MSI have announced 5 'low end' A320 AM4 boards recently (I spotted them on Techreport)
Although I have a preference for ITX kit and builds, I was immediately struck how space efficient the A320M Gaming Pro and A320M Grenade are in terms of PCI-E slot arrangements.
I have thought for a long time that an obvious design for a mATX board would be to have the top slot 1x; so that a WiFi or sound card could be fitted and not block the airflow of a single graphics card in the 16x slot below, and then leave an empty space in 'slot 3' to allow for dual slot cards which dominate the market these days and then a usable 1x slot in the lowest position.
Well, MSI have thought of it too, and props to them IMHO! Great use of space there
Otherwise, there are very few boards with that configuration. I've seen the odd Asrock 'mDTX' boards like the H81M-DG4 and the H61M-VG3 before it. Asus had the H81M-P.
Seems a shame that there weren't better chipset boards in this size, a bit specialist for sure.
Although I have a preference for ITX kit and builds, I was immediately struck how space efficient the A320M Gaming Pro and A320M Grenade are in terms of PCI-E slot arrangements.
I have thought for a long time that an obvious design for a mATX board would be to have the top slot 1x; so that a WiFi or sound card could be fitted and not block the airflow of a single graphics card in the 16x slot below, and then leave an empty space in 'slot 3' to allow for dual slot cards which dominate the market these days and then a usable 1x slot in the lowest position.
Well, MSI have thought of it too, and props to them IMHO! Great use of space there
Otherwise, there are very few boards with that configuration. I've seen the odd Asrock 'mDTX' boards like the H81M-DG4 and the H61M-VG3 before it. Asus had the H81M-P.
Seems a shame that there weren't better chipset boards in this size, a bit specialist for sure.
