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Minisforum Launches New ITX Board with MXM Slot

MXM, there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while. Formerly quite a popular mobile GPU form factor, even making it’s way into desktops like ASRock’s DeskMini GTX, MXM has been dying a quiet death as of late. Laptop manufacturers, in the pursuit of thinner and lighter, have forgone the format and gone fully embedded. (There’s also that rumour that NVIDIA themselves sentenced the form factor to death..) Minisforum, purveyor of smol, have unveiled their new Eyertec AD650i motherboard, an interesting combination of embedded CPU and MXM. First up, the specs. The board comes with an embedded Intel Core i7-12650H …

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CES 2019: Digital Storm

First visit of the day, and what a product! Digital Storm had on display their Micro-STX based Project Spark – now slated for release in Q1 this year! Now featuring a i7-9900K processor and MXM 2080 GPU, it’s a mini powerhouse. Note: the final revision will include a monoblock covering both CPU and GPU – eschewing the notoriously loud MXM cooler. Also of note, the power brick will be upgraded to a 330w unit, or parallel 600w units. Thoughts? Discuss them in the forum.

Reviews Systems

ASRock’s Z370 DeskMini GTX1060 – Barebones Bonanza? (Part 2)

In part one of this article, we tore down and set up the ASRock DeskMini GTX1060, a Micro-STX based barebones system that comes with a MXM format GTX1060 6GB GPU. In this second part of the review, we will look more in depth, to gain a deeper understanding of the Deskmini GTX/RX Z370, and see what it is capable of. As a recap, the ASRock DeskMini GTX/RX Z370 is a well designed Micro-STX barebones system, that in part 1, gained my recommendation, and my conversion from M-ITX to Micro-STX for my personal preference. The design of the platform, as well …

Reviews Systems

ASRock’s Z370 DeskMini GTX1060 – Barebones Bonanza? (Part 1)

When Craig reviewed ASRock’s B250 DeskMini GTX1080, we were impressed by the utter performance density offered by the platform. A GTX1080, with desktop GPU performance, in a box under 3 litres of volume. Today it’s my turn to look at a DeskMini GTX/RX model, albeit the next generation, based on Intel’s Z370 chipset. The ASRock DeskMini GTX/RX line is based on the Micro-STX form factor, a variation on the STX form factor originally launched by Intel as “5×5” a few years back. ASRock realised that by adding in a mere 2 inches in length (ugh… metric plz) meant that the …

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ASRock at CES 2018

With anticipation, our team headed to the ASRock suite first thing today, hoping for yet more SFF awesomeness from one of the companies who have proven their SFF mettle numerous times recently. First up, ASRock is working with MXM partners to increase the availability and decrease the cost of MXM GPUs for the Micro-STX platform. Here, a desktop grade GTX1060 is available in the form factor. The next generation Z370 Micro-STX was on display, with many, many changes to the first, Z270, iteration; The new power phase(5+1) supports 6-core processors. New STX board allows for XMP profile 2.0 w/ speeds …

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Digital Storm’s Spark – A Closer Look

Earlier this week, the first enthusiast grade Micro-STX prebuilt system was revealed, with a couple of teaser images and not much else to go off to sate our SFF appetites. With our team at CES 2018, we decided we needed a closer look! It must be noted, that this is the initial prototype, produced in acrylic. A metal version is in the works, with minor redesigning taking place, but the overall design is expected to remain the same. The system packs a 92mm radiator, the expected ASRock Micro-STX motherboard, 4 x M.2 drives and the usual MXM graphics card. Yes, …

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ASRock Micro-STX updates (GTX 1080 is working!)

When ASRock unveiled the DeskMini GTX back at CES they only supported up to the MXM GTX 1060, and when Drew talked with them power delivery concerns were the main holdup for supporting anything higher. But those crazy guys at ASRock have managed to get not only the GTX 1070, but even all the way to the GTX 1080 MXM cards working in there! Even cooler, it does so while providing all the power through the MXM slot, without relying on some kind of clunky power cable setup. Under load, we were told the GTX 1080 will level off at around the low …

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The ASRock H110-STX MXM is nearly here.

Now visible on the ASRock website in all its glory, the ASRock H110-STX MXM motherboard that we showcased at CES is nearly here! As a friendly reminder to anyone questioning the justification of a such a unique product, please note that this motherboard is pretty much the holy grail of SFF products in that it houses an enthusiast Intel i7-7700k, z270 chipset, and up to an MXM 1060! (at time of writing, the MXM 1060 is the most powerful card that can be used) That being said, we noticed a few discrepancies on the current specifications page with their datasheet. The change that stood out most was that the listed specifications show 2 x …