intel – SFF.Network

Press Release: Colorful Releases New B660 ITX Boards

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. — Colorful Technology Company Limited, a professional manufacturer of graphics cards, motherboards, all-in-one gaming and multimedia solutions, and high-performance storage, introduces the CVN B660I GAMING FROZEN and CVN B660I GAMING Mini-ITX motherboards as the latest addition to the CVN Series motherboards for the 12th generation Intel Core processors. The GAMING FROZEN motherboard features a white PCB from front to back, complemented with …

News

ASRock Working on Intel’s New A380 GPU

Intel’s new Arc family of graphics cards has a mainstream board partner, in the shape of ASRock. Excitingly for us, and belying the “A380” moniker (plane nerds know what I’m talking about), it’s an “ITX” spec GPU in the shape of a Challenger branded card. The board features a single 8 pin power connector, which is interesting considering the Intel rated 75w TDP. This is likely a mid-process prototype still. Looking at the solid aluminium heatsink, it seems that this card will either run cool, or loud. Place your bets now! From early benchmarks, the A380 looks to lag behind …

Cases Motherboards Reviews Systems

ASRock’s DeskMeet B660 – Fantastic Idea, Interesting Execution

ASRock’s DeskMini series has been a stalwart in the SFF world for some time now, even with the canning of the GTX/RX series (Rest in Peace, MXM graphics cards). Eschewing standard form factors to enable denser computers, the DeskMini has been the basis of many builds and mods in our community forum. But the challenge with the DeskMini has always been hardware compatibility – only really supporting CPU, RAM and storage upgrades. What if we wanted more graphics power and more RAM? Enter the DeskMeet. As a larger brethren to the DeskMini, the new DeskMeet series significantly increases component compatibility …

News

ASUS Upgrades the ROG Huracan G21 Prebuilt

Launched in the middle of 2018, the ASUS ROG Huracan G21 has been getting a bit long in the tooth. Realising this, ASUS has decided to give the system the refresh treatment, upgrading the platform, CPU and GPU. This 17.7L (129.9×372.4×366.1 mm) chassis houses a decent gaming rig, replete with the RGB and fancy acronyms expected. First up, ASUS has replaced the original H370 chipset board with a Z370 unit – possibly unlocking the ability to overclock. This upgrade is to support a choice of CPUs based on the Intel 9th gen platform, namely the i7-9900K, 9700K and the i5-9400K. …

News

CES 2020 – A SFF Roundup

Whilst we were unable to attend CES 2020, I’ve been trawling the depths of the interwebs for SFF related coverage to summarise in lieu of aforementioned physical presence. Let’s go! AMD Of course, AMD took centre stage, continuing the steamroller-like (pun intended, sorry!) push of the recent years. AMD produces both CPUs and GPUs, so we get a double barrelled keynote. AMD is pushing into the laptop space more than ever, with the new Ryzen 4000 series, Zen 2 core, 7nm laptop CPUs. Taking aim at the three laptop market segments – ultrathin, gaming and professional, a pair of new …

Reviews Systems

Guest Review: ECS Liva Z2

This review has been provided by forum member Duality92! Editing has been performed by John Morrison. I would like to take this opportunity to thank ECS for this product sample, they have provided me with an ECS Liva Z2 for the purpose of this review. ECS is no newcomer in the Mini PC world, this is the third unit I have reviewed, the others being the Liva Plus and the miniscule Liva Q. The Liva Z2 is the latest generation of the fanless Mini PC lineup from ECS. It sports the Intel Gemini Lake CPU, which were released in Q4 …

Motherboards Reviews

ASRock’s Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac – A New Direction

For some time, ASRock has been using the Fatal1ty branding on their high end products – a tie back to the days of old, where Quake was king, and bright, flashy branding was cool. However, Fatal1ty has given way to ASRock’s “Phantom Gaming” brand, with a much more subtle aesthetic. All black? Yes please! Beefy heatsinks? Yessir! First sighted on ASRock’s limited availability (unfortunately) GPU line, the Phantom Gaming brand has come to motherboards – slowly taking over the performance space within ASRock’s lineup. This particular model uses the Intel Z390 chipset – what Z370 should have been, but I digress. …

News

The first Intel Z390 board has been revealed, by ASRock

Dubbed the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac (edit: link doesn’t work anymore), ASRock is the first to officially launch an mITX Z390 board, Intel’s latest chipset supporting the 9th Gen Intel Core processors that are right around the corner. The stand-out features are the Thunderbolt 3 enabled USB Type-C connector, as well as the four USB 3.1 Gen2 ports (10Gb/s per port) at the rear, with an additional two USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gb/s per port) at the rear as well, along with two more via the internal header for the case front panel. The M.2 heatsink stands out as well, with …