A Closer Look
Obviously, there’s not a lot of room on a mini-ITX motherboard, but that hasn’t stopped ASUS from absolutely cramming a load of hardware into here. If anything, it’s as well equipped as most Micro-ATX and ATX motherboards. Hooking everything up may prove to be a job for someone with nimble fingers, but it’ll be worth it.
The PCI slot is armoured, which looks great and will also provide added strength to the motherboard. High-end graphics cards are pretty heavy, so a strong PCIe slot is pretty much essential these days.
Why compromise on audio performance if you don’t have to! By using a raised design, ASUS was able to cram in more audio hardware than usual for this motherboard, putting it on-par with their full-size solutions. What’s really neat, is that it also forms their M.2 drive mount and heatsink design, giving the board a nice flowing look.
There are four SATA ports on this motherboard, with two on each side of the two DIMM slots. There’s also a USB 2.0 and 3.0 header, as well as the usual front panel pins.
The power delivery hardware looks surprisingly robust, and since all Ryzen CPUs are overclockable, you shouldn’t have any issue hitting some decent speeds; even for a mini-ITX motherboard. The stock AMD mount comes included, but it’s easily unscrewed to install an aftermarket solution.
Up top, you’ll find three PWM fan headers, as well as an addressable 3-pin and RGB 4-pin header.
Finally, the back of the motherboard offers up support for four USB 3.1 Gen1 devices, and two USB 3.1 Gen2 ports. There’s a single Intel I211-AT LAN port, and 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac WiFi with 2×2 and MU-MIMO support.
Do you have pictures of the bottom of the motherboard and of the m.2 slots? How easy is it to remove the audio/m.2 riser?
Thanks for the review, much appreciated