ASUS RoG STRIX X370-I Gaming Ryzen Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The ASUS RoG STRIX X370-I Gaming AM4 Motherboard is available now from most major retailers. Its price is generally around £170, which isn’t cheap, but this is a pretty well-equipped mini-ITX motherboard and you get plenty of features for your investment.

Overview

I love a good mini-ITX gaming motherboard and the X370-I from ASUS certainly fits the bill. If you’re focused on a new Ryzen gaming system, or any other AM4 CPU for that matter, it’s a great choice that comes packed full of cool features. It is a little expensive, but most mini-ITX gaming focused motherboards are.

Performance

When it comes down to it, this isn’t the fastest motherboard we’ve ever tested. Or should I say, it doesn’t support the fastest CPUs on the market? However, the Ryzen CPUs have their strengths against Intel and it’s down to the consumer to pick which is best for them. Of course, ASUS have both Intel and AMD solutions on the market for Mini-ITX, and they’re both the best in their respective classes. Check out our review of the STRIX Z370-I Gaming.

However, the performance is hardly lacking either, and when it comes to work or gaming, there’s more than enough grunt here for a high-end gaming PC build.

Build Quality

This is a great looking motherboard, dare I say one of the best looking Mini-ITX motherboards! The way the M.2 heat sink is integrated into a soundcard is superb too, and a really nice design choice. The durable design of the board and the choice of high-quality components certainly adds peace of mind. Finally, the addition of armour on the PCIe slot means that the board will better cope with the weight of heavy duty graphics cards.

Added Value

This is where the £170 price tag becomes more justifiable, as the X370-I is packed with cool features. Let’s get the obvious one done first, it’s RGB lighting. With underlighting on the right side of the PCB, as well as matching lighting on the M.2 shroud it looks great. Of course, with addressable LED headers, you can easily expand on that to suit your needs.

Dual M.2 storage mount means blazing fast performance. Intel Gigabit Ethernet, LANGuard, GameFirst and 2×2 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO support certainly takes care of your networking needs too. However, it’s the new RoG M.2 Audio Combo Card that wins my heart, delivering big performance that’s rare on mini-ITX motherboards. Of course, you also get SupremeFX audio, with Sonic Studio III and Sonic Radar III.

Pros

• Dual M.2 mounts with 1 x heatsink
• Easy to overclocked
• PCIe Armour
• Powerful sound processing with M.2 soundcard
• Super fast ac Wi-Fi with MU-MIMO
• RGB lighting
• Competitive performance
• Great memory performance
• Stunning aesthetics

Cons

• A little expensive, but most gaming Mini-ITX motherboards are