ASRock Launches the X470 Fatal1ty Gaming ITX/ac Motherboard

[Raevenlord]

ASRock has finally launched one of their more interesting X470 solutions, the X470 Fatal1ty Gaming ITX/ac motherboard. The specs for this board are already well known to us, but I'd like to point out the graphical DisplayPort output, a feature seldom seen in other products, which is there to facilitate users some FreeSync shennanigans on their Zen APU.

This motherboard crams all of the essentials for a great system (and great looking in its all black color scheme) as it is, though of course, some expandability options are absent due to PCB real-estate limitations. But user looking for a no-frills, ITX motherboard with built-in AC wi-fi support may not need to look anywhere else. No pricing announcement yet, but allowing ourselves to speculate based on past ASRock products and ASUS' own ROG Strix X470-I Gaming, probably places this motherboard in the $200 range. These should start creeping in on store inventories soon - though a warning on ASRock's website saying this model may not be available worldwide sets a feeling of unease.



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[DeathtoGnomes]

nothing good to see here, move along.

#waitsfortheATX

 

[Nuckles56]

If it had a few more USB ports, that would be the perfect ITX board

 

[EntropyZ]

No uATX form factor board yet. There is no upgrade path from the AB350M Pro4.

 

[Ruru]

If it had a few more USB ports, that would be the perfect ITX board

Why it should need more USB ports? I need USB for mouse, keyboard, WLAN dongle, gamepad and webcam, and I use an ATX system. This has WLAN already, so no need for that.

Heh, "Fatal1ty mouse port", I had that on my old P67 Performance, they still use that PR-BS I see.

edit: It has also headers for USB2.0 and 3.0, so that gives even more USB connectors.

 

[Valantar]

Why it should need more USB ports? I need USB for mouse, keyboard, WLAN dongle, gamepad and webcam, and I use an ATX system. This has WLAN already, so no need for that.

Heh, "Fatal1ty mouse port", I had that on my old P67 Performance, they still use that PR-BS I see.

edit: It has also headers for USB2.0 and 3.0, so that gives even more USB connectors.

Agreed. 5 USB-A + a type-C is plenty, at least with the addition of front panel USB. I need my mouse, keyboard, DAC/amp and the built-in hub in my monitor (which has my Xbox controller receiver, memory card reader, and so on). That's four, and only one of them gains from 3.0 speeds, so the two 2.0 ports are great. I'd say this is a solid contender for "perfect AM4 ITX board". It even has three fan headers, with one of them specced for powering a pump! That's worth far more than having an extra USB or two.

 

[GhostRyder]

Looks like a decent board, wish they would be a little more generous with their VRM cooling on these. Though its got some cooling spots unlike some others I have seen (ITX boards in general).

 

[RH92]

Don't know if Asrock has made some changes to the bios on those compared to the 300 series ( more likely not ) but as a Fatality AB350 ITX owner i would advise everyone to look more towards ASUS if you take your OC seriously ! Not only ASUS bios is better but they push updates much faster than Asrock does .

Looks like a decent board, wish they would be a little more generous with their VRM cooling on these. Though its got some cooling spots unlike some others I have seen (ITX boards in general).

Considering VRM cooling wasn't realy an issue on the Fatality X370/AB350 ITX boards even when paired with octa cores well i believe you have nothing to worry about . I would be more worried on the bios and OC side of things .

 

[hyp36rmax]

Man had no idea this had displayport. Nice!

 

[Disparia]

*heavy breathing*

 

[theGryphon]

nothing good to see here, move along.

#waitsfortheATX

Oh, you really speak only for yourself, as you should!

 

[Roph]

Does nobody else cringe at the "fatal1ty" stuff?

Also, anemic rear I/O. My budget board has more USB.

 

[GhostRyder]

Don't know if Asrock has made some changes to the bios on those compared to the 300 series ( more likely not ) but as a Fatality AB350 ITX owner i would advise everyone to look more towards ASUS if you take your OC seriously ! Not only ASUS bios is better but they push updates much faster than Asrock does .



Considering VRM cooling wasn't realy an issue on the Fatality X370/AB350 ITX boards even when paired with octa cores well i believe you have nothing to worry about . I would be more worried on the bios and OC side of things .

Generally I like to do a bit of overclocking on even ITX boards which is why I worry a bit. A past board I bought had pretty poor VRM cooling so even though we could overclock very well on it the temps went up pretty hard until we modified it to have some hard cooling (IE fan blowing directly on it, mixed with some heat spreader add ons). It had no heat spreader which was something that should have been thought about. I was going to build one of these for a friend and he wants it pushed to the limit on the 8 core so I was curious how it would hold up.

 

[RH92]

As i said if you are looking to push a 8 core Ryzen to it's limits with an ITX board i would certainly go for something along Strix B350/X370/X470 -i .

here you will find a VRM analysis on Asrock AB350 itx wich has basicaly the same VRM solution as the X370 and the new X470 itx.

here you can see a review about strix x370itx where he talks about VRM temps (starts around 3:50 ) .

What you can learn from this is that ASUS is using a true 6 phase while Asrock uses a 3phase for VCore . The temps on the ASUS board when heavely OC and no airflow are well within the limits so the temps on the Asrock board should be a bit worst but within the limits non the less . It also depends on what your friend plans to do with it. If it's content creation then he would probably need some kind of airflow for the VRMs but nothing to extreme.

 

[Caring1]

" a warning on ASRock's website saying this model may not be available worldwide sets a feeling of unease"
Not sure why you would want to instill doubt in to the readers mind, but that is pretty standard fare for this type of product, I have seen it numerous times on quite a few different Items.
Also after doing a comparison on Asrock's site between this and their previous iteration, there are minimal differences to warrant "upgrading" if you own the X370 version already.
From what I can see, there are color changes to the board overall, and a newer Gen USB 3.1, moving from version 1 to version 2 as well as support for newer gen Ryzen, which was promised for earlier boards via an update to the BIOS. Everything else appears to be the same.

 

[Valantar]

People with an X370/B350 board talking about upgrading to X470 baffles me. Why replace a perfectly functional board? Isn't the whole point of the unified AM4 platform that you won't have to, and still upgrade your CPU if you want/need?

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

I see people bitch and moan about how there arent 6 SATA ports or more.... I only use mITX with APU/iGPU graphics. This opens up the ability to drop in a SATA expansion card or my favorite, the SATA/SAS card with mini-SAS ports to allow connecting 8 SATA drives to 1 mini-SAS port.

 

[Valantar]

I see people bitch and moan about how there arent 6 SATA ports or more.... I only use mITX with APU/iGPU graphics. This opens up the ability to drop in a SATA expansion card or my favorite, the SATA/SAS card with mini-SAS ports to allow connecting 8 SATA drives to 1 mini-SAS port.

I kind of get your point, but personally I'd want the PCIe slot for a 5/10GbE card, at least in the near-ish future. Outside of the server space, there are definitely no ITX boards with that, and for hosting my photos and editing them in Lightroom, GbE is very much showing its limitations. I'm reluctant to replace my current FM2+ "NAS" motherboard simply because I'm currently using 4 of its SATA ports and I'm likely to fill up the last two in not too long. Even moving the boot drive to USB or an m.2 SSD on a new build would only let me add a single drive, forcing me to replace drives prematurely to add space. I've seen some NAS vendors make some interesting combo AICs (nGbE+SSDs and similar configurations on a single card) but I doubt those would work in a DIY system.

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

I kind of get your point, but personally I'd want the PCIe slot for a 5/10GbE card, at least in the near-ish future. Outside of the server space, there are definitely no ITX boards with that, and for hosting my photos and editing them in Lightroom, GbE is very much showing its limitations. I'm reluctant to replace my current FM2+ "NAS" motherboard simply because I'm currently using 4 of its SATA ports and I'm likely to fill up the last two in not too long. Even moving the boot drive to USB or an m.2 SSD on a new build would only let me add a single drive, forcing me to replace drives prematurely to add space. I've seen some NAS vendors make some interesting combo AICs (nGbE+SSDs and similar configurations on a single card) but I doubt those would work in a DIY system.

Then add a Daughter Board that gives you the expansion slots you need.

 

[Valantar]

Then add a Daughter Board that gives you the expansion slots you need.

Daughterboard? Huh? Do you mean a PCIe expansion card? Otherwise, how would you connect this to the motherboard? USB?