Unfortunately, VGA is still very much a requirement for many business and enterprise clients...
Not sure what you're issue with the X300 chipset is tho, its just a more basic version of the 500 series meant for USFF systems and it even supports overclocking...
1) VGA definitely still very present in the business world, not a problem unless it's used
in place of something more desirable. In this case, you're still getting HDMI/DP so who cares.
2) The A300/X300 (a.k.a. "knoll") actually isn't a 'proper' chipset, it's purely an activator chip for the Ryzen CPU's onboard IO die. It basically enables the motherboard to function without a dedicated chipset, saving both PCB space, as well as 5-15W for the chipset (~5W for A520/B550, ~10-15W for X570), yet it still has plenty of connectivity thanks to the Cezanne IO design:
(Side note: If you knew how to modify the firmware on the knoll itself, you could theoretically cross flash an A300 to X300 as it's pretty much just a config setting to enable OC).
Fair comment, I suppose the Deskmini isn't just a consumer machine, but isn't an Asrock industrial product.
I am looking forward to getting going with my A300, I am awaiting a basic APU to get me going; it will really be a budget build for starters.
At least the A/X300 units have dual M.2 slots and a better iGPU compared to the Intel variants
Agree, it's awesome that ASRock included 2x PCIe x4 M.2 sockets! It's SO frustrating when I look at lot of the NUC and similar SFF boards that claim to have "2x M.2 sockets" and find out that it really means 1x M.2 2230 A+E key (PCIe x1 + USB3 for WiFi/BT) and 1x M.2 2280 B+M key (PCIe x4 or SATA for SSD).
Hopefully ASRock does an X600 DeskMini or similar STX board, and retains the 2x PCIe x4 sockets (at least!). With Zen4 APUs (RDNA2 + PCIe 4.0 or 5.0?) you can have a potent onboard GPU but also could choose to connect an eGPU with an M.2 adapter, but
without the PCIe3.0x4 bandwidth limitation (woohoo!)
Fingers-crossed for PCIe 5.0 on the M.2 as it would give some serious longevity. If you consider the max bandwidth available per lane has doubled each generation, so:
- PCIe 5.0 x4 ~ PCIe 4.0 x8 ~ PCIe 3.0 x16 = 128 GT/s (where I'm hoping we'll be with Zen4 APUs)
- PCIe 4.0 x4 ~ PCIe 3.0 x8 = 64 GT/s
- PCIe 3.0 x4 = 32 GT/s (where we are at now with Zen3 APUs)
Heatsinks ! GaN transistors.
GaN transistors would be nice, given they should be more efficient and put out less waste heat than the MOSFETs in use today. Though, if they're not a drop-in replacement it may mean significant time/money spent re-engineering, not to mention the possibly-higher cost of GaN vs SiC vs Si power delivery components themselves. I don't know enough about how power delivery components work to comment further.
