A Closer Look
This is the only mini-ITX motherboard we have for review today, so it feels a little special. Historically, ASUS mini-ITX boards are as feature-packed as they come, and that’s certainly still holding true today. It may be small, but it’s literally stacked with hardware and heatsinks to deliver a great user experience.
While the VRM configuration is trimmed down due to the motherboard’s size, it’s still pretty beefy, offering up a 10+2+1 power stage, but with upgraded hardware to allow for 110A per stage when 90A is much more common on most motherboards, and there are higher quality alloy chokes and durable capacitors too, not that we’d expect anything less.
There’s an additional heatsink and fan built into the VRM cooling too, which will help a lot given how much hardware is crammed into such a small area.
It comes with a Q-latch M.2 mount, which is actually two M.2 mounts stacked on top of each other over the chipset, so the extra large heatsink here serves a triple purpose, hence why it’s so big!
There’s a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, which comes reinforced, so it’ll easily handle the weight of a modern bulky graphics card.
It uses the external ROG STRIX HIVE II Audio hub that you can place on your desktop, a common accessory for high-end ASUS boards, and it connects via USB Type-C.
However, with the motherboard and HIVE II combined, you get some pretty fantastic audio hardware.
- ROG Hyper-Grounding Technology
- ESS® SABRE9260Q DAC
- Silver-plated audio jacks
- Dedicated audio PCB layers
There’s also comprehensive I/O with USB4 Type-C 40Gbps, fast networking, and display options.
- 2 x USB4 (40Gbps)(2 x USB Type-C)
- 5 x USB 10Gbps port(s) (4 x Type-A + 1 x USB Type-C, 1 port supports ROG STRIX HIVE II)
- 3 x USB 2.0 port(s) (2 x Type-A)
- 1 x HDMI™ port
- 1 x Wi-Fi module
- 1 x Intel 2.5Gb Ethernet port
- 1 x BIOS FlashBack button
- 1 x Clear CMOS button
