News

ASRock’s B550AM Gaming Motherboard Sighted

  ASRock’s B550AM Gaming motherboard has been sighted, but rejoice ye not, as this board has a pair of caveats that make it less news worthy than I originally figured. Firstly, the B550A chipset is a rebrand of B450. Secondly, this board at the time of writing appears to be for OEM only markets. So, with that out of the way, let’s look at some interesting features – From TechPowerup; “The AM4 socket is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots supporting dual-channel DDR4 memory; the board’s sole PCI-Express 4.0 x16, and an M.2-22110 slot that has PCIe 3.0 x4 and …
News

Press Release: Noctua Releases the Chromax NH-L9a-AM4

Press Release: When an SFF Network article is marked as a press release, it is copied verbatim from marketing materials supplied by the company. It does not represent the views or opinions of SFF Network or it’s staff. — Vienna, January 21st 2020 – Noctua today introduced another addition to its chromax line of all-black CPU coolers: the new NH-L9a-AM4 chromax.black is a low-profile quiet CPU cooler for AMD’s Ryzen-based HTPCs and Small Form Factor (SFF) builds. Thanks to the same proven heatsink design and NF-A9x14 PWM fan as the original NH-L9a-AM4, it stays true to the same successful formula …
News

CoolerMaster’s MasterAir G200P has been launched

CoolerMaster teased their MasterAir G200P SFF cooler at Computex 2019, and it’s finally time to hit the market for this low profile 92mm cooler. Featuring a max height of 39.4mm, this cooler is another option for our SFF air cooled builds. Twin C-shaped heatpipes draw heat from the nickel plated copper base up to the aluminium fins, to be cooled by the 92×15.4mm fan. Speaking of the fan, the fan is rated for 800-2600 RPM, with a max of 35.5CFM and 2.4mm H2o static pressure. The fan runs between 6-28dBa according to CoolerMaster. The cooler supports LGA1151, LGA1150, LGA1155, LGA1156, …
ReviewsSystems

ASRock’s DeskMini A300 – Finally!

Around a year ago, AMD graced us with the Ryzen APU family, bringing higher logical core counts and the Vega GPU architecture to the APU platform. Unlike the rather.. limited.. FM1/2/2+ platform family, the new generation ran on the AM4 platform, allowing anyone to choose between CPUs and APUs for their builds. What the new Ryzen platform also offered is a chipset-less option – A300. Because Ryzen integrates so many controllers and devices into the die, it is possible to create a motherboard with no chipset at all, much like the ill-fated AM1 platform. SATA, PCIe, RAM, and more fed …
MotherboardsReviews

ASRock’s B450M Pro4 – M-ATX, Fully Featured

Micro-ATX, the oft-ignored form factor, stuck between the expandability (and HUUUUGEness) of ATX and the size of M-ITX. For generations, the M-ATX market segment has been filled with mediocre boards from a cursory glance, leaving folks to go to one extreme or the other instead. In fact, I have mused publicly in the past on this, a sad perspective of the middle child of the PC world. ASRock has long been a stalwart of high density computing options, with the DeskMini range, insane Mini-ITX boards and the like – I was intrigued to see what their B450M Pro4 has to …
MotherboardsReviews

ASRock’s Fatal1ty X470-ITX/ac – Back to the Future

With the second generation of Ryzen processors on the market, it’s only fitting than a new, upgraded, chipset family is available. With this in mind, today we are looking at ASRock’s first AMD 400 series M-ITX board, the X470 Gaming-ITX/ac. This board is a younger brother to the previously reviewed X370 Gaming-ITX/ac, with a few changes to the layout, as well as the aesthetic. ASRock’s partnership with the Fatal1ty brand goes back some time, and has always been associated with bright, Gam3r-esque branding and design. Not any more it seems, with this new generation of motherboards taking on a much …
News

BIOSTAR at Computex 2018

SFF Network’s COMPUTEX 2018 coverage is sponsored by SilverStone, who’s celebrating 15 years of innovation in SFF and beyond. Click here to check out their website and to learn more about their latest products. BIOSTAR, rather the underdog in the Western PC components market, didn’t have much of interest to us SFF’rs this year, so we just shot through the booth, grabbing a couple of quick snaps. Here goes! BIOSTAR’s Racing NUC-a-like was on display. This little box features about the same processor, RAM and storage as my $200 laptop. Eep! All joking aside, this little racer has some OK …
Feature

Raven Ridge HDMI 2.0 Compatibility – Forum Members to the Rescue!

Our community forum is a fantastic place, with our users banding together to help out those of us who need assistance on various SFF related topics. Recently, user Hifihedgehog started a thread surrounding unofficial support of HDMI 2.0 with AMD’s new Raven Ridge APU platform. Whilst manufacturer specs have been vague on the situation, Hifihedgehog set out to find out exactly which motherboards support the standard with a Raven Ridge APU.   Fantastic news for Raven Ridge! Thanks to an adventurous redditor, it turns out that in at least one case HDMI 2.0 capability is, in fact, not dictated by the …