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Lower Cost, AMD A620 Chipset Boards Coming Soon

Source: TechPowerup As part of the AMD CES Keynote this year, AMD’s A620 chipset was unofficially paper launched (“entry-level AM5 motherboards”), promising cheaper boards, hoping to sway folks building new systems over to the new AM5 platform. Moving to AM5 from an existing older system is relatively cost prohibitive, with no DDR4 support and pricier processors. AMD hopes this bottom end chipset will help lower the barrier to entry. A620 is quite different from B650, with no overclocking, fewer PCIe Gen 3 lanes, and no PCIe Gen 5 lanes for GPU and M.2 slots. I do wonder if undervolting will …
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AM5 Launch – SFF Options

With the.. controversial.. launch of AMD’s AM5 platform, I thought it would be worth overviewing the SFF Motherboards available or previewed at the time of writing. Available now: x670e ASUS ROG STRIX X670E-I Gaming Wifi 6E At US$469.99 at Newegg.com, the ASUS ROG STRIX….I give up… is the first M-ITX board available for the new AM5 platform. A feature packed board, with multiple protrusions as is the norm for this family of board. The chipset heatsink doubles as a M.2 SSD mount and heatsink. A “FPS-II” card is mounted at the front of the board, holding ports for the usual …
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ASRock Phantom Gaming Z390 Boards on the Horizon

Browsing the usual sources across the web, I came across a snippet from VideoCardz.com noting the emergence of ASRock’s new sub branding – “Phantom Gaming”. Whilst we have no confirmation that this brand will replace the Fatal1ty branding that currently adorns products, the article does give us one more bit of info that is worth looking in to – a motherboard list. I quote: Z390 Phantom Gaming 9 Z390 Phantom Gaming SLI/ac Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac Z390 Gaming K6 Z390 Gaming-ITXac Z390 Master SLI/ac Z390 Pro4 Z390 Taichi Ultimate Z390 Taichi Z390M Pro4 Z390M-ITXac Z390M-STX MXM Whilst a few of these …
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MSI 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. Rushing through the halls of the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Centre between meetings, we discovered MSI had their products on show, as expected. Let’s see what they had to show us! First up, MSI’s Z370i Gaming Pro Carbon AC (can we suggest a word limit to product names? Please?). This Coffee Lake board features the usual assortment of ports, but in MSI’s own style. We do appreciate …
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Intel H370, H310 and B360 Chipset Boards Incoming!

Thanks to Techpowerup! and VideoCardz for doing the legwork on this one. With the month or two of Intel’s Z370 chipset being available, we’re finally seeing more budget friendly boards readying for launch. Here’s a roundup of the SFF friendly models! ASUS ASUS STRIX B360-G GAMING ASUS TUF B360M-E GAMING ASUS PRIME H310M-A ASUS PRIME H310M-D ASUS PRIME H310M-E ASUS PRIME H310M-K ASUS TUF H310M PLUS GAMING ASUS PRIME B360M-K ASUS STRIX H370-I ASUS STRIX XB360-I     ASRock ASRock B360M-HDV ASRock H370M-ITX/ac ASRock H310M-ITX/ac ASRock H310M-HDVP ASRock H310M-HDV ASRock H310M-G/M.2 ASRock H310M-DGS ASRock B360M-ITX/ac   Gigabyte GIGABYTE H370M D3H …
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Mini-ITX AM4 board from Biostar unveiled!

Thanks to the tip from our forum member MarcParis, we finally have the specs of the first known mITX board featuring the AM4 socket. As many of you know, this is the socket type that supports the AMD Ryzen CPU line, expected to be fully revealed at the end of February and possibly commercially available not long after. [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] But to avoid confusion (you’ll see in a minute), let’s start with their also-revealed microATX board. MicroATX BioStar X370-GT3 It features the top-end AM4 300-series chipset type, the X370, which features USB 3.1 10Gb/s, overclocking, and CrossFire/SLI. The leaked …
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ASUS 200-Series Boards Lineup

Alphabetical order! Next up in our motherboard roundup from the 200-Series launch is ASUS’s offering. Let’s see what they have for us! [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] ROG STRIX Z270I Gaming This appears to be the only Mini-ITX offering that ASUS has in the 200-Series launch, but in it’s defence, it is fully featured. The main notable feature is a double-decker heatsink – enabling both your PCH and M.2 SSD to be cooled with a single heatsink! This board also includes the new USB 3.1 front panel connector… exciting times. The board also features Aura Sync RGB LED, 802.11ac WiFi, DDR4 4266 MHz, …
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ASRock 200-series motherboards officially announced

Written by James Schell and John Morrison. Yesterday we saw leaked images of the upcoming Intel 200-series chipset motherboards, but today several manufacturers have officially announced their new line of motherboards. This post will take a look at ASRock’s lineup. [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″] Mini-ITX Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac This is the high-end Fatal1ty ITX board from ASRock for the Z270 chipset. Most of the specs are about what you would expect, Intel Gigabit NIC, 802.11ac wireless, 1x PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2, SATA Express (why?!), and so on. But there is also a HDMI 2.0 port, and, more surprisingly, a Thunderbolt 3 port! [mks_separator …