Product Photos and Closer Look
The X370 Gaming ITX/ac motherboard arrived in a retail package which is quite small box. The motherboard itself is also small as ITX size is 17 x 17 cm or 6.7 x 6.7-in.
On the box we can find all we need to know about the product inside. If we wish to know everything then there wouldn’t be enough space on the box to describe all the features and specifications ( you could see the list on the previous page ).
On the back of the motherboard are described key features. Pretty much everything you could already see in this review. Let’s check what is inside the box.
Inside the package, of course besides the motherboard, are manuals, SATA cables, IO shield, driver’s DVD, a screw for M.2 drive and WiFi antenna. Simply all we need to install the motherboard.
Additionally we’ve received huge mousepad with “BEYOND EXPECTATION” sign. Nice gift from the ASRock. You will see part of that mousepad on the photos. We can say this was beyond expectation … and we are still expecting nice surprises from the X370 Gaming-ITX/ac!
The motherboard is in typical ITX format so should fit into every non-thin ITX PC case. From the first look, everything looks great on the PCB and all is well designed so we shouldn’t have issues with larger coolers, heavy graphics cards or other components above standard. I’ve mentioned graphics card so it’s worth to add that single PCIE 3.0 x16 slot has steel cover which protects the slot and reduces any signal interference. Personally I’ve never had issues with that but if it’s added then I won’t complain.
The motherboard has standard AM4 CPU socket and mounting. It also works with standard ATX/SFX PSU. Even if you don’t have additional 8 pin CPU power cable then on 4 pins it works perfectly fine. 8 pin cable may be required while overclocking at higher voltage and when 8-core processors are in use.
On the X370 Gaming-ITX we will find Intel LAN and WiFi/Bluetooth. What is interesting, previous generations of motherboards had third-party network controllers which were advertised as faster and simply better. Somehow users didn’t like them much and on all higher series motherboards we will find Intel network controllers. For me Intel is perfect and I’ve never had issues with their controllers.
Next thing which is finally in use are graphics card outputs. On the X370 Gaming-ITX are two HDMI ports that offer maximum resolution up to 4K x 2K but we can also see that maximum values are at low-frequency so be prepared to use lower display resolution when APU is main graphics chip. On the Ryzen 3 2200G at 2560×1440 everything is clear and runs great. Of course performance of this APU is limited but some games are still playable at this resolution.
The X370 Gaming-ITX/ac has four SATA III ports and a single M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s) socket which supports bootable NVMe drives. When we use APU then M.2 maximum bandwidth will be limited to x2 / 16Gb/s. Since for our tests we have APU then perfect M.2 SSD seems something like Patriot Scorch 256GB which we already reviewed on this motherboard couple of days ago.
For some users it already sounds like standard but still not all motherboards support more USB 3.1 ports while the X370 Gaming-ITX has both, USB 3.1 A and C ports, and additional socket to connect front panel with more USB 3.1 ports. I guess it’s even more than enough for most users while for some others who feel it’s not enough I recommend high quality USB hubs.
On the back of the motherboard is nothing unusual except maybe M.2 socket. It’s a great idea to save space and expand motherboard’s functionality. I wonder why it took so long to introduce sockets on the back of the motherboard. Part of the power section is also on the back of the PCB.
Nicely called ASRock Super Alloy describes improved and powerful power design which contains:
- Premium Power Choke
- Dual-N MOSFET
- Nichicon 12K Black Caps (100% Japan made high quality conductive polymer capacitors)
- Matte Black PCB
- High Density Glass Fabric PCB
- 2oz Copper PCB
I’m not sure how colour of PCB affects power design but for sure it’s good to see it’s black. PCB itself is high quality and offers additional interference resistance what affects stability and overclocking potential. Especially RAM shows better results when PCB is good quality with additional shielding.
We are used to see most other components on all top ASRock motherboards so I will tell it in short. It’s strong and stable power design which will handle overclocking without issues, regardless if you push to the limits 4 core or 8 core CPU.
On the next page we will show you how BIOS/UEFI looks like.
