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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 …

News

CES 2019: AMD

The SFFn crew (Tim and Joshua and myself) just had to make it to the AMD keynote – here’s what we saw! The Radeon VII is a triple fan card, so not the smallest. However, for the water enthusiasts amongst us, the card has all the IO in a single slot – no more DVI here! Thoughts? Discuss them in the forum.

News

L1Techs Overviews the Sapphire FS-FP5V, a New Mini-STX Board

As analysed by forum moderator j0rd: Lackluster I/O, 1 USB3, 3 USB 2 Serial header GPIO Traditional front panel header 1 SATA w/ a power breakout 2 M.2 slots, e-key and 1 PCIe / sata Dual realtek 1G NIC’s realtek audio chip 2 SO-DIMM slots Vega 11 GPU 4 core 8 thread CPU 3.8GHz single core turbo Other Ryzen CPU’s will be available ECC RAM supported DDR4 3200 support Quad DisplayPort Comments? Here!

Motherboards Reviews

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

Udoo 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. The Udoo Bolt, an embedded board currently in the process of a Kickstarter campaign, was on show at Computex 2018! The board features an integrated AMD Ryzen V1000 APU, dual DDR4 support (with ECC if you desire!), three M.2 slots, and is Arduino compatible. At 12x12cm, this is even smaller than STX, albeit with the limitation of an embedded processor. Let’s see how this awesome piece …

News

AMD’s Vega Nano at Computex 2018

At long last. The Vega Nano, promised last year at AMD’s Capsaicin event, has arrived, albeit not in the form we originally saw. PowerColor, a brand known for their unique take on graphics cards, has taken AMD’s lead and created a production version of the Vega 56 Nano card! At today’s AMD press event, we were treated to an exclusive look at the card, where I held the card on display. I’m not always driven to silence by a product but here was one that did so. Let’s have a closer look. Out of reach? Maybe not! Closer. There it …

News

ASRock Shares Details of First Foray into Graphics Cards!

With the SFF Network crew on-location at Computex 2018, one of the first booths we’ve visited is that of ASRock, a company we’ve covered and reviewed at length for their work in the realm of motherboards and pre-built systems. Well known for their mITX and (lately) STX boards in particular, ASRock recently announced their intent to expand into GPUs by launching a broad series of AMD-powered graphics cards, which is a first for the company. ASRock has dubbed their entire series of graphics cards the “Phantom Gaming” line, with aggressive aesthetics and cooling to match. Interestingly, although there is not …

Editorial

How STX Changed My View of SFF

This article marks a return to my editorial content – occasional articles entirely based on my personal opinion. These are part of a series focusing on issues in the SFF niche. All content is entirely opinion of myself, not of SmallFormFactor.net, and should not be taken as fact. For years, I was a Micro-ATX SFF stalwart. I never truly believed M-ITX could offer all I needed in a system, with lackluster networking, audio and storage solutions, as well as just poor physical design. CPU coolers sat too close to RAM or expansion slots, minimal drive expansion was available, and the …

News

ASRock Reveals Their Hand – A Bunch of AMD GPUs For Your Perusal

Recently, rumours started appearing that industry veteran ASRock was considering a foray into the world of graphics cards. In the last couple of days, all was revealed, with ASRock’s Phantom Gaming GPU lineup hitting headlines. With RX550, 560, 570 and 580 product lines, it seems ASRock is working closely with AMD on the new lineup. (We won’t get into the NVIDIA GPP shenanigans here). Unfortunately, there are no signs of an ASRock MXM GPU to support their DeskMini line of barebones systems, however, the lineup is pretty complete for a first launch – it seems ASRock has put some thought …

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 …

News

Raven Ridge Review Roundup

(Alliteration!!) Forum member Legion spent some time finding a sizeable bunch of reviews of the new AMD Raven Ridge platform. So, here’s a few of them for your perusal in lieu of our review (coming… eventually!) Anandtech: https://www.anandtech.com/show/12425/marrying-vega-and-zen-the-amd-ryzen-5-2400g-review Hexus: https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/cpu/114962-amd-ryzen-5-2400g-ryzen-3-2200g/ Toms Hardware: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-ryzen-5-2400g-zen-vega-cpu-gpu,5467.html#xtor=RSS-100 Techpowerup: https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_5_2400G_Vega_11/ And a video review: Thoughts? More links and videos in the thread here.

News

iBase MBN806, the First AMD Snowy Owl Motherboard to Appear in the Wild

iBase, a Taiwan based networking and embedded motherboard and system manufacturer, seems to be the first company to market with AMD’s Snowy Owl platform. As a reminder, AMD’s Snowy Owl is the embedded version of EPYC, AMD’s datacentre processor range. Based on the BGA2028 “socket” (BGA is Ball Grid Array, meaning this is a soldered on chip), the iBase MBN806 is powered by an eight-core, eight-thread EPYC Embedded 3201 SoC with a clock speed of up to 2.3 GHz. Feeding this octo-core SoC, quad DDR4 memory slots support up to 128GB of registered, or 64GB of unregistered memory, in either …