Rumor Possibility of AMD on STX form factor

There are so many frieds discussed about AMD solution on STX form factor.
I told Crew ASRock had one AMD FM2+ 5x5 board....
Let me show off one board I found on my boss's table.

We did a very very quick research during CNY.
AMD 2200G box fan is so high that can't be installed into our chassis.
BUT... how about install CPU fan and heatsink separately? HAHAHA...

Only for fun

 

[W4RR10R]

1.) Can't see a proper PCIe slot happening here for no other reason than they wouldn't want to cannibalize their ITX boards. That being said if 500 series AMD chipsets end up rolling with PCIe 4.0 we should see twice the throughput of current M.2 which means an M.2 to PCIe 3.0 x8 adapter should be a very real possibility.

So 4 physical pcie lanes on a pcie 3.0 device would scale up to 4.0 transfer speed to equal ~8 3.0 lanes? Or would there have to be an intermediary controller. 4.0 could also be of use for itx crossfire if you bifurcated a 4.0 x16 into two x8s and then 2 3.0 x16.

 

[chinevo]

The current version is almost perfect for me. I really wish only two things:
- Support for 95W APU (3600G). It will be great to have bios update for current version of motherboard.
- improved rear I/O (eliminate RJ-45 under USB ports and put it instead of unnecessary VGA port). This makes I/O lower in height.

As for PCIe, 4 dimms, overclocking possibilities (chipset > A) and other ITX ideas. I am against these features in Mini STX. This as simple as possible platform was designed for very compact systems with iGPU. I prefer to stay with this vision. But we can have two versions - simple and hardcore

I also like the idea to have 4pin connector, but not instead of 5.5 DC jack, maybe additional like in some thin Mini-ITX mobos.

 

[Boil]

Not to put the cart in front of the horse, but knowing that the 3600G is coming out what would people like to see offered on this platform if another generation is released? I know certain influential people from AsRock lurk on these boards and I'd love for them to improve version 2.0 of this unit. My Wishlist looks like this

- Support for 95W APU (3600G)
- 4 pin power connector instead of barrel connector with the inclusion of a barrel to 4 pin panel mount connector for the barebones version of this board
- Move both M.2 drives to the underside of the PCB in order to allow for more power phases etc. on the top side
- B550 or equivalent chipset. Presumably this will come with higher speed memory support
- Improved rear I/O (Dual NIC, two of each type of USB, eliminate VGA header to allow for this)

Thoughts?

Having 95W APU support would be a must...
All-internal 4-pin power, for use with HDPlex 160W AC.DC brick; another must...
Not sure about the M.2s, there is also the WiFi uniti on the front; might not be room for everything on the backside...?
What about X300 chipset, since that will not require actual PCG real estate...?
Rear I/O, moving ALL front I/O to the rear would be best for my personal needs (no need to re-route front I/O to the rear for a custom chassis)...

Would love, Love, LOVE to see a version of this motherboard that supports the (hypothetical) Ryzen 5 3600G AND allows (reasonable) overclocking headroom...!

 

[peak_mu]

Sorry, to pull you back into this, is there anyway I could get you to test your 1700 in the A300 to seem if maybe my 2600 was DOA I don't have another AM4 board aand stick of DDR4 to test my 2600.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get it to work. I tried a brand new 1600 that I just received, and it failed to boot. The fan would spin, but the blue power LED wouldn't light up and the OS never loaded. I installed ubuntu server using the 2400g, and made sure that it booted and that I could ssh into the box from another pc. Then I put the 1600 in and cleared the CMOS, but no luck. I'll test the 1600 in another system later today, but it's looking like the board indeed only supports APUs with the current BIOS.

Have you tried using any of the older BIOS? Bit of a stretch, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that overclocking used to work with an older BIOS but stopped working with a newer one. Maybe they left the support in for non-APUs with the older revisions?

 

[W4RR10R]

Have you tried using any of the older BIOS? Bit of a stretch, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that overclocking used to work with an older BIOS but stopped working with a newer one. Maybe they left the support in for non-APUs with the older revisions?

I had my 2600 test at a local retailer and it working fine, I've used all the BIOSs they have released, thank you for testing your board at least now we know it likely all non APUs.

I've been doing some thinking and reading I believe it may not be that the board doesn't work with the normal CPUs, but I read that some boards/BIOSs refuse to POST/Boot without a display adapter detected, and since the GPU I'm using isn't connected to the PCIE lanes usally designated to the GPU, POST may not see it, even though it works. IDK if this helps me in my seemingly impossible quest to misuse this board or not though.

 

[SFF EOL]

The board currently has a 5.5mm DC in jack much like a laptop. This is located with all the other rear io, the 4 pin would allow the dc in jack to be moved else where in the case, like if you wanted to use an internal acdc adapter, rather than the included external brick.

Thanks, I'm still learning, clearly.

 

[Brian_Buckley]

Hardware Unboxed review. Only info I haven't seen elsewhere is the total power draw at 102W while gaming with a 2133MHz > 2933MHz memory overclock. Also an interesting look at it as a budget system.

 

[Debris84]

What do we know about overclocking with A-series chips?

 

[W4RR10R]

What do we know about overclocking with A-series chips?

As far as I can tell, you can't. I also am using a 200ge another locked part, but AMD says that A300 is locked and X300 is unlocked, the only difference between the chipsets (even thought they aren't physical chipsets). Its a BIOS thing.

 

[peak_mu]

Just an FYI for those who might be interested, the DC input jack is 5.5mm x 2.5mm, not the more common 5.5 x 2.1.

I was able to get a slim Dell XPS 15 130W brick to work, and the system ran stable on the Aida64 stress test. It drew about 80W, with brief spikes of up to 83W.

What's weird is that the motherboard emitted some very noticeable coil whine when using the Dell XPS brick, but not when using stock. It's really too bad, as the XPS brick is quite a bit smaller for similar power output.

 

[confusis]

Still working on my review. Noting a performance hit on the DeskMini platform versus ITX. This needs more investigation.

 

[Kmpkt]

Just an FYI for those who might be interested, the DC input jack is 5.5mm x 2.5mm, not the more common 5.5 x 2.1.

I was able to get a slim Dell XPS 15 130W brick to work, and the system ran stable on the Aida64 stress test. It drew about 80W, with brief spikes of up to 83W.

What's weird is that the motherboard emitted some very noticeable coil whine when using the Dell XPS brick, but not when using stock. It's really too bad, as the XPS brick is quite a bit smaller for similar power output.

Did you do any undervolting etc to achieve those draws? Also was draw measured at the wall or elsewhere? I'm really curious to see if one of these can run on an HDPlex 80W.

 

[Windfall]

Did you do any undervolting etc to achieve those draws? Also was draw measured at the wall or elsewhere? I'm really curious to see if one of these can run on an HDPlex 80W.

Same.

Already have a case designed for this and an 80w.

 

[peak_mu]

No undervolting; the only things in the BIOS that I remember changing from stock are turning on various virtualization options and setting the XMP profile for the memory. Power was measured at the wall.

Full specs of the system for anything that might be using power:

2400g
NH-L9a w/ LNA
G.Skill F4-3200C16D-16GRS, 2x8gb 3200 CL16 1.2V
No wifi card when the test was run, ethernet plugged in but no active transfers
850 EVO 500GB on a SATA port
Filco Minila USB keyboard
G403 mouse wireless
Displayport output to 1440p monitor

Aida64 stress test settings: CPU,FPU,cache

Idle power in Windows 10 with just Firefox open with a single tab: ~11W

Idle power in Kubuntu 18.04.2: ~15W (not 100% sure, but I think I also had just Firefox open, maybe 6 or so tabs)

Let me know if you want any other power testing results.