once were, mini-ITX systems are still seriously cool!
Equipped with a power 14+1+1 power phase design and an optimized memory layout, these new motherboards should make light work of the latest Intel Core 14th Gen K-series processors, and ASRock claims they have top-tier memory overclocking capabilities, supporting DDR5 8600+ memory modules, making them a prime choice for enthusiast gamers and PC builders.
Overclocking World Records
The Z790I Lightning WiFi has achieved four overclocking world records on HWBOT.org with the Intel Core i9-14900KS processor. Additionally, the B760I Lightning WiFi received the “Best Motherboard” award at CES 2024 from Tom’s Hardware, emphasizing its exceptional design and overclocking capabilities.
Superior Cooling
ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi and B760I Lightning WiFi motherboards feature a 14+1+1 Phase 110 A SPS Dr.MOS VRM, outperforming competing ITX offerings. ASRock has custom-designed a composite cooling solution for these boards, including enlarged aluminium heatsinks, heat pipe, and a MOS fan, delivering robust cooling performance to enhance overclocking capabilities. This superior cooling ensures the processors perform at their peak.
i9-14900K
The Z790I Lightning WiFi fully unleashes the powerful performance of the latest Intel Core i9-14900KS, achieving a Cinebench R23 multi-core score of up to 43,064 pts. The Z790I Lightning WiFi leads with DDR5-8600 memory support, enhancing memory overclocking performance significantly.
Features
Both the Z790I Lightning WiFi and B760I Lightning WiFi motherboards utilize server-grade low-loss 8-layer 2oz copper PCBs and optimized DDR5 memory designs, pioneering support for 8600 MHz memory for unparalleled overclocking support. Each board features one PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, two Hyper M.2 slots, Phantom Gaming 2.5GbE LAN, 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6E, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A/Type-C ports, offering an abundance of high-speed connectivity options. The B760I Lightning WiFi received the “Best Motherboard” award at CES 2024 from Tom’s Hardware, emphasizing its exceptional design and overclocking capabilities.
VRM
The robust VRM specifications and optimized memory design fully unleash the overclocking potential. The global professional overclocker Splave used the Z790I Lightning WiFi with the Intel Core i9-14900KS for LN2 extreme overclocking, setting four World Records and eight Global 1st Place records, as well as numerous i9-14900KS 1st Place achievements on HWBOT.org, successfully pushing the overclocking performance of the Mini-ITX motherboard to new heights.
Price and Availability
No word on how much these will cost just yet, but I expect we’ll see an update very soon, and hopefully we can get one of them, if not both, in for testing!
