Motherboard and graphics card manufacturer ASRock told PCMag that it will be moving at least some of its manufacturing away from China: "As for the 10% tariff applied to other products like GPU cards, we need some time to transfer the manufacturing to other countries."

This is just a concrete example of what we'd already been warned of by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA): that tariffs on videogame-related hardware could harm the gaming industry in the US. Whether the tariff strategy is a good move overall, politically and economically, some negative impact can't be denied.

To again get a little more concrete, ASRock also says that "in the transition period [between manufacturing in China and manufacturing elsewhere], we may absorb some of the cost and also increase some in price to reflect the increased cost." This, despite the fact that "since the market is still highly competitive, it is not easy to raise price[s]."

This isn't likely to be an isolated issue, either. Tons of PC gaming hardware companies do some or all of their manufacturing in China. MSI, for instance, makes its motherboards in Shenzhen, China.

TSMC, too, has some production in China in addition to Taiwan, this being its Nanjing fab. However, this facility's older 16 nm and 12 nm FinFET process, once used for Nvidia 10-series cards, is now used for things not so gaming-related, such as TVs. There could be smaller things—chip controllers, for instance—still made on this node, though.

But any effects on a company's margins can have a knock-on effect. The Commercial Times reports that it's estimated that prices for TSMC's 7 nm or smaller processes will be raised by over 15% this year. These effects will no doubt be expounded by export controls: in addition to import tariffs, advanced chips also require authorisation to be sold to China.

Unless Trump follows through with threats of massive tariffs against Taiwan, however, the main effects on the PC gaming industry will be not on chip fabs but on the likes of manufacturers such as MSI and ASRock—any component or peripheral manufacturers that have some or all of their process based in China.

We already saw signs of this late last year, when PC Partner decided to relocate its headquarters from China to Singapore (via Tom's Hardware). This company is the second-largest graphics card manufacturer, making PCBs for brands such as Inno3D and Zotac.

Some might not realise just how reliant on Chinese manufacturing a lot of the component and PC market actually is. To give just one example, Corsair, an American company, has some of its PSUs made by Seasonic, and while Seasonic's offices are based in Taiwan, its factory is located in mainland China.

Ultimately, this will probably mean that a lot of manufacturers have to raise prices or move manufacturing out of China as ASRock is planning on doing. And I suppose Trump could consider companies upping and leaving China a long-term political and economic victory, but any price hikes will ultimately hit American customers.

None of this is to mention other potential practical or administrative knock-ons. The United States Postal Service (USPS), for instance, recently announced that it was suspending millions of daily packages from China, although these have now resumed.

As with most things economic, little is certain. But with ASRock now seeming to plan on shifting its manufacturing away from China and talking about price increases, we're seeing some real effects of the tariffs in the PC gaming hardware industry. And these are just 10% tariffs, much lower than many expected. Who knows what 100% tariffs against Taiwan would cause?

If there's one internal PC component that has caused me repeated physical pain over my many years of DIY builds, it's the traditional GPU retainer clip. It's fiddly to get to with a beefy modern graphics card, and seems designed to produce sore fingertips and many curse words if used on the regular.

The solution to my issue is a quick-latch system that makes this fiddly work easier. Though as X user @9950pro highlights, a post on Bilibili says a latch design used on Asus Intel 800-series and AMD 800-series boards may risk damaging a GPU under repeated usage.

As demonstrated above, the quick-release system in question requires you to pull the far left of the card up first (the output socket side) which causes the card's body to push down on the retainer clip.

There's a slight bit of rotation of the pins in the socket as the card goes in and out, along with a fair bit of resistance against the contacts, which seems like it could potentially cause wear.

Our Nick has been using this exact release system on two Asus motherboards, and in his opinion, repeated usage could grind the contacts over time.

The mobo demonstrated above is the Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming Wifi, and while Nick has his reservations about the mechanism, he hasn't experienced any undue wear as of yet.

In a screenshot posted later in the Bilibili thread, a user appears to have been speaking with an Asus representative regarding further contact over the issue. I've reached out to Asus for comment, and will update this story with any further information I receive.

It's worth noting that Asus uses multiple mechanisms with its Q-release motherboards, including this one demonstrated below, which releases the GPU in a more conventional manner.

Yes, this particular PC is very dusty. Our Jacob has since informed me he has taken an air blower to the internals, so rest assured it's in much better shape now.

Anyway, all PCIe slots put some degree of resistance on the contact pins when a GPU is inserted and removed, but we swap graphics cards out of conventional slots all the time without undue wear. If this particular mechanism is causing contact pins to be chewed faster than others, it seems like some tweaks might be required to prevent damaging users cards.

It's difficult to get an exact figure on exactly how many mating cycles a modern PCIe slot is rated for. Regardless, it's thought to be relatively low, although that's the slot itself and not necessarily the pins on the GPU. And the amount of cycles a part is rated to and the amount that may cause this sort of wear could be quite different.

If you're not the sort of person that pulls GPUs in and out of a system constantly, however, and you use an Asus motherboard with this particular release mechanism, I doubt there's much to worry about. Most users will only swap cards out every few years or so, and it seems unlikely that this particular release system would do much damage with occasional use.

Still, excessive grinding and GPU pins? It's the sort of thing that makes my teeth feel funny just thinking about it.

To answer that question we first need an understanding of what the fundamental differences between the two chipsets are, so let's break it down into what each one is capable of supporting.

Even just a cursory glance at this table shows that the B860 is a far less capable chipset compared to the Z890 but it's not really any different to how it was with previous generations. Considering that AMD allows CPU overclocking with its B850 chipset (and yes, the names are all far too similar), the fact that Intel is still sticking with memory-only overclocking with the B860 is very anachronistic.

While the B860 chipset doesn't support USB4, there's nothing to stop a motherboard vendor from adding such a feature to a mid-range model. However, to do so, four PCIe lanes out of the supported 14 would be required for 40 Gbps, so it's unlikely that you'll see many B860 motherboards sporting USB4, if any.

In the case of the Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi, eight of the 14 PCIe 4.0 lanes are used for two of the M.2 slots (the primary M.2 slot is a CPU PCIe 5.0 connection), which leaves just six lanes for everything else. Four of those are taken up by a lone PCIe x4 slot, at the bottom of the motherboard, so Asus didn't have much scope for adding more.

What this and most other B860 motherboards do have, though, is a Wi-Fi 7 module and having tested several new boards of late (all sporting the aforementioned wireless system), I can honestly say that it's a feature that's well worth having.

You don't even need a Wi-Fi 7 router to take advantage of the better system, either—I use a Wi-Fi 6 router and the wireless signal and transmission speeds are notably better on Wi-Fi 7, compared to older ones.

Some other nice touches are things like the quick-release lever for the graphics card slot—no more digging around trying to unlock the card, just press the plastic bar above the chipset's heatsink and you can easily pull the card out.

The latest BIOS is in 1080p, making it much nicer to read, and the Q-Dashboard option, providing an overview of the motherboard's sockets and slots, is a great way to see what's connected properly at a glance.

It's fair to say that the launch of Arrow Lake, back in October 2023, didn't go to plan for Intel and the performance of the Core Ultra 200S series of processors missed expectations all round. Since then, both Windows 11 and Z890 motherboards have received numerous updates, improving thread scheduling, power profiles, and memory latency.

That makes it a little difficult to fully assess the performance of this Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi because it's been released with all these updates in place, whereas the previous Z890 benchmark figures are all pre-patches.

However, we do have results for the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice and given it retails at $270, it's a useful inclusion in the benchmarks below. At the very least, one will be able to see what the current state of Arrow Lake is like and see how far it has come.

Benchmarks and performance

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K | Cooler: MSI MAG Coreliquid I360 | RAM: 332 GB Lexar Thor OC DDR5-6000 | Storage: 2 TB Corsair MP700 | PSU: Corsair RM850x Shift 850 W | OS: Windows 11 24H2 | Chassis: Open platform | Monitor: Acer XB280HK

The first benchmark I ran was our Factorio test, as I discovered during my initial tests of Intel's Core Ultra 200S processors, that it's a very good indicator of whether the BIOS is decent or not. As it turned out, the one that the TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi shipped with wasn't, so the first thing I did was update to the 0805 BIOS—it's a beta release but it does support all of Intel's latest performance fixes for Arrow Lake.

Well, it wasn't quite the first thing I did. During the installation of Windows 11, I needed to install drivers for the Wi-Fi module. While this can be bypassed if you don't have a LAN connection (press Shift+F10 when you reach the stage where the installation looks for a network, then enter oobe\bypassnro to restart and have the option to set up a local account), I prefer to just jump into an online setup as soon as possible, to get all the relevant updates.

Except I couldn't because there are three Wi-Fi driver sets on the support page for this motherboard (Realtek, MediaTek, and an unbranded driver) and the box/manual doesn't state which module is installed on the board. After trying them all several times, as well as manually installing a whole host of other drivers, I eventually got the MediaTek set to work.

Anyway, you can see that the Cyberpunk 2077, Baldur's Gate 3, and our Factorio test all run at a level that puts the performance of the Asus B860M-Plus roughly halfway between the average state of Z890 motherboards in October 2023 (for the launch of Arrow Lake and marked with an asterisk) and the recently tested Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice.

It's not bad but it's not great, either. In theory, the B860 chipset shouldn't have any impact on the gaming performance of a CPU, because it just handles USB ports, M.2 slots, and the like. So the disparity seen will be down to how Asus has designed the rest of the motherboard and how it has configured the BIOS.

If productivity and content creation are more important to you than gaming, then it's good news on that front. For our standard CPU benchmarks of Cinebench 2024, Blender 4.2, and 7zip, the Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi performs far more like the Gigabyte Z890—the differences you can see are within margins of test variance.

Where things start to go awry for the Asus B860M-Plus is heat. The motherboard doesn't have any thermal sensor for its VRMs so it wasn't possible to accurately measure how hot they get during a heavy CPU workout. I did use the tip of my finger to judge how toasty the heatsinks were but one can hardly add 'Hmm, that's a bit hot' to a graph.

And then there's the primary SSD heatsink. It's a slim piece of lightweight metal, with a fairly insubstantial thermal pad underneath, so I didn't expect it to manage a PCIe 5.0 SSD when being worked hard. Suffice it to say, my lack of expectation was fully met as the drive repeatedly bounced off its thermal limit, throttling the write performance.

Given that one of the motherboard's key selling points is a Gen5 SSD slot, the fact that it doesn't really cope with one is rather disappointing, though to be fair to Asus, relatively few affordable motherboards do cope.

At least the chipset itself ran cool at all times, and I even experimented with loading it up with another SSD and various USB devices to try and stress the little chip as much as possible. At no point did its temperature ever exceed 40 °C and a quick finger test of the heatsink showed that this wasn't a reading error.

Conclusion

Taking all of the above into consideration, it's hard to recommend the Asus TUF Gaming B860M-Plus WiFi motherboard. It's not a bad product and at $210, it's notably cheaper than many other Arrow Lake boards. However, if you're willing to spend a little more, then there are better microATX options to choose from.

For example, Asus' own Prime Z890M-Plus WiFi sports four PCIe slots and six SATA ports, and it's just $27 more expensive. The ASRock Z780M only has a WiFi 6E module and a single PCIe slot, but alongside the eight rear USB ports, there are two full-speed Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports.

It is $260, though, but for $20 less, you could get the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite Ice, with ten USB ports on the rear IO panel and one of those is USB4.

And that's just if you must have a microATX motherboard. If your PC case has room for a full-size board, then you're going to be far better off with one of those, Z890 or B860, as there will be more room for PCIe slots and other features.

Other than its relatively low price, the TUF Gaming B860M-Plus doesn't have much else going for it and in today's motherboard market, just being cheap isn't enough.

In case you're not familiar with the new chipset, it's worth noting that the primary difference between AMD's Xx70 and Bx50 is the number of connectivity options, such as USB and M.2 ports, but it's a little more nuanced than that. For example, X870 motherboards all come with at least one USB4 port but such a feature is entirely optional for B850 boards.

What you're getting here though is pretty much all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a last-gen X670 motherboard. The ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi sports four M.2 slots for SSDs (the primary one is Gen5, while the other three are all full-speed Gen4), which makes a change from seeing multiple M.2 slots running at all kinds of different speeds.

The good news continues with the USB options. You're not getting USB4 but at least you have one 20 Gbps Type-C, one 10 Gbps Type-C, two 10 Gbps Type-A, four 5 Gbps Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports on the rear IO panel. Those twelve USB ports are joined by another four headers on the board (1x 10 Gbps, 1x 5 Gbps, 2x USB 2.0) for a total of 16 USB ports.

However, the payback for all these storage and connectivity options is a dearth of SATA ports and PCIe slots. You get two apiece and that's it. That's probably going to be fine for most PC gamers building a new AM5 rig, and at least both PCIe slots are electrically x16 (one being Gen5 and the other Gen4), but just two SATA ports seems a tad measly.

If you do need more SATA options, then this isn't the motherboard for you but I strongly suspect that most B850 models will be similarly equipped.

The ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi motherboard supports all AM5 Ryzen processors and thanks to its 20 power stages (80 A each, with 16 for the CPU), it should have no problem dealing with a 170 W Ryzen 9 9950X or the like.

In terms of RAM, you can load it with up to 192 GB of DDR5, though the more you pile in, the less likely it will run at higher speeds. As with all AM5 processors, DDR5-6000 is the best balance between stability and performance, so you're going to be better off just using two DIMMs and no more.

Asus, MSI, and others have taken the opportunity, with the launch of new CPUs and motherboard chipsets, to do something about the overall ease of use of their products. In this instance, there's not much on offer, though—just Asus' Q-Release mechanisms for the primary PCIe and M.2 slots.

The former works by holding a graphics card firmly in place until you pull it out at an angle, which pushes the mechanism back. I'd much prefer to see the implementation used on other Asus models, where you pull a spring-loaded lever on the side of the board to release the graphics card. At least the one on the M.2 slot is very simple to use and it's genuinely worthy of the Q-Release name.

But that's where QoL (quality of life) features start and end on the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi. For example, there are no chassis fan headers in the middle of the board—all three are located at the very bottom. There is no display for BIOS codes, just four tiny LEDs that indicate the status of the CPU, RAM, GPU, and boot status.

There's a tiny, almost hidden power button (but no restart) on the board but it is tucked away right at the top, making it very inaccessible once installed in a case, with cooling and wires all fitted. While such features aren't hugely useful to everyone, I expect to see better ones on a motherboard with a $300 price tag.

You do get a BIOS reset and flashback switch on the rear IO panel but they're both very small and fiddly to use. It would add mere cents to change them into more substantial buttons.

Then again, this is a motherboard that's designed to be installed once and only gradually worked on with component upgrades over time, and I should imagine most PC enthusiasts will just be more interested in the substantial heatsinks covering the VRMs and primary M.2 slot, or the fact that it sports a built-in Wi-Fi 7 module.

Benchmarks and performance

As we've only recently updated our motherboard benchmark suite, we don't have a wealth of other models to compare the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi to. Since the first Zen 5 processors came to market, AMD has been gradually improving the performance of its Ryzen 9000-series chips with Windows and BIOS updates.

This means that some of the performance results aren't fully comparable as the underlying performance environments aren't 100% identical. However, at the very least, one can look at the figures and judge how well the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi performs compared to an Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero and MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk on the basis of how they were in October 2024.

At the very least, the Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro included in the figures is as up-to-date as possible and both it and the MSI board are similar in price to the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming.

That said, I have retested the ROG Crosshair with its latest BIOS version and Windows 11 24H2, and while there is no difference in the average frame rates since the last time I benchmarked the motherboard, the 1% low figures are lower by around 5 to 7%. On the plus side, in Windows 11 24H2, the Factorio benchmark is now 13% quicker, as is the compression result for the 7zip test.

While it's best not to read too much into these figures, mostly because of the impact of Windows 24H2, the Asus B850-F is clearly just as good as the others and in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, better than the $640 Crosshair X670E Hero. It's worth noting, though, that the results for that board and the MSI Tomahawk were collected with an 'all-high' power profile enabled.

AMD recommends that you use Balanced in Control Panel and then Balanced or Best Performance in Windows Settings, but I have consistently found that the Ryzen 9 9900X and 9950X perform better in games if one uses the High Performance setting in Control Panel.

If all you want is a motherboard for PC gaming and nothing else, the little Asus seems to be the one to go for. That said, we're only talking about a few frames per second here and there, and at $300, you'd certainly want a bit more than just gaming chops.

When it comes to CPU-heavy tasks, such as offline rendering and file compression/decompression, the ROG Strix B850-F is as good as the two X870 boards and it easily outpaces the X670E model in the 7zip test.

That's to be expected, of course, because while the B850 chipset doesn't really offer any real benefits over the previous generation, in terms of performance tweaks, the newer motherboards do support higher RAM speeds. That suggests the manufacturers have improved the underlying memory structures, increasing stability and reducing latencies.

However, while relative performance is on par with the Gigabyte and MSI boards, the Asus B850-F falls behind in another aspect.

Even though the ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi has hefty metal heatsinks covering the power stages and the primary M.2 slot, they're clearly not as good as those on the Gigabyte and MSI models. I suspect it's down to the thermal pads used between the sinks and components because removing the M.2 heatsink after all the tests were done showed that the thermal pad barely made contact with some of the Corsair MP700 chips.

That would be acceptable on a $120 budget motherboard but on something that's $300? Not in the least bit and it makes a bit of mockery of the fact that the ROG Strix B850-F sports two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots. If the main SSD cooling system isn't up to dealing with a Gen5 drive, then the other one certainly isn't.

It also brings the board's gaming performance into question because many PC gamers will want to overclock their CPU, use ultra-fast RAM, or install a Gen5 SSD. If the board isn't truly capable of managing the thermal load, is it worth buying it just for the sake of a few more frames per second?

Conclusion

On the basis of those last thermal performance figures, you can probably guess where the conclusion to this review is heading. But just to make the point extra clear, here's how the Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi compares to the Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro and MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi in terms of price and features.

Other than the weak thermal solutions, the Asus B850-F is a really good motherboard. However, its feature set doesn't justify the price, especially when one can get more USB and SATA ports, and more PCIe slots, for the same kind of money.

If Asus had set the price to, say, $240 then it would be a far more tempting proposition.

The Asus ROG Strix B850-F Gaming WiFi is a good motherboard but it's let down by some odd decisions concerning component choice, layout, and thermals. It's also let down by the price and if you are looking to spend $300 on a new AM5 motherboard, Gigabyte and MSI have better options.

The Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro retails for just $350—still not cheap, but then the X870E option with AMD’s new 800-series chipsets is the flagship choice.

This gets you Wi-Fi 7, full PCIe 5.0 support across both graphics and some of the M.2 storage ports, USB 4 Type-C ports and the latest features too that are designed to make the building process as hassle-free as possible as well as dealing with hot-running PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The latter are what ultimately make the difference here given the older X670E chipset offers the majority if not all of the same features under the hood in terms of ports and bandwidth.

At this price you’re also paying for premium looks too and Gigabyte has delivered with a chunky set of dark, moody heatsinks for the M.2 ports and VRMs as well as a dash of built-in RGB lighting above the I/O panel and chipset heatsink. While it’s not exactly cheap, the board looks and feels every bit like something costing $100 more.

If you hate dealing with tiny M.2 screws or graphics cards stuck in their slots then you’ll love the tool-free features on offer with the X870E Aorus Pro. They’re similar to other manufacturers, but easily as good as anything from Asus or MSI. The EZ-Latch feature applies to both the M.2 SSD, heatsink and PCIe slot for your graphics card, with the former two benefitting from small latches that pop open with a finger press for easy removal and installation. To remove your graphics card there’s a push-button next to the memory slots.

Even the Wi-Fi antenna gets the EZ treatment with a combined connector that plugs into the I/O panel port so there’s no fiddly nuts or screws to deal with here either. All of the four M.2 ports cool SSDs on both sides and three of them support PCIe 5.0 SSDs although the lower two PCIe 5.0 slots will steal bandwidth from your graphics card so it’s best to avoid those.

The rest of the PCB has nearly everything you could want, even for a high-end system. There are eight fan headers, a couple of 2-pin thermal probe headers if you’re really going to town with your cooling and you even get a POST LED display and power and reset buttons. It also has impressively large VRM heatsinks to cool the 16+2+2-phase power delivery.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | RAM: 32 GB Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR5-6000 | Storage: 2 TB Corsair MP700 | PSU: MSI MAG AB50GL 850 W | OS: Windows 11 24H2 | Chassis: Open platform | Monitor: Dell U2415

Apart from the funky Wi-Fi connector, the rear I/O panel is a standard-looking affair that doesn’t go all-out on USB Type-C like other boards have. Instead, you get two USB 4 Type-C ports and a total of nine USB Type-A ports comprising three USB 3.1, four USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0, so a good balance of ports and future-proofing without going too overboard and bumping up the price needlessly.

Also on the I/O panel is a Q-Flash Button, otherwise known as BIOS Flashback, a 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet port and audio connectors for the Realtek ALC1220 codec.

Gigabyte’s BIOS and software are pretty good too, with the former offering a snazzy front page that makes it easy to get to the basic options such as memory EXPO/XMP and quick links to fan control and BIOS updating. The software is definitely useful for controlling your fans from within Windows and its drover update utility also worked well so should be handy for beginners and did spot one or two things Windows Update missed.

If this was 2026 and AMD’s Socket AM5 maybe only had another 12 months left, we’d suggest not spending this much on a motherboard that’s likely got no upgrade path if you bought whatever Ryzen CPUs were around at that time too. However, the Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro will enjoy a decent lifespan with AMD previously promising to support the socket through to at least 2027.

Spending a little more for cutting edge features that will see you through your next CPU upgrade as well is definitely a strong argument.

The board has plenty to offer aside from future CPU support, though, as it has good VRM and M.2 cooling, looks fabulous and is super-easy to work with thanks to a bunch of tool-free features. It has limited RGB lighting as standard and only two of the four M.2 ports are usable thanks to lane stealing, but other than that, it’s a very solid X870E board for the cash that’s particularly user-friendly.

But from the start the constant updates do make testing difficult.

BIOS updates, driver updates, Windows updates – they’ve all been coming thick and fast for Z890 motherboards in the hope of improving performance. Today we’ll be seeing if the latest tweaks for the platform and specifically the Gigabyte Z890 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice make it worth considering, even when directly compared with its X870 counterpart that costs a touch more.

Of course, with Intel, it’s only releasing cheaper options of LGA1851 motherboards this month, whereas AMD had to content with older 600-series chipsets on its platform. Like AMD’s 800-series, the focus is on Wi-Fi 7, PCIe Gen 5 support, tool-free features and high-speed USB Type-C ports and being Intel, that means Thunderbolt 4.

While this particular board’s party piece is its glorious white colour scheme that even extends to the PCIe and memory slots, as well as small details on the PCB such as the POST code display and RGB headers. Really nice touches, Gigabyte.

Considering this board leaves you with plenty of change from $300, aesthetics and features-wise it doesn’t seem to be a bad deal at all. It looks beautiful thanks to Gigabyte’s attention to detail with the white theme, although it’s a shame there’s not a touch more RGB lighting to really make it pop.

As it stands, there are only two small illuminated areas above the I/O panel and below the chipset heatsink, although it has 3-pin and 4-pin RGB headers to add your own accessories too. Spending over $300 will likely get you a few more fan headers, but the six included here are ample for the majority of PC owners.

Despite having been released recently and carrying Intel’s flagship chipset, the board only has one PCIe 5.0 M.2 port, while its AMD equivalent has three. However, only one of those won’t steal lanes from your graphics card, so it’s somewhat of a moot point. Both boards have four SATA ports, which are a dying breed as many similarly priced AMD B850 boards have cut these to just two.

Gigabyte’s tool-free features are everywhere, from the push-button graphics card release of PCIe EZ-Latch Plus to its equivalent on the M.2 ports, heatsinks and even a quick-connecting Wi-Fi antenna all cutting the time it takes to jump into your favourite game.

Features such as a POST code display and power and reset buttons are usually reserved for pricier boards but Gigabyte has managed to include them.

The I/O panel has a decent nine Type-A USB ports too, although there’s only one Type-C Thunderbolt 4 port, while most USB4-equipped AMD boards have two of those for a little extra flexibility. Thunderbolt 4 hubs exists if you want to expand this, but they’re usually expensive.

Gigabyte’s EFI is also included in the white theme, so the company deserves plenty of credit for going to these lengths. It’s not quite as modern as Asus or MSI’s recent updated efforts, but it’s still easy to find your way around and get at useful settings such as the XMP memory profile, boot order or fan control, with the latter having an excellent suite in the EFI as well as in Windows using Gigabyte’s free software.

You’ll have to take our performance comparisons as you find them as there have been so many performance fixes updates for Intel’s Core Ultra CPUs over the last few weeks that making direct comparisons with boards tested back at launch is rather tricky.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: Intel Core Ultra 9 285K | Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | RAM: 32 GB Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR5-6000 | Storage: 2 TB Corsair MP700 | PSU: MSI MAG AB50GL 850 W | OS: Windows 11 24H2 | Chassis: Open platform | Monitor: Dell U2415

Temperatures don’t change that much, though and for a Z890 board dealing with our Core Ultra 9 285K, it managed to knock a couple of degrees of the temperature we saw with the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Hero and MSI MEG Z890 Ace at a peak of 50°C. Its peak PCIe 5.0 SSD temperature was a fair bit warmer than the Asus board, but at 72°C just comfortably away from the danger zone unlike the 77°C recorded by the MSI MEG Z890 Ace.

Performance seems to have improved compared to our earlier Z890 reviews, but this isn’t down to Gigabyte, rather than the plethora of fixes from Intel and Microsoft. Gaming performance was higher overall, sometimes by large amounts and it also saw smaller uplifts in Cinebench, Blender and 7-zip, each time taking the performance crown.

The combination if BIOS updates, Windows 11 24H2 and the latest Windows updates all contribute here and there are more fixes to come. Power consumption was largely in line with other Z890 boards we’ve tested, though, with a 91 W CPU package power reading in our game test and peak of 239 W in Cinebench sitting within 10 W of other boards.

If Intel’s Core Ultra 200 series had knocked it out the park, or even offered decent gains over its predecessor across the board as well as giving AMD something to think about, this review would have gone very differently. As it stands, though, it’s tricky to recommend anything Z890-related due to our initial findings, but the benchmarks here do suggest the situation for Arrow Lake has improved and sometimes significantly.

The trouble is, if your building a gaming PC, there’s only one CPU you should be pairing a $300 motherboard with and that’s AMD’s Ryzen 7 9800X3D. In fact, it’s so good that it’s outsold all of AMD’s other Ryzen 9000 CPUs combined. However, you’re probably here because you want to buy a Z890 board for some reason and not anything from AMD.

Gigabyte has taken the white theme to the extreme, it has better port options in some areas than some AMD B850 boards we’ve seen and Gigabyte has shoehorned in way more features that we expected given there’s actually change from $300. Its AMD equivalent does offer a couple of extra bits for about the same price, but if three hundred bucks is your limit and you want a white Z890 motherboard, this is easily the best option out there.

A quick glance at the latest B850 boards sees quite a few retail for more than the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice, though, and also lack features such as USB4 and also opt for budget audio codecs. A quick glance over the PCB on this board, though, and we’re pleasantly surprised by the features considering there’s a two at the beginning of the price tag.

The X870 chipset is all about making features such as USB4 and PCIe 5.0 for SSDs and graphics cards mainstream, but there seems to be enough budget left over to add plenty of premium options in other areas though.

At nearly $300, it’s still a lot for a motherboard, but the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice would certainly be capable of running a high-end water-cooled PC if you wanted to and not feel dated even through 2027 when AMD has stated Socket AM5 could start to wind down.

Apart from the CPU socket and chipset, the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite WiFi7 Ice has a nearly identical number in the Intel Z890 camp so making comparisons is interesting. You’re definitely getting the better deal with AMD despite a little less RGB lighting, with a few more ports and power delivery phases and the Z890 option lacks 2-pin thermal probe headers included on this board that allow you to hook up coolant probes in water-cooling systems or fine-tune your case’s cooling.

You get more Type-C ports on the I/O panel here too, albeit in USB4 guise rather than Thunderbolt 4, but here two is mostly better than one. There are more PCIe 5.0 M.2 ports as well, but you probably want to stick with the top one as the other two will steal lanes from your graphics card. It’s great to see features such as power and rest ports and a POST code display on a board at this price too as they just make it easier when testing, benchmarking or troubleshooting.

If you’re wondering what the HDMI port is on the PCB, it’s for external screens. You might have seen those included with cases such as the Y70 Touch from Hyte, where you have to wire the screen to a port on the rear of your PC. With this port, you can run the cable inside the case, which is less complicated, although it’s worth noting it only supports up to 1,920 x 1,080 at 30 Hz.

This area has another oddity too. There are no fan headers whatsoever in the middle of the PCB, with six located at the bottom and another two up top. This might make it tricky powering large numbers of rear or roof fans in addition to a CPU cooler without extension cables.

All of Gigabyte’s tool-free features are here with a push-button graphics card release and latch securing the M.2 heatsinks coming under the EZ-Latch Plus banner, EZ-Latch Click offering a screwdriver-less way of installing SSDs and single-piece Wi-Fi connector too. The upper M.2 heatsink is suitably chunky and cools both sides of your SSD with thermal pads, while just the top is cooled on the larger lower heatsink.

Gigabyte’s EFI has also received a coat of white paint too so it really has gone to town with its colour matching. The EFI itself looks pleasant enough and is well laid out, featuring a superb fan control suit too, but it maybe looks a little less modern than MSI or ASUS, both having recently upgraded theirs. Installing motherboard software is usually risky, but Gigabyte’s Control Center actually offers some decent features, especially with fan control that might be worth checking out.

PC Gamer test bench
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X | Cooler: Asus ROG Ryujin III 360 ARGB Extreme | RAM: 32 GB Corsair Vengeance Pro DDR5-6000 | Storage: 2 TB Corsair MP700 | PSU: MSI MAG AB50GL 850 W | OS: Windows 11 24H2 | Chassis: Open platform | Monitor: Dell U2415

Gigabyte seems to have done an excellent job in the cooling department, with the VRM’s not topping 44°C in our stress test and the chipset not rising above 35°C either. The M.2 temperature was exceptionally low for such an affordable board too, with our toasty PCIe 5.0 SSD only reaching 66°C, which was also 6°C cooler than it’s Z890 sibling, while matching the pricier Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro.

Its average CPU temperature in games was surprisingly low too and overall it was a touch slower than other Socket AM5 boards we’ve tested. It wasn’t across the board, though, as Factorio saw better results and Baldur’s Gate 3 was much more in line with other AMD benchmarks with the same test system. Outside of games, performance varied by tiny amounts that aren’t really worth commenting on, except for Blender where it was faster in compressing. Power consumption was typical too and stayed within single digits of other Socket AM5 boards we’ve tested with the same CPU.

Apart from a slight hiccup in its layout with the top and middle of the PCB almost devoid of fan headers, the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi Ice offers a decent amount of features both new and old while leaving you with change from $300. That’s still not a small amount, but with good cooling for SSDs and VRMs, plenty of USB ports and tool-free features helping to speed up your build time, we’d actually go as far as saying it represents good value, which is rare for a motherboard these days.

You might have to make good use of long fan cables or extensions if you plan on using lots of fans at the top of the case and connecting those to the motherboard and beware of its lane-stealing M.2 ports and stick to the top slot.

Other than these minor gripes that are likely to impact a niche few, the Gigabyte X870 Aorus Elite Wi-Fi Ice looks fantastic, offers a decent, balanced set of features and shouldn’t leave anyone wanting, even if you still own it long past Socket AM5’s final days.

In the case of the former, AMD actually announced the B850 chipset back in July 2024, with the launch of the Zen 5 CPU architecture, but it's taken until now for motherboards using it to appear. ASRock, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI are all showing off new models at CES, and I have one in for testing already.

While AMD X870/E motherboards all come with PCIe 5.0 graphics card and primary SSD slots, B850 boards are only required to support PCIe 4.0 for both as standard, though many offer Gen5. It's a similar story regarding USB4—mandatory for X870/E boards, optional for B850.

In some cases, it can be quite confusing. Take Asus, for example, and its ROG Strix B580 motherboards. The B850-E Gaming WiFi has a Gen5 GPU and SSD slot (the rest being Gen4) and a 40 Gbps USB4 port; the B850-F Gaming WiFi has the same Gen5 slots but no USB4 port, just a 'normal' 20 Gbps USB.

And there's the B850-A Gaming WiFi with a Gen5 graphics card slot, but no Gen5 SSD slot or USB4 port. Ah but then there's the B850-I Gaming WiFi that has a Gen5 GPU slot, two Gen5 SSD slots, and no USB4.

To be fair to Asus, it's not the only motherboard vendor that has a large number of very similar but confusingly specified models. But what's making it all worse is the fact that Intel's new mainstream chipset for its Core Ultra 200S processors is called B860.

The similarity between the codenames means that there are certainly going to be cases where someone accidentally orders the wrong motherboard—the best-case scenario just results in a quick return to the retailer, and the worst-case scenario involves someone trying to jam an AMD CPU into an Intel socket or vice versa.

Comparing the two chipsets shows that they are very similar in features, as well as names. Neither offer PCIe 5.0 lanes (just Gen4), nor sport USB4 ports (that's done via a separate chip in the case of B850 motherboards).

Intel's B860 has two more PCIe lanes than AMD's B850 but the latter has integrated WiFi 7, whereas the former uses WiFi 6E (though some B860 boards use a separate WiFi 7 chip).

Down at the bottom end of the chipset scale, you've got AMD's B840 and Intel's H810. The latter is better than the former but unless you're really working with a very tight budget, neither are great options for building a cheap gaming PC. You're better off with last-gen products that can be bought for a much lower price than at launch.

As these new motherboards have only just been launched, there aren't many in stores just yet so you might want to wait a month or two just to what the reviews of them are like. I suspect some of them are going to be quite expensive, though, so you may well be better off getting an X870 or Z890 board if you get more features for the same money. We'll let you know once we have more info.

It's been a busy year for motherboard vendors, thanks to new AM5 socket chipsets from AMD and a completely new platform (LGA1851 and Z890) from Intel. In many cases, manufacturers just took a previous design and tweaked it for 2024, but some took the opportunity to improve all kinds of different aspects such as the BIOS interface, and PCIe and M.2 slot latches.

With Intel's Core Ultra 200S series of processors being rather underwhelming in terms of gaming chops, last-gen Raptor Lake chips are still very popular but what motherboard to pick? Well, the ASRock B760I Lighting should be seriously considered, despite its diminutive size. It'll handle any 14th Gen Core processor and highly overclocked RAM. It's a bit short on rear IO ports, though.

For AMD enthusiasts, you could choose a last-gen chipset or something with the latest X870. For the former, the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi is an exceptional motherboard, jammed with USB ports and Gen5 slots for graphics cards and SSDs. The price tag is steep though and that's where the newer MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi come in.

It's a good deal cheaper than the Asus board and sports more USB ports than you could ever possibly want. There are plenty of M.2 slots too, though the available configurations are complicated, to say the least.

Out of everything we've tested this year, these models are the ones we've nominated for gaming motherboards of 2024. Now you just have to wait until New Year's Eve to see which one is the winner!

Best gaming motherboard 2024: the nominees

The winner of the PC Gamer Hardware Award for the best gaming motherboard on New Year's Eve. Three different boards but only one can be a winner.

Forget about the innuendo-inducing name for the moment, all the app does is switch X3D Turbo Mode on and off, according to the press announcement. It's not a standalone tool, as it's simply a small add-on for GCC (Gigabyte Control Center). You won't be able to toggle it on the fly, as you need to do a system reboot for the changes to take effect, but it's far better than having to delve into the motherboard's BIOS.

If you're wondering what X3D Turbo Mode actually does, it's two things, according to Igor's Lab: disable the secondary CCD (Core Complex Die) on Ryzen 9 chips and disable SMT (simultaneous multithreading).

In other words, turn a 16-core, 32-thread Ryzen 9 9950X into an 8-core, 8-thread processor. Why would one wish to do this? Well, according to AMD, all of its dual-CCD CPUs run games better when all those programs' threads are handled by the main CCD.

This is definitely the case for the last-gen Ryzen 9 7950X3D and Ryzen 9 7900X3D because the performance-boosting 3D V-Cache is only on the primary CCD. With the latest Zen 5 dual-CCD models, it shouldn't really be required, but AMD insists that it is. However, my own testing of the Ryzen 9 9950X and 9900X has them running games better when the chip is allowed to use both CCDs; that's also been the case for disabling SMT.

It's generally expected that AMD will announce X3D versions of those processors at CES 2025 in January, but whether X3D Turbo Mode will make much, if any, difference with those chips is uncertain. We'll be sure to check it out when we get the chance.

In the meantime, let's just sit back and ponder exactly what went through Gigabyte's marketing team when, after a presumably lengthy brainstorming session, it settled on the name Aorus AI Snatch. The middle word I understand, as everything has to be AI now, whether it is AI or not.

But snatch? Err, I won't explain the euphemistic use of the term (hint: it's a tad rude) but the typical definition is to 'steal something by grabbing it' or 'obtaining something quickly when an opportunity arises.' There's absolutely nothing snatchy about firing up a bit of software, going to a specific optional area, and then clicking a button.

And if you're going to try and be all edgy and whatnot with an app's name, then at least have somebody spell-check the thing. 'Post resart' anyone?

Mind you, the marketing team's efforts have certainly got one thing right and it's that people are going to sit up and pay attention to something called an Aorus AI Snatch. Heaven only knows what other suggestions were possibly considered: The Aorus AI Wang Wizard? The Aorus AI Clunge Control? I shudder to think. Let's just hope that Gigabyte sticks to giving things a proper tech term in the future, thank you very much

The new Arrow Lake CPUs only fit into an LGA1851 socket, so you can't fit one in a previous-generation motherboard. At the moment, there's only one chipset available (Z890) and most board vendors have focused on creating ATX-sized models that are quite expensive. Then again, if one is going to spend over $500 on a Core Ultra 9 285K, you're probably best off getting a suitably capable motherboard to ensure the setup lasts you as long as possible.

The ROG Maximus Z890 Hero isn't at the very top of Asus' Intel motherboard range but it's not far off, as it sports as comprehensive a set of features as one could possibly ask for. Naturally, that means the price tag is equally as big, but that's par course for high-end motherboards these days.

Pretty much everything about the ROG Maximus Z890 Hero is big—opening the enormous packaging reveals a motherboard that weighs in at an astonishing 3.6 kg (8 lbs). From the huge primary M.2 slot heatsink to the massive polychromic display, nothing about it is subtle even though it doesn't sport in-your-face graphics.

Just read through the specifications to see what I mean. Few motherboards come with six M.2 slots and fewer still have two Gen 5 slots and four Gen 4 ones. If that's not enough storage for you, then there are a further four SATA ports and a SlimSAS connection, for additional NVMe or SATA drives. How about 11 USB ports on the rear IO panel and a further 10 via headers?

If overclocking is more your thing, then you're not going to be disappointed. Power is handled by a total of 27 stages (22 of which are rated to 110 amps), covered by some of the chunkiest heatsinks I've seen for a very long time. I'm a little surprised that Asus didn't choose to use active cooling for the VRMs but given Arrow Lake's reduced power consumption compared to Raptor Lake, it's perhaps not necessary.

The engineers at Asus have worked hard at making the motherboard more user-friendly ('EZ DIY', as Asus calls it) and it's replete with lots of so-called 'Q' features—M.2 Q-Release, M.2 Q-Slide, M.2 Q-Latch, PCIe Slot Q-Release Slim, Q-Antennae, and so on. Fortunately, it's not just marketing nonsense, as the features genuinely make it really easy and simple to install and remove graphics cards, SSDs, and the Wi-Fi aerial.

I do wish Asus would refresh its BIOS layout and structure, though. It's packed full of options as always and now defaults to a 1080p resolution (so it looks crisp and clear) but it's somewhat overwhelming at times. The jump in complexity between Easy and Advanced modes can't be very welcoming for beginners, that's for sure. Still, at least the Q-Dashboard is a nice touch, displaying an overview of your motherboard's parts and connectors.

Performance testing motherboards is a somewhat tricky affair, mostly because there's usually very little difference between various models in most tests. It's only when one uses highly specific synthetic benchmarks that small differences begin to make an appearance, and these rarely translate into a noticeable discrepancy in real-world situations.

This is especially true in the case of Z890 motherboards because they're all brand new in the market, so there isn't a wealth of results to compare against. Hence why there are only two other boards in the results below: an MSI MEG Z890 Ace and an MSI MAG Z890 Tomahawk.

For the most part, you can see there's little to separate them, especially in gaming. However, the Factorio test really stands out, as the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Hero achieves a 21% faster result than either of the MSI boards. I've spent some time discussing this with both companies without much success in understanding the result.

The only thing I can think that might be behind it is that the Asus motherboard applies a fixed clock speed for the Core Ultra 9 285K's internal ring bus, whereas the MSI boards allow it to vary. Intel tells me that Asus' approach is the correct one.

However, the ROG Maximus Z890 Hero is slower in the 7zip tests and not by a margin of error, achieving a 14% lower result in the decompression benchmark. Games store all data in a compressed format and decompress it on the fly when required so the 7zip figure suggests that one might notice a decrease in gaming performance when using the Asus motherboard. But as you can see in the gaming results, it doesn't affect those particular games.

Tracking the CPU package power, VRM and chipset temperatures during the main benchmarks will highlight any deficiencies in a motherboard's power delivery and cooling systems and while there are some disparities between the three motherboards, they're not significant. The ROG Maximus Z890 Hero's heatsinks do an excellent job of keeping everything cool but given that the MSI board's do likewise, I do wonder if their vast size was really necessary.

But I have no such concerns over the heatsink for the primary M.2 slot. It's a monstrous slab of metal and as you can see, it does a superb job of keeping a PCIe 5.0 SSD's temperature under control.

At no point did it ever exceed 70 °C and this is the only motherboard I ever tested that's managed to do this with a Gen5 SSD. The fact that it's so easy to remove and reattach is the proverbial cherry on top.

There's an awful lot to like about the Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Hero. Despite its sheer mass, hulking heatsinks, and pretty polychromic display, it's a relatively understated design that should suit most PC enthusiasts.

Underneath all the metal is a motherboard that's loaded to the hilt with ports, slots, and sockets. If you want to build a new gaming PC with an Intel Core Ultra 200S processor, you're not going to be left wishing for anything.

Well, apart from its price, that is. At a few bucks over $690, it is very expensive—and while there are even pricier Z890 motherboards on the market, that price tag is enough to make anyone look twice before buying.

The Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Hero is an excellent motherboard, of that there's no doubt, and should easily last you through many years of use. Whether that's enough to justify spending that kind of money, especially when more LGA1851 motherboards will come out in 2025, is far less certain.

"Wow", I thought to myself as I glared at the sharp edges that replace the fuzzy 768p interface of decades gone, "they finally did it."

I then set about hurriedly finding out when this change happened. Turns out, Asus announced it back in August, alongside a few other key changes to the BIOS page.

The change rolled out with X870 and X870E chipset motherboards for AMD's Ryzen 9000-series.

"We're bumping up the resolution of our BIOS interface to 1920×1080. With this change, you’ll be able to see more content at a glance, making it easier to survey the available settings and find the ones that you need," Asus says.

It's not just a visual change, either. A higher resolution means more room for settings on a single page, which means less scrolling and navigating through menus. It also means my mouse doesn't behave quite as erratically within the BIOS, as high DPI mice become nigh uncontrollable with low resolutions.

I've been relying on Asus and MSI motherboards over the past few years for most of my processor testing and personal builds, and neither has offered a greater resolution for the BIOS. That's why this feels a dramatic change for me.

However, I've since discovered that ASRock motherboards have been living in the future for some time now. Those boards already offer a higher resolution BIOS screen, and owners of ASRock motherboards are probably wondering why I'm bringing this up as some newfangled invention in 2024. You don't know how good you've had it all this time.

Unfortunately, I can't find any evidence of MSI offering a similar improvement—the company's boards now stand out like a sore thumb. Even the more modern Z890 motherboards my colleague Nick has in testing today lack any sort of resolution bump.

This also doesn't appear a retroactive update to older motherboards. We've updated a handful of older Asus motherboards to the latest BIOS files available and no luck, which all suggests there's a little more to it than you'd think.

But, hey, at least we're seeing some tangible improvements to the BIOS in 2024 from Asus, and well done to ASRock for being three steps ahead of everyone else.

News of ASRock's bold move was reported by Tom's Hardware, though I've noticed that the latest AMD and Intel motherboards are all sporting more Type-C ports on the rear panel. For example, MSI's X870 Tomahawk Wi-Fi has three and two of those are USB4 capable. That seems like a fair number to me but ASRock clearly thinks otherwise.

As part of its range of motherboards for Intel's Core Ultra 200S series of processors, the Z790 Taichi Aqua is very much a niche motherboard. That's because there isn't a single USB Type-A socket on the back; it's 100% Type-C and oh boy, does it look weird.

I don't mean that in a critical sense, more just that's such an unusual sight. The Type-C USB connector was first introduced back in 2014 (yes, that's right—ten years ago) but the desktop PC world has been very slow at adopting the format. I bought an ASRock Z790 Nova motherboard earlier this year and it has just one Type-C port on its rear IO panel.

Some of the high-end Intel motherboards I'm currently testing are a little more generous, though none of them have more than three Type-C sockets.

The thing is, as great as it is to see the little universal port making a proper appearance on desktop PCs, I think binning Type-A ports altogether is a mistake. If you have a wired gaming keyboard or mouse, then it's almost certainly going to be Type-A. Same with headsets, speakers, webcams, even VR headsets.

Even if you're looking at that ASRock motherboard and going "That's the one for me," you're almost certainly going to need a whole stack of USB port adapters (or just one very large hub) to make full use of the Taichi Aqua's rear panel. And while the motherboard still supports Type-A with its front connectors, the number available is really down to what your PC case actually has.

Now, if all those Type-C ports on the ASRock Z890 Taichi Aqua do float your boat, it's worth noting that they're not equal in terms of USB specification. Two of them are 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 4 ports (not USB4, I hasten to add), while the remaining eight are split equally between 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen2 and 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen1 connections. And yes, the USB nomenclature is a complete mess.

Mind you, what you should definitely do, before rushing out and buying one, is wait and see what the gaming performance of Intel's Core Ultra 200S processors is like. If it's great and you love a lot of Type-C, then ASRock's motherboard should be right up your alley.

Ostensibly, it's a very similar motherboard to MSI's X670E Tomahawk but there are a whole host of improvements, though not because of the new X870 chipset. Think of that as being a 'do-over' of the X670/X670E, rather than bringing any sweeping changes to the fore.

AMD's Ryzen processors have built-in controllers for USB ports and PCIe lanes, so all the chipset does is basically offer more connections. X870E motherboards sport two expansion chips, just like the current X670E models, whereas X870 ones, such as this MSI board, just have one. But, when one looks at all of the ports available, that's going to be more than enough for most PC gamers.

The rear IO panel of the MAG X870 Tomahawk is jam-packed with USB ports, including two 40 Gbps USB4 Type-C, which also double as Thunderbolt 4 sockets. There's another Type-C in there, though only rated to 10 Gbps, but then you've got three more of that speed in Type-A form, plus another three at 5 Gbps and four USB 2.0 sockets. And that doesn't include all the headers on the motherboard for front-mounted USB ports. 

Normally, that level of USB-ness is the preserve of top-end, mega-bucks boards so you may be wondering how MSI has managed it on a $300 offering. The answer lies in the fact that despite having lots of PCIe and M.2 slots, as well as a mountain of USB ports, they're not all full-speed variants.

The three PCIe slots are mechanically x16 in size but only the top is wired like that. It has a PCIe 5.0 connection to the CPU but the other two are slower—a lot slower.

The middle PCIe slot is (electrically) x1 Gen 3 and the bottom slot is x4 Gen 4, though if you use the third M.2 slot, it will drop to x2 Gen 4.

As most PC gamers will just slap a graphics card into the top slot and not use the rest, it's not a massive issue but if you do need to use them for high-speed expansion devices, just be aware you're not going to get much performance from them.

The M.2 slots are similarly messy. The top two are directly wired to the CPU and so are electrically x4 Gen 5. However, the second slot shares PCIe lanes with the USB4 Type-C ports in the rear IO panel, so if anything is connected to either socket, you get x2 Gen 5.

The third and fourth M.2 slots are both Gen 4 but while the latter is x4, the former is only x2. That's far more complicated than it needs to be but that's the price one must pay to have all those USB ports.

What isn't complicated is MSI's new graphics card retention mechanism for the first PCIe slot. Push a small button on the right-hand side of the board to slice the system away from the card and hold it open; press it again to close and lock it.

I know most people only remove their graphics card once in a while but for anyone who does it frequently, it's an absolute marvel. How robust it is over years of abuse is another matter but I'm genuinely impressed by it.

MSI deserves credit for trying to make its new X870 motherboards much easier to use all round—the UEFI/BIOS is now much slicker and user-friendly, headers on the board are all labelled and sensibly placed, and the rigidity of this Tomahawk makes it pleasantly simple to install in a case.

There's another addition that I'm impressed by and it's the additional 8-pin PCIe power socket at the very bottom of the motherboard. The traditional 24-pin power system was designed to provide current on the 12 V lines in an era before ultra-high power GPUs and masses of RGB fans became the norm. In short, it just doesn't provide enough current for the demands of a high-end enthusiast's setup.

The latest PCIe specification demands that the PCIe slot for graphics cards should allow for up to 165 W power excursions—power spikes to you and me—and MSI's new power connector helps meet that requirement, along with ramping up the available current on fan/pump and RGB headers to 11 and 3 A respectively.

If you like to go all-out with your gaming PC accessories, then the extra socket will come in very handy (though if your PSU is top-mounted in the case then you'll need an extension cable to reach it).

Benchmarks and performance

All of this would be for nought if the motherboard didn't perform especially well and for the new round of AMD and Intel boards, we've updated our benchmark package. 

Rather than carry out dozens of tests that all show the same figures, we've honed it down to a variety of scenarios (gaming, light and heavy content creation) and used software to record power consumption and thermals for the CPU, VRMs, and chipset.

As the latest motherboards boast a full-speed Gen5 M.2 slot, we now also test how well the integrated heat spreaders cope with PCIe 5.0 SSDs.

As we've only just swapped to the new suite, we don't have a wealth of figures to compare against but at the very least, you can see that a Ryzen 9 9900X, paired with 32 GB of DDR5-6000 CL32 and an RTX 4070, performs just as well in the MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk as it does in an Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero.

The same is true for when the workload switches to content creation tasks, and the disparities you see between the boards are mostly down to test variance. The exception is the 7zip test—I repeatedly tested both boards, multiple times, to check these results and the X870 Tomahawk was always faster. Not by much, but it's better than nothing.

There's little to separate the two motherboards when it comes to thermals and power consumption, too. The ROG Crosshair X670E Hero runs with a hotter chipset but that's because there are two chips under its heatsink, whereas the X870 Tomahawk just has one.

Given that this is a 120 W Ryzen CPU, it'll cope with any other model just fine. MSI added a 170 W option to its BIOS, which I experimented with briefly—the CPU didn't like it all that much but the board's VRMs did, only adding 10 to 15 more degrees to the peak temperature, with no significant air flowing on them.

As with the performance results, any differences are down to test variances, especially when it comes to heat because it's just not possible to maintain a fixed ambient temperature in my office.

Conclusion

With no surprises with all the test figures, there's only one thing left to cover and that's whether the MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk is worth buying. At $300/$300/AU$548, it's certainly not cheap and if you're looking to save money with a new AM5 build, then you're better off sticking with a B650E model (or waiting until AMD releases an equivalent in the 800 series).

You are getting a very capable motherboard for a lot less money than a high-end X670E, though. The build quality, component layout, and feature set are all top-notch, and there's a wealth of nice touches—the graphics card release mechanism, the quick-install SSD system, and the BIOS to name but a few—to warrant some of the price tag.

The colossal number of USB ports that you can have also goes no small way in justifying the cost and if that aspect of a motherboard is important to you, then it's hard to ignore what the MAG X870 Tomahawk offers compared to other motherboards.

However, what I can't ignore are the PCIe and M.2 slots. In the case of the former, you're only getting one decent one and that'll be snapped up by the graphics card, leaving a x4 Gen 4 and x1 Gen 3 behind. The last one is rather disappointing to see on a $300 motherboard.

And while you do get four M.2 sockets, there are compromises with two of them that affect one of the PCIe slots and the USB4 ports. In part, that's a limitation of the chipset and what Ryzen processor one uses with the motherboard, but it's also because MSI has chosen to load up the X870 Tomahawk with so many USB ports.

So it really comes down to whether storage and PCIe expansion are important factors when making a motherboard choice. If it is, then something like the Gigabyte X670 Aorus Elite AX ($210 on Amazon) is the way to go, with four full-speed M.2 slots (1x Gen 5, 3x Gen 4), though it does have the same PCIe slot arrangement as the X870 Tomahawk.

But if you want as much USB connectivity as possible, all wrapped up in a very classy motherboard, then the MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk should be seriously considered.

That's according to Micro-Star International (aka MSI) who invited me and a raft of other tech journalists to visit its primary manufacturing site in Shenzhen, China. We were given an in-depth tour of the motherboard production lines, along with some smaller lines making AIO and mini PCs, plus some early glimpses of new models coming soon.

The site where everything happens is huge: 200,000 m² in size and hosts four production facilities, including warehouses, test labs, and offices, along with six buildings for living quarters and the like. Yes, that's right, a large portion of MSI's workforce lives on-site but that's not unusual for the industry in China.

It's not just motherboards that are made at MSI Shenzhen, as graphics cards, desktop PCs, servers, and even components for the automotive world are manufactured there. It was first built around 23 years ago and has been steadily modernised to meet the demands of the world of computing.

My first impression of the factory was one of relief—it was uncomfortably hot and humid outside but blessedly cool indoors, even in areas that didn't have active air conditioning. The same was true of the main motherboard production area, though, for our visit, most of the lines weren't operating.

After a morning showcasing new products, MSI walked us through its manufacturing process for motherboards. Much of it is heavily automated, with humans only involved in specific aspects—quality control, testing, repairs, large component mounting, and final boxing. All of the tiny resistors, capacitors, and inductors are fitted by machines.

Once everything was explained, we split up into small groups and then walked into the primary motherboard production facility. My second impression was one of familiarity, as I used to lecture about manufacturing engineering for many years, and I recognised an awful lot of the machines and procedures.

Some of the equipment being used was older-looking than I expected, particularly the robotic arms, but for the most part, it's as modern as one would imagine it to be. If one has an image of manufacturing in China being dirty and unsafe, then it's an entirely wrong picture of how everything is at MSI Shenzhen.

At one point, one of the operators managing the surface component mounting machines was chided by a senior member of staff for allowing a waste roll of parts to fall onto the floor. I should imagine some of that was due to the presence of media but I spent a bit of time just watching various operations take place and it became clear MSI runs a very tight ship.

The slides and images in this article highlight the various stages of making a motherboard but as a general overview, it goes like this:

• A blank PCB is inserted into the production line and then solder paste is applied to the bottom of the board.
• The board then moves into a machine that applies surface components, before it moves off into a long oven. This is used to melt the paste and bond the components to the board.
• It takes a while to run through the heating process but once done, the PCB is passed through an automated optical scanner which checks that all of the parts are correctly mounted. These stages are then repeated for the top-side components.

Certain parts, such as VRM heatsinks and DRAM sockets are added by hand because MSI says there aren't robots good, or fast, enough to do the job. I'm not sure that I necessarily agree with such a statement but some components are probably just too fiddly to be inserted by a machine.

Once the main part of the building phase is done, the quality control testing stage begins and each board is taken off the line for electrical testing. Once passed, it's added back to the line for packaging and final boxing. There are multiple stages where checks are performed, either by machine or by eye, and there's even a dedicated repair stage to fix any little niggles.

It's a relatively quick process, although it does depend on the motherboard model. Top-end versions, replete with all kinds of heatsinks and other surfaces, take longer to build than the basic ones. However, it's pretty much the same number of people involved, probably no more than 15 in total.

MSI is proud of the fact that so much of the production line is automated and as consumers, we certainly benefit from this, as it means there's far less variability in the quality of the motherboards and it helps to keep the cost of them down, too (though they are mightily expensive, these days).

The downside to this is that while MSI Shenzhen was originally designed to employ and be operated by nearly 12,000 people, the factory now only employs around 3,000. It's obviously not the only large-scale manufacturing industry that's gone this way but for a country as populated as China is, it must surely add a lot of pressure on workers and potential employees to retain their jobs or get into MSI in the first place.

Fortunately, from this perspective, there are still many areas where it's humans all the way. The smaller production lines, such as those for mini and all-in-one PCs, were entirely hand-processed, bar machines to just move items along (plus some cute little robots travelling around the shop floor).

The quality control and electric testing of all those PCs is also done by hand and it's somewhat reassuring to know that a genuine person is checking the PC you may end up buying runs properly. Whether that'll be the case in another 20 years is anyone's guess, though.

Although we only got to see a very small section of MSI Shenzhen, the sheer scale of the operation was evident. The inventory and surface component recycling sections were large, busy, and heavily computerised. Wagons were constantly dropping off materials and taking finished products away. Workers en masse stuck rigidly to routines, clocking on and off, taking lunch breaks, and so on.

I as write this, I have two new MSI motherboards on my desk, ready for testing and review. It's funny to think that I could have seen one of them being made in front of my eyes just a few weeks ago. I certainly have a newfound appreciation for the journey it, and millions like it, have gone through to get here.

Now, how can I get back over there and sneak into the graphics card production line to see some nifty new GPUs being put together?

MSI says the boards' new supplemental PCIe Power feature delivers a major boost in overall board and GPU power supply. That could well come in handy, what with expectations of ever greater power draw from upcoming GPUs, particularly Nvidia graphics cards like the rumoured 550 W RTX 5090.

The power boost comes courtesy of an integrated 8-pin PCIe power connector on the motherboard itself. Conceptually, it's a little like the supplemental power connectors that already feed power to the CPU socket.

The PCIe Power feature pairs with support for the new ATX 3.1 standard to enable 2.5x "power excursion" for the PCIe graphics slot. In plain English, that ups power delivery from 66 W to a maximum of 165 W for the primary PEG-16 slot.

Of course, high-end GPUs suck down a lot more juice than that. The balance will come courtesy of the new ATX 3.1 12V-2x6 power connector for graphics cards, which is very similar to, and backwards compatible with the troubled 12VHPWR connector that led to all those melty RTX 4090 GPUs.

Anyway, upping the power supplied to the PCIe slot itself serves to increase overall power budget available to GPUs. But that's not all. The PCIe Power feature actually adds more power than just that PEG-16 slot increase.

Overall it contributes an additional 252W. That combines with the existing 168 W of board power delivered by the 12V rail in the main 24-pin ATX power connector to provide a grand total of 420 W. Note, that's 420 W just for the PCIe slots, RGB and fan headers and all that gubbins. It does not include the CPU, which has its own power circuit.

Indeed, the new MSI boards can deliver a slightly batty 132 W just to the fan headers. So, yeah, cooling shouldn't be a problem, no matter how crazy you go with your CPU and GPU specs. You will, of course, need one heck of a PSU to feed these boards, plus a high-end CPU and GPU.

If you've got a GPU drawing up to 600 W, an Intel CPU sucking 300 W or more, plus 420 W of motherboard power, well, you probably need a PSU rated at about 1,500 W to be on the safe side, which is getting pretty close to the peak wattage of a standard 15A US power socket, which comes in a 1,800 W.

That does rather beg the question of where all this escalating power draw might end. Likewise, as welcome as all these new power connectors are, the whole ATX standard does seem to have fallen miles behind the reality of modern PC components and their power requirements. 

Surely the main 24-pin connector would benefit from an overhaul that would see it capable of handling all power requirements. Along with a major revision to the PCIe power standard, imagine just one power cable for everything rather than this proliferating rat's nest of extra cables and connectors. Surely this is not beyond the wit of man?

Instead, we now have supplementary motherboard connectors for GPUs as well as CPUs, but you'll still have to plug another cable into the graphics card itself. It's all a bit of a kludge.

MSI isn't absolutely explicit regarding which motherboards will get these new ATX 3.1 features. But we believe all X870 and X870E Series motherboards are included, and you can see the full lineup here. Either way, models with supplemental PCIe power will be available on September 26, so you can feed your massively multi-cable fetish in just over a week. Good luck!

X870 and X870E options set to reach the market in the coming weeks, though given their features and specs, they are certainly not going to be cheap.

AMD always indicated it would stagger the release of the new chipsets. Still, it's a bit disappointing to have such a long delay, as B850 boards in particular would no doubt add some additional incentive for mainstream users to upgrade.

Of course, you can use any currently available B650 or B650E motherboard (or A620 board for that matter) with a CPU like the Ryzen 5 9600X or Ryzen 7 9700X, but there's always the potential stumbling block of it not having an updated BIOS with support for the new chips. Not every board features a CPU-less BIOS flashback option.

At a recent media event attended by PC Gamer, AMD revealed the base specifications of B850 motherboards. They don't appear to be a drastic improvement over B650E motherboards, but the inclusion of Gen 5 NVMe SSD support and 20Gbps USB will elevate them over cheaper B650 options. These boards are also likely to feature WiFi 7 and more powerful VRM and cooling solutions—at least on the more premium models.

B840 motherboards look to be less exciting, and may even be a downgrade compared to A620 motherboards. Such boards are unlikely to be released until well into 2025, but AMD's preliminary PCIe Gen 3 spec is not going to appeal to anyone except for those on a very tight budget. That could limit them when used with graphics cards using an x8 or x4 PCIe link, which are just the kinds of cards gamers on a budget are likely to use.

We saw X870 boards shown off at Computex nearly three months ago, so we can expect to see B850 boards teased towards the end of the year, with a full showcase at CES 2025 looking very likely.

Cowcotland reports these connectors are included to handle the demands of next generation Nvidia and AMD graphics cards. That indicates some of these cards are likely to consume serious amounts of power. Assuming such cards are a matter of months away from seeing the light of day, MSI is likely already aware of at least the basic requirements of such cards.

Secondary power connectors are not a new feature. They tend to be found on high-end or overclocking-focused motherboards. Their purpose is to provide extra juice to high-power graphics cards, but seeing them included on more mainstream options is interesting indeed. 

A standard PCIe x16 slot can provide up to 75W of power. If you add another 150W from an 8-pin connector, you're looking at 225W from the motherboard alone. Now if you add up to 600W from a 12V-2x6 or 12VHPWR connector, the math suggests 800W or more is possible.

Of course, that would only apply to flagship tier cards like an RTX 5090, but then its also possible to install a pair of less demanding cards for things like productivity or AI workloads, and that's a scenario where the 8-pin connector is also beneficial. Having a pair of cards pulling 150W from two PCIe slots alone would put a lot of strain on the motherboard, so a bit of backup power makes sense.

Still, it seems like the power consumption and TDPs of flagship graphics card are still rising. A card like the RTX 4090 pulls up to 450W, or higher for overclocked models. I'd put a bet on the fact that Nvidia's next gen monster will not come in lower than that. A 500W+ TDP for a standard RTX 5090 is a definite possibility if history is any indicator.

Other manufacturers are not including 8-pin connectors across their ranges, though enthusiast boards like the Asus Crosshair X870E Hero does include one. Is MSI just being cautious, or will next gen GPUs really need such headroom? It'll be interesting to see if more boards will include the additional connector, particularly when Intel's Z890 boards officially break cover in the weeks ahead.

As you'd expect in this day and age, Asus has incorporated several auto-optimizing 'AI' features including AI Networking II, AI Overclocking and AI Cooling II. They include CPU and DRAM overclocking enhancements with more granular controls along with notably robust VRM designs. Various models also support multiple PCIe 5.0 SSDs.

The flagship option is the ROG Crosshair X870E Hero. It looks like a ROG board for sure, with long list of features. It comes with a very strong 18+2+2 phase VRM with 110A stages, which even a heavily overclocked Ryzen 9 9950X won't challenge. Add to that support for DDR5-8200+, up to three Gen 5 SSDs, dual USB4, USB 20Gbps with 60W PD, WiFi 7, dual LAN and the typical ROG overclocking features and flourishes, and this is sure to be a solid offering. 

Asus hasn't revealed a price as of yet, but expect this one and Asus' other offerings to cost more than their X670 counterparts.

Next up are four ROG Strix offerings including the ROG Strix Z870-I Gaming WiFi. Asus' X670E-I version is our pick for best Mini-ITX motherboard, so unless Asus really dropped the ball, the X870-I is sure to be a contender for the throne.

The ROG Strix X870-F Gaming and X870-A Gaming are sure to be popular offerings. They include most of the goodies of the more expensive Hero.

A little further down the range comes the Asus TUF Gaming X870-Plus WiFi. This one features a unique blocky-looking aesthetic that I personally find quite appealing. It still includes WiFi 7, USB4 and dual Gen 5 SSD support. 

The TUF brand has evolved from its original military theme with a focus on reliability into more of a budget gaming brand. If the Z870-Plus WiFi is priced right, It could be a really competitive mid range offering. 

The ProArt X870E Creator WiFi is aimed at creators. It comes with a 3 month Adobe Creative Cloud subscription which is a decent value add. It's packed with USB ports and it includes 10G LAN alongside 2.5G LAN and WiFi 7. 

I love its black and gold design, though I'd expect this one to cost a pretty penny indeed. Still, it'll be considered cheap when compared to workstation class options.

Finally there's Asus' mainstream Prime family. Both the Prime X870-P WiFi and Prime X870-P appear mostly identical, though the latter's name obviously means it lacks WiFi 7, and indeed it doesn't include WiFi at all, which is a bit odd in this day and age.

Both boards still have decent feature lists, with Gen 5 SSD support and USB4. Interestingly, the X870-P WiFi includes four PCIe expansion slots. Unless my eyes fail me, it's the only Asus X870 board to feature that many.

These are just the first of many X870E and X870 boards to launch. They'll be better suited to the high end models such as the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X. There's nothing stopping you from buying such a board to use with a Ryzen 5 9600X or Ryzen 7 9700X, but they'll be more logically paired with upcoming B850 motherboards.

We don't have any word on pricing, but Asus not known for its aggressive pricing. With the electrical complexities inherent to boards with PCIe 5.0 GPU and SSD support, faster RAM support and stronger VRM solutions, I'm expecting X870 boards from all manufacturers to be expensive.

Of course, the big question is exactly how much gold there is in your old motherboards, toaster circuits and TVs. The Royal Mint reckons it can salvage 450kg from 4,000 tons of e-waste.

At current prices, that works out very roughly to a value of $35 million. So, you can see why the Royal Mint is giving it a go. 

It also translates into roughly one part per 8,000 of gold in e-waste. Which is quite a lot when you think about it. It's certainly a lot of gold to chuck out when you consider the huge amounts of e-waste produced globally every year.

Most estimates put that at around 50 million tons. The Royal Mint no doubt specifically selects e-waste with relatively high gold content. So, that 50 million tons annually very likely doesn't imply 6,250 tons of gold in e-waste as per the Royal Mint's recovery rate. Global annual gold production is only half of that figure.

But it still makes you think how much gold is just being sent to landfills or sitting around in junk yards.

Of course, recovering the gold isn't straightforward. Traditionally, extracting gold from e-waste has represented a dubious environmental trade-off. But the Royal Mint claims to have largely squared that particular circle. 

"Traditional gold recovery processes are very energy intensive and use very toxic chemicals that can only be used once, or they go to high energy smelters and they're basically burnt,” says Leighton John, the Royal Mint's operations director.

“The groundbreaking thing for us is the fact that this chemistry is used at room temperature, at very low energy, it’s recyclable and pulls gold really quickly,” he says.

Put frankly, all this also gives the Royal Mint something to do, what with cash usage dwindling fast in an age of ubiquitous digital and contactless payment systems. We just don't need nearly as many coins as we used to.

In future, the Royal Mint says it is considering whether it's worth recovering other metals including aluminium, copper, tin and steel. It is also, apparently, looking into the prospect of turning ground-up motherboards into a building material.

In the here and now, it's intriguing to ponder just how much gold there is in your PC. A bit more than you might think, but might we suggest you're probably still better off booting up some Baldur's Gate 3 than smelting it down for cold, hard cash.

Digitimes (via IT Home) reports that, according to "industry sources," motherboard shipments are set to recover in the second half of 2024. This is based on previous shipping information and estimates for 2024. Tallying up the numbers relayed, it looks like the four major motherboard vendors (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, and ASRock) might reach a sizeable 33,700,000 motherboards shipped by year's end.

This coincides with other positive developments in the PC and component industry, such as PC sales steadily increasing and Q4 2023's GPU sales seeing a 32% year-on-year increase. Now, we can add motherboards to the list of PC components seemingly back in healthy waters.

To put these developments in context, just two years ago, in 2022, the big four motherboard manufacturers shipped 30% fewer motherboards than in 2021, demonstrating the protracted downswing influenced by pandemic-induced chip shortages and post-pandemic under-demand for tech. Yes, there was a boom during 2021 and 2021, but the trough in 2022's PC and component market dipped far below pre-pandemic levels.

After a topsy-turvy few years, we could all do with some normalcy in the industry, and the projected motherboard shipment figures thankfully look like a return to this. The data that IT Home relays shows an estimated return to the level of motherboard shipments we had back in 2019 before any of the past years' big market swings.

Much of this, by the way, might be to do with upcoming Intel Arrow Lake and AMD Zen 5 CPUs, the former of which are likely to hit the market later in the year while the latter are practically on our doorstep. These processors, perhaps crucially as far as the market's concerned, will feature beefy NPUs for AI workloads, which is all the rage right now.

What does this mean for us PC gamers? Well, a healthier PC market certainly makes for a healthier PC gaming market. And basic economics tells us that more supply tends to equal lower prices, provided demand doesn't also skyrocket. 

Market improvements in one area, such as with motherboards, also tends to knock into other areas. For example, if more companies are buying motherboards, then more companies are probably buying all the other components to slot into these motherboards, which means more demand, more money for manufacturers, more production, and so on. Y'know, rising tides and all that.

Call me an optimist, then, but I think good things could be in store for PC gamers in the market for new hardware over the coming years.

The best Mini-ITX board of all is the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi. An AMD AM5-compatible motherboard that will pair nicely with one of the best CPUs for gaming. It's closely followed by the very similar Asus ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi which stands out as the best Mini-ITX board for an Intel system.

Not everyone needs such high end motherboards though, and there are plenty of more affordable options. The ASRock B760I Lightning WiFi is a clear standout for best budget Mini-ITX for Intel, while the MSI B650I Edge WiFi is a very solid choice for best mid-range Mini-ITX for AMD (AM5).

The Quick List

Best Mini-ITX motherboard

Most Mini-ITX motherboards come with inevitable compromises, but Asus has managed to eliminate most of these with the X670E-I Gaming WiFi. That makes it the best Mini-ITX AMD board by far. It incorporates several interesting design innovations. 

Rather than settle with the constraints of a 17 x 17 cm Mini-ITX PCB, Asus went vertical by shifting some functionality onto daughter boards, and it completely relocated the audio section onto an external sound card that also functions as something of a hub or dock. The result is a genuinely high-end Mini-ITX board that challenges even high-priced ATX motherboards.

Of course, it comes with a steeper asking price, but there's nothing else that comes close (apart from its Intel Z790-I sibling). You get dual USB4 ports and plenty of other high speed USB ports too.

It's got a VRM capable of powering high core count Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series CPUs (with the latest BIOS), and of course, it will accept current and future X3D chips, making it an excellent foundation for a top-class gaming rig. It's got a PCIe Gen5 GPU slot, and it'll also support DDR5-8000+ memory. All said, its a motherboard that's as future proof as much as it's possible to make one.

It's one of relatively few Mini-ITX boards that supports Gen5 SSDs. They might not be all that relevant for gaming right now, but in the years to come, it's a feature that's better to have than not. You can install another Gen4 SSD as well. 

About the only weakness of the board is the inclusion of just two SATA ports. Support for two M.2 drives and two SATA drives will suffice for most gamers, but file hoarders might find four drives limiting. Most Mini-ITX cases lack support for lots of drives anyway, so this shouldn't be a deal breaker for most. If it is, don't forget you'll have the ability to add fast external SSDs thanks to the USB4 ports.

The X670E-I WiFi has an external sound card complete with ESS Sabre 9260Q DAC. There's just no way to fit all that circuitry onto a Mini-ITX PCB. Asus calls this device the ROG Hive. It's not just an external sound card, either, as the Hive includes some useful features with more USB ports, and even an AMD PBO overclocking button.

The Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi is an easy pick for the best Mini-ITX motherboard. It's the ultimate choice for users looking to build a high-end gaming system. When you consider you'll have support for the latest generation of Ryzen CPUs (and potentially the next to come, too) it's an investment that's likely to remain relevant for several years. It's in a class of its own.

Read our full Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi review.

Best budget Mini-ITX motherboard

The Gigabyte A620I AX is an excellent option for those on really tight budgets. It'll make a great pairing with a Ryzen 8000G-series APU, allowing you to game at 1080p without an expensive graphics card. You can always add one later, though in the case of a Ryzen 8600G or 8700G APU, you'll only get 8x lanes for a GPU. A Ryzen 7000 or 9000-series chip will give you the full 16x lanes.

If you choose it to be the foundation for a rig with a Ryzen 7000 or 9000-series CPU, this little Gigabyte will do the job. Its 5+2+1 VRM is quite basic, so if you're eyeing a CPU beyond the 65W range, you'd be better off considering a more expensive B650 option. It's the kind of board that will allow you to save money and divert it towards a better GPU, which is where the real performance gains come from.

It's a no frills board, as you'd expect at its low price, though the inclusion of WiFi 6E and a 2.5G LAN port are definitely highlights. It'll also accept 96 GB of memory and speeds of up to DDR5-6400, which is in the sweet spot for an AMD rig. 

The USB complement is basic, with a single 10 Gbps port being the highlight, plus a further five ports made up of a mix of USB 3.1 5 Gbps ports and USB 2.0 ports.

Storage wise, It's got a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, plus two SATA ports. That's enough for a typical gaming system. For example, you'd put your OS on the M.2 drive, leaving you with a couple of SATA ports for an SSD or two for your game library or bulk storage.

The Gigabyte A620I AX won't win the battle of the spec sheets, but its affordability makes it an excellent budget Mini-ITX motherboard. It'll happily serve as the foundation of a cheap gaming system, and it'll support the latest Zen 5 CPUs and APUs—and probably a generation beyond that—so it'll have a good upgrade path ahead of it.

Read our full Gigabyte A620 AX review.

Best Intel Mini-ITX motherboard

While the ROG Strix X670E-I is our pick for best Mini-ITX motherboard, Asus makes a Z790-I version too. The ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi is just as good, and it's very similar in terms of features and price, which makes it the best Intel Mini ITX motherboard just like it counterpart. Really, it only loses out to the AMD version by virtue of the fact that LGA 1700 is nearing the end of its life, and it doesn't offer the upgrade path of its AMD sibling.

That aside, the Z790-I Gaming WiFi is an excellent Mini-ITX motherboard that stands head and shoulders above all other Intel Mini-ITX offerings. If you want a board that'll happily accept the most powerful 12th, 13th and 14th generation CPUs, with high speed memory and Gen5 GPU and SSD support, the Z790-I Gaming WiFi is an excellent choice.

Its highlights are many. It's got a robust VRM with 105a stages, meaning it can happily power a Core i9 14900K. Its heatsinks are capable, but if you push such a demanding chip hard for long periods you'll need a case with decent airflow to keep it all under control.

The ROG Hive external sound card is a really classy and well-built piece of kit. It includes an ESS Sabre 9260Q DAC. The Hive includes some useful features with more USB ports, BIOS flashback functionality (useful if you're buying a 14th Gen CPU at the same time) and an AI auto-overclocking button.

It's USB complement is top-notch, headed by dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports. On top of that you get another 20 Gbps USB Type-C port on the back panel, and a case header for another. When you add the other 10 GBps ports, plus the ports on the ROG Hive external sound card and the case headers, you've got connectivity potential that only flagship ATX motherboards can beat.

Like its X670E-I counterpart, the ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi supports just four internal drives. But with those Thunderbolt 4 ports, plus up to two more 20 Gbps ports, it shouldn't be a problem if you really do need loads of storage.

Do note that Asus was forced to make the socket area a bit tight, so you'll want to check with your cooling manufacturer to ensure your choice of cooler will fit. You might be forced to orient it in such a way that doesn't suit the layout of your case, for example.

The Asus ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi is an excellent vehicle for housing the ultimate Intel small form factor gaming rig. With its top class connectivity options, its ability to house a high end processor, Gen5 GPU and SSD support and excellent audio, it stands alone.

Read our full Asus ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi review.

Best budget Intel Mini-ITX motherboard

The ASRock B760I Lightning WiFi is a B760 board that could easily substitute for a Z790I one. In fact, it is very similar to the ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi. Apart from missing out on CPU overclocking capabilities and PCIe bifurcation support, the B760I Lightning is every bit as good as its more significantly more expensive stablemate.

It can be considered a second generation B760 board, as it's been designed with 14th Gen CPUs and the latest and fastest DDR5 memory in mind. As a result, it's an absolute powerhouse of a board.

It's got a 14+1+1 phase solution with 110a stages which means it's easily capable of powering an i9 14900K or KS, even with unlimited power. Of course, you'll need a high airflow case to allow it to stretch its legs and keep the VRM cool, but the same can be said of an ATX board too. Add to that support for DDR5-8600 memory and you've got a Mini-ITX offering that's really overpowered, especially considering the B760I Lightning will more likely end up being paired with an i5 or i7 CPU. It's a bit like a Toyota hatchback with a V12 engine.

The rest of the board includes roughly what you'd expect from an affordable option. You get support for a pair of PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, plus three SATA ports. Its USB complement is nothing to rave about, as 20 Gbps USB is missing for example, and you get only six USB ports on the back panel. Hopefully that won't bother most gamers. WiFi 6E and 2.5G LAN are included, which helps to elevate it above older B660 Mini-ITX boards.

A cherry on top is out of the box support for 14th Gen processors. The B760 boards released around the time of the 13th Gen launch don't support 14th Gen CPUs without a BIOS update, meaning you'll need an older CPU to flash it with, unless it features a BIOS flashback function which is often missing on budget motherboards.

The ASRock B760I Lighting WiFi is a board that's got it where it counts. If you care more about having a powerful CPU and/or GPU than ticking a long feature checklist, then it's a fantastic option that'll save you a good chunk of money over more expensive boards.

It's the best budget option around if you're after a board built to meet the requirements for a powerful, yet compact 14th Gen gaming system.

Read our full ASRock B760I Lightning WiFi review.

Best mid-range AM5 Mini-ITX motherboard

The MSI MPG B650I Edge WiFi is a classy mid-range option that's perfect for a gamer that wants a feature rich Mini-ITX motherboard without spending the big bucks on a more expensive X670 board. That makes it the best mid-range Mini-ITX board we can think of.

It features an 8+2+1 phase VRM with 80a stages. That's perfectly adequate for running a high core count Ryzen 7000 series chip, and of course, X3D models as well. And like all AM5 boards, it will accept a Ryzen 9000-series CPU after a BIOS update. Crucially for the latter, the B650I Edge WiFi comes with a BIOS flashback function, meaning even if you buy it later on, you'll get the ability to run a Zen 5 chip without needing an older CPU to update the BIOS.

The Edge includes a quality set of connectivity and expansion options. It includes dual PCIe 4.0 SSD slots, plus four SATA ports, meaning it's a fantastic option for those wanting to install lots of hard drives. Support for a Gen5 SSD would be nice—not that Gen5 SSDs make much of a difference for gamers unless an extra second of loading time here or there bothers you, that is.

We like the fact that it includes a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 20 Gbps port on the rear panel. This makes up for the fact there are only six USB ports. A speedy 20 Gbps port allows you to run a hub or dock to add more devices. Once you add a decent ALC 4080 audio codec, WiFi 6E and 2.5G LAN, the B650I Edge WiFi is a very appealing mid-range Mini-ITX offering.

Don't be overly alarmed by the inclusion of a chipset fan. It's certainly not ideal, but it's not obtrusive unless you install the board in a case with poor airflow. It has to cool a high performance M.2 SSD as well as the chipset, and many a small ITX sized heatsink can't keep both optimally cool without some help. MSI's BIOS allows you to control the fan curve, so you can tune it to a level where it can never be heard if you find it bothersome.

If you can live without Gen 5 support, then the feature set of the MSI MSP B650I Edge WiFi makes it a very compelling mid-range AM5 option. Like all AM5 boards, it's elevated by its certain support for Zen 5 CPUs and probably Zen 6 CPUs as well. 

If you want a board capable of housing high core count CPUs, with lots of storage potential, 20 Gbps USB and a solid upgrade path, then this MSI has an edge.

Read our full MSI MPG B650I Edge WiFi review.

Best budget AM4 Mini-ITX motherboard

In 2024, Socket AM4 Mini-ITX motherboards are becoming hard to find. That limits your options. But with all those millions of AM4 CPUs in circulation, repurposing one for a Mini-ITX rig is on the agenda of more than a few gamers, and non-gamers alike. A board like the ASRock A520M ITX/ac is a solid budget choice for building an affordable Mini-ITX rig, whether it's for gaming, a home theatre or a general purpose daily driver.

It's a particularly good option for partnering with a Ryzen 5000G series APU. Their 65W TDPs won't put undue stress on the A520M ITX/ac's reasonable 8 phase VRM. In fact it's even got support for the likes of the Ryzen 9 5950X. It's not a natural choice for such a CPU as its heatsink is a bit small, but if you were to install something like a Ryzen 5 5700X3D, you'd be surprised at the amount of gaming performance such a system would offer.

Storage wise, it offers a single PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot and four SATA ports. It's Gen 3 all round as the primary GPU slot only supports PCIe 3.0. That won't really hurt graphics cards with PCIe x16 support, but it might cost you some performance with cards with 8x support, and more particularly those with x4 support, such as AMD's RX 6400 and RX 6500 cards.

A key for using the A520M ITX/ac with integrated graphics is the inclusion of HDMI 2.1 and DP 1.4 ports for dual monitor support. Alongside these are up to 6x USB 3.2 Gen1 and four 4x USB 2.0 ports. Four of the Gen 1 ports are found on the back panel.

Given the A520M ITX/ac was released in 2020 at a time when WiFi was far from prevalent on budget motherboards, WiFi can be considered a bonus inclusion. It's an older 802.11ac standard, but that'll be fine for general internet use. 

Despite its limitations compared to 2024 options, the  ASRock A520M ITX/ac's capable VRM make it a good choice for a budget system, even with a more powerful Ryzen 5000-series CPU. The inclusion of WiFi is a bonus for a budget AM4 board. Load it up with an affordable PCIe 3.0 SSD and a few SSDs or hard drives and it'd make an excellent media server too.

Read the full ASRock A520M ITX/ac review.

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Where to buy

Mini-ITX motherboard FAQ

Jargon buster - motherboard terminology

ATX, Micro-ATX, Mini-ITX

The most common form factors/sizes of a motherboard from largest to smallest, which beyond physical dimensions determines which cases it'll fit into and (broadly) how many expansion slots are available. There are other, less common form factors (XL-ATX, HPTX, etc.), but these three are the most ubiquitous consumer form factors.

USB Header

A connector on the motherboard that allows you to run a cable to the case to add additional USB ports, typically on the front panel (though some cases provide top or rear panel slots as well). 

BIOS/UEFI

Basic Input/Output System and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface connect the hardware and software that lives on the board (the firmware) to the operating system (OS, such as Windows or Linux). They allow you to adjust system-level settings, such as fan speed or RAM frequency. UEFI has largely replaced the older BIOS standard.

Expansion Slots (PCIe Slots)

Peripheral Component Interconnect Express slots on the motherboard are designed to accommodate add-in cards like graphics cards, SSD cards, dedicated sound cards, etc. PCIe slots are measured in both length (x16, x8, x4, x1) as well as by the number of data transmission lanes they provide (x16, x8, x4, x1). It's possible for an x16 slot to only provide 8 lanes of data, for instance, which means the maximum possible data transfer rate is halved (though in many cases, because PCIe provides such a high ceiling for transfer speeds, a lower number of lanes doesn't make a tremendous difference).

DIMM Slots

Dual In-Line Memory Module slots, the slots on a motherboard where your RAM lives. The number of total slots contributes to the maximum amount of RAM your system can handle, paired with the chipset and OS. 

Chipset

The logic allows the various parts of a motherboard to talk to each other. The chipset determines which processor generations a motherboard is compatible with and what add-in cards can be used.

SATA Ports

Serial Advanced Technology Attachment ports, an interface for connecting storage devices/drives to a motherboard (HDDs, SSDs, optical drives, etc.). The number of physical ports on your board, combined with ports for NVMe storage, will determine the total number of storage drives you can have connected to your PC at any time.

The ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi is more or less an Intel version of the ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi I recently reviewed. Both are positioned as the ultimate MIni-ITX solutions for the LGA 1700 and AM5 sockets—at least for now. Whereas the X670E-I has a long potential upgrade path ahead of it, LGA 1700 is nearing the end of its life. With Z890 motherboards and Arrow Lake processors coming later in 2024, it's one for buyers in the here and now. 

It's just not possible to cram high-end features into a 17cm x 17cm PCB. To get around that, Asus went 3D. It moved several of the the ROG Strix Z790-I's features onto riser cards, and it also moved the audio section to an external USB-connected device that essentially functions as an external dock. The Z790-I really is an impressive and innovative engineering showcase that leaves few of the inherent Mini-ITX compromises.

That R&D effort and feature set comes at a price. At $429 / £369 / AU$699, it's an expensive proposition, but it's not uncompetitive with high-end ATX options. But this board isn't expected to compete with ATX boards; it's positioned as the ultimate Intel LGA 1700 SFF board, and it effectively has no competition at this level.

Beginning with a VRM overview, the Asus ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi features a 10+1+1 phase VRM with 105a per stage. It is easily sufficient for a Core i9 14900K. The heatsinks are compact by necessity, and it includes an embedded tiny fan. Temperatures peaked at 72°C. That's not bad, but it's higher than you'd expect from a comparative ATX board. It will require a case with good airflow if you plan to push an i9 CPU hard for long periods. 

It's also worth noting that the socket area is very tight, so much so that my Cooler Master AIO cooler would only fit in one direction so the tubes would fit. This could present a problem for large air coolers with protruding heatpipes. You should confirm whether your cooler will fit by checking your manufacturer's compatibility list.

Its two memory slots support speeds of up to DDR5-7600, but that was a number relevant to 13th Gen processors. 14th Gen CPUs typically have improved memory controllers, and after a 14th Gen supporting BIOS update, there's a strong chance the ROG Strix Z790I will be able to go higher than that. The board will accept up to 96GB of memory, which is more than sufficient for a gaming system.

The board features both a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and primary M.2 slot, plus a second slot that supports a Gen4 drive. These are stacked atop one another. There's a small embedded fan that cools the whole assembly, but it was not obtrusive during my testing. This stacked section of the board is seriously impressive.

Mini-ITX boards just don't have the space for four or five M.2 slots, and the Z790-I's two M.2 drives are joined by just two SATA ports. You can add external drives via the Thunderbolt 4 or 20 Gbps USB ports, but you'll have to make do with a maximum of four internal drives.

The two SATA ports are contained on a daughter board that Asus calls the FPS-II card. It connects to the board via a pair of USB Type-C connectors and it contains the aforementioned SATA ports, the case headers, and USB 2.0 headers among others. This is just one of the ways Asus managed to go beyond Mini-ITX PCB limitations.

The really key innovation is the external USB device called the ROG Hive. It's an external sound card that's based around a Realtek ALC 4050 codec, but also includes an ESS Sabre 9260Q DAC. It does more than provide quality audio though. It features an AI OC button, programmable flex button, and another 10 Gbps Type-C port plus another Type-A port that allows BIOS flashbacks. It's an impressive and notably well-built little device. 

Unlike most Mini-ITX motherboards, the rear I/O of the ROG Strix Z790-I is seriously impressive. The highlight is a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports, both of which support DisplayPort alt mode. There's an HDMI 2.1 port also. The TB4 ports are joined by a 20 Gbps Type-C port, three 10 Gbps ports, a single 5 Gbps port and two USB 2.0 ports. Impressive! But nine ports isn't the end of it. There's another 20 Gbps case header, and if you add the other headers plus the ports on the ROG Hive, its USB complement is excellent.

Intel WiFi 6E and 2.5G LAN take care of networking duties. It would be nice to get 5G LAN and/or WiFi 7, but the latter isn't a must have right now, at least not until the price of WiFi 7 supporting routers reaches friendlier levels.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

Performance wise, I often say that comparing the performance of boards with the same partnering components doesn't provide much insight. All things being equal, the differences are usually within a margin of error of one another, especially at this stage of LGA 1700's life. Things like Intel's Thread Director, the underlying BIOS microcode and Windows support have all matured over the last three years.

What is clear is that the ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi will have no problems driving even an i9 14900K, RTX 4090 with lots of high speed RAM. As is the case with all Mini-ITX systems, you will need to ensure you have adequate airflow if you choose such components. The VRM will get very warm otherwise. I'd probably look to something like an i7 or a chip like the i5 14600K as more of a natural fit for an Intel Mini-ITX gaming system that doesn't require the ultimate in power-guzzling multi-threading support.

Much like I was impressed with the equivalent X670E-I Gaming WiFi, I came away impressed by the ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi. It's a Mini-ITX board with few compromises. It has no Intel-based competition that can tick all of its checkboxes.

The list of highlights is long. There's the dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, PCIe 5.0 SSD and GPU support and the audio of the board is a clear step up from any other LGA 1700 Mini-ITX offering.

The audio comes courtesy of the ROG Hive. It's a great idea to shift space-hogging audio circuitry away from the PCB and into an external device. But rather than just designate it as an external sound card, Asus went well beyond this and included some useful functionality and more USB ports. And speaking of USB ports, the ROG Strix Z790-I is an excellent option if you want lots of fast USB ports for things like external SSDs, docks, or hubs.

There are few weaknesses, though one of them is the board's internal storage complement. A third chipset connected M.2 slot on the rear of the board, or an extra SATA port to two would have been nice to see. At least with those 20 Gbps and 40 Gbps USB ports, you can add plenty of external storage.

The other important thing to note is the potential for cooler incompatibilities. It's critical that you check with your cooling manufacturer to ensure your cooler will fit. Most should, but you might be forced to orient it in a way that won't suit the layout of your build.

At a price of  $429 / £369 / AU$699, the Asus ROG Strix Z790-I Gaming WiFi is an expensive proposition, but it's in a class of one when you consider what it offers. It's also cheaper than when it was launched, to be fair. Given its feature set and the engineering involved, its premium price is not altogether unreasonable.

It's the ultimate board for the ultimate Intel Mini-ITX high-end system. You'll need to update its BIOS for 14th Gen support, but it's the kind of board that will happily power a gaming rig with a next-gen GPU for years to come. It's an easy recommendation for users looking for the best Intel Mini-ITX board they can get their hands on right now.

The Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi aims to give users more than they'd expect from a Mini-ITX motherboard. Rather than trying to cram everything onto a two dimensional PCB, Asus has gone into the third dimension. It's shifted several features onto riser cards, and there's an additional USB connected audio device that also functions as something of an external dock. The Strix X670E-I WiFi is an impressive engineering showcase that goes a long way to eliminating the compromises inherent to Mini-ITX motherboards, though the ability to install many M.2 drives is a still a step too far.

At $399 / £409 / AU$639, it's an expensive piece of kit to be sure, but it's still competitive against upper mid-range ATX options and well below the price of flagship boards. It's a board for those that want the ultimate AMD Mini-ITX system. And, it's already got a BIOS with support for next-gen Ryzen 9000-series processors.

The clunkily named Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi features a 10+2+1 phase VRM with 110a per stage. It's easily able to handle the demands of a Ryzen 9 7950X processor, and surely the high-end SKUs to launch in the future. The heatsink isn't what you'd call gigantic, but there is a small embedded fan there in case things get a bit toasty. It supports up to DDR5-8000 memory, but who knows what it might be capable of when next-gen processors make their debut.

The board features both a PCIe 5.0 x16 slot and primary M.2 slot. There's a second slot that supports a Gen 4 drive. These are stacked together. This section of the board is mightily impressive. It incorporates a detachable daughter board for the second slot, and there are layers of heatsinks dedicated to cooling the chipset at the bottom of the stack, and the two drives that sit atop it. There's another small fan that cools the whole assembly, but this can be set to only spin up when it all gets a bit hot under the collar. Note that a Gen5 SSD will inevitably end up reaching higher temperatures than you'd see compared to an isolated drive on an ATX board. Decent case airflow is still a must, which can be tough to achieve in a small form factor build.

The two M.2 drives are joined by two SATA ports. That's about the only weakness of the board. File hoarders will not be satisfied with support for just four drives, though with USB4 on board, you could always add speedy external drives.

The two SATA ports are contained on a daughter board that Asus calls the FPS-II card. It connects to the board via a pair of USB Type-C connectors and it contains the aforementioned SATA ports, the case headers, USB 2.0 headers, an overclocking mode switch and clear CMOS button. It's a relatively simple but clever way to claw back some of that limited Mini-ITX PCB space.

Even more impressive is an external USB connected device called the ROG Hive. It's an external sound card that's based around a Realtek ALC4050 codec, but also includes an ESS Sabre 9260Q DAC.  This is a key example of thinking literally outside the box, as such components and their associated circuitry would not be possible to jam into the limited space on a Mini-ITX PCB.

The Hive offers a lot more though. It features a Precision Boost Overdrive button, programmable flex button, and another 10Gbps Type-C port plus another Type-A port that allows BIOS flashbacks. It's an impressive and notably well-built little device.

The rear I/O puts nearly every other Mini-ITX board to shame. The highlight is a pair of USB4 ports, both of which can drive Type-C monitors. These are joined by five Type-A 10Gbps ports and three USB 2.0 ports. Ten ports on the rear of a Mini-ITX board is a rare thing, and with the various headers, plus the ports on the ROG Hive, it really is loaded on the USB front.

There's a HDMI port, and you get Intel WiFi 6E and 2.5G LAN. It would be nice to get 5G LAN and/or WiFi 7, but this is an X670 board. WiFi 7 wasn't available when it launched and 5G LAN was considered a flagship tier feature. You'll have to wait for X870 boards if you want faster networking.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

Gone are the early days of niggles and flaky DDR5 memory support on the AM5 platform. The ROG Strix X670E WiFi has received well over a dozen BIOS updates and during my testing displayed none of the issues that I encountered during the first wave of X670 launches. X670 and Socket AM5 can be considered a generally mature platform.

The board's performance was consistent, and it was happy with my Samsung based G.Skill DDR5-6000 test kit, which was not always the case on some other boards I tested with pre-Ryzen 7000-series launch BIOS.

I came away seriously impressed by the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi. It somehow manages to cram a high-end feature set into a Mini-ITX form factor with few compromises. I love the inclusion of dual USB 4 ports in particular, and the ability to run a PCIe 5.0 SSD and a next-gen PCIe 5.0 GPU is welcome too.

The ROG Hive is also a highlight. It's a great idea to shift space-hogging audio circuitry away from the PCB and into an external device. But rather than just designate it as an external sound card, Asus went well beyond this and included some useful features with even more USB ports, and even an AMD PBO button.

And speaking of USB ports, Asus gives you another eight ports on top of the USB4 ports on the rear panel. The Hive adds more, and with the case USB headers, The X670E-I offers a really comprehensive set of USB ports for all manner of devices and peripherals.

The only glaring weakness of the board is its storage complement. Asus could have included a third M.2 slot on the rear of the board, or made the FPS-II card a little bigger with an extra two SATA ports. The latter might have been too much of an ask from its USB-C connection though. 

At $399 / £409 / AU$639, the Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi is an expensive proposition, but not overly so given what it manages to cram into its diminutive size. There are plenty of ATX boards around that price. Given its unique characteristics, and the inclusion of the ROG Hive and the daughter boards, there would have been a lot of R&D effort involved, so it's understandable for Asus to charge a premium based on that alone.

With AMD stating it intends to support AM5 for years to come, it's a good investment too. After BIOS updates, you'll be able to pop in a high core count Ryzen 9 9950X, future X3D models, and surely Zen 6 CPUs as well. 

The Asus ROG Strix X670E-I Gaming WiFi stands out as a premium Mini-ITX motherboard for users looking to build a high-end AMD system. We have no problem recommending this little ROG board. It's in a class of its own.

The B760I Lightning WiFi can be considered a second generation B760 board. It's been given some tweaks and an upgraded power delivery subsystem that's better able to handle the demands of 14th Generation Intel CPUs.

Recently, I reviewed the ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi. While that board is a very good one, at around $279 I felt it didn't offer enough over the $185 B760I version. That's because apart from PCIe bifurcation and overclocking support, both board's specs are mostly identical, leaving few reasons to opt for the Z790I version over the B760I one. That's a good omen for the latter.

Though support for ultra-fast memory is not essential for a gaming system, it'll only become more useful as DDR5 speeds march ever-higher. The B760I Lightning supports blazing fast DDR5-8600 (OC) memory. Along with the Z790I version, it is the only board I've tested to date that allowed me to run a Teamgroup DDR5-8200 kit out of the box with just XMP enabled. That's really impressive.  It supports up to 96 GB of memory, though I wouldn't be surprised to see a BIOS update that adds support for 128 GB in the future.

The other major highlight is its excellent VRM. It's among the very best you'll find on any Mini-ITX board, let alone a B760 one. It's a 14+1+1 phase solution with 110a stages. That's more than capable of powering an i9 14900K or KS. 

The two heatsink sections are connected via a heatpipe. There is a small embedded fan but it was hardly noticeable during my testing. It really is a top class power delivery system. 

As is the case with all Mini-ITX boards, the lack of PCB space means you'll have to put up with some restrictions when it comes to headers and auxiliary controllers. There are three fans headers, plus another for the VRM fan. There are two ARGB headers, plus USB 2.0 and USB 3.1 Gen (5 Gbps) headers. A 10 Gbps header would be nice to see, but USB 20 Gbps support is not really expected in this price range. 

The board supports two PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs. One slot is located above the x16 slot, while the other heatsink-less one is located on the rear of the board.  These slots are joined by three SATA ports. You'll have to look to Z790 if you must have Gen 5 SSD support, though the primary PCIe x16 slot does support Gen 5.

The B760I Lightning WiFi is a bit lacking in the rear I/O. There are welcome DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports for use with integrated Xe graphics, but the USB complement is made up of just four Gen 1 (5 Gbps) ports and two Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports. There's no BIOS flashback support, but that's less of an issue for the B760I Lightning compared to first generation B760 boards such as the MSI MPG B760I Edge WiFi, which will likely lack native 14th Gen support unless its been shipped from the factory with an updated BIOS.

I like the inclusion of an S/PDIF port, even if the audio codec is a cheap ALC897 one. 2.5G LAN duties are provided by a Realtek RTL8125BG controller, while an Intel AX210 M.2 E-Key card gives WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. 

System Performance

Gaming Performance

As expected from a mature platform, there is little to separate LGA 1700 boards from one another in regards to performance these days. What differences there are mostly fall within a margin of error.

An important thing to note is that I used an i9 14900K and RTX 4090 GPU. The fact that this little board will happily run such a demanding CPU without a hint of an issue or a problem with VRM cooling is a real testament to the capabilities of the B760I Lightning WiFi. This is a sub $185 Mini-ITX board we're talking about.

With the B760I Lightning WiFi, ASRock has knocked it out of the park if you're after an affordable and solid foundation for a high-performance rig. It will happily handle any 12th, 13th or 14th generation CPU you wish to name. Chuck in a 14900K, plus a set of DDR5-8000+ and you'll have the foundation of a supremely fast gaming rig by any standard, let alone a Mini-ITX one.

It's not perfect though. I'd like to see a stronger USB complement. Even a pair of USB 2.0 ports on the back for a keyboard and mouse would be a significant improvement. A 20 Gbps USB port would be a cherry on top, but these weaknesses can be overlooked on a board that costs just $185.

You'll still miss out on an M.2 slot or two, four memory slots and space for expansion cards compared to an ATX board, but those are necessary sacrifices for any Mini-ITX system.

I'd honestly question the need to spend more for a Z790 Mini-ITX board unless you plan to overclock your CPU. The ASRock B760I Lightning WiFi is nearly $100 cheaper than its near identical Z790I Lighting WiFi counterpart. That's enough of a saving to put towards a better CPU or GPU, which is where real performance improvements come from.

The MSI B760I Edge WiFi is positioned as an affordable board with a decent mainstream feature set. It's a Mini-ITX motherboard, so it should be a good option for those looking to put some more money towards a better graphics card or CPU for a compact, yet highly capable small form factor system.

At $205 / £199 / AU$349 the B760I Edge WiFi is not an overly pricey option, though the competition is tough in this price range, with Mini-ITX options from ASRock, Gigabyte, and Asus all priced similarly. Being a Mini-ITX board, you'll have to contend with a sacrifice or two compared to ATX options, but that's par for the course.

I'd say the B760I Edge is an attractive board. It's similar in look to its AMD-toting MPG B650I Edge sibling, though thankfully it lacks that board's chipset fan. Its silver-on-black theme would look good with the right matching components—if you can see it at all in a tiny case, that is. It lacks onboard RGB too, though it does have RGB and ARGB headers. I can imagine it looking great in a white case.

At this price, MSI quite expectedly didn't go all out when it comes to a mega VRM and ultra-fast memory support. It'll happily run DDR5-7200 memory, with up to 128GB supported. That's enough for any gaming system.

It has an 8+2+1-phase VRM with 90a stages. That's not extreme, but it is adequate enough to handle an i9 processor at full tilt. The heatsinks do a perfectly adequate job of keeping things cool, as long as you have decent airflow in your case. It's worth remembering some ITX cases aren't stellar in that regard because of their compact nature.

The primary PCIe slot supports Gen 5, while storage wise, you get a pair of M.2 slots, both of which support Gen 4 SSDs. The one on the front is connected to the CPU, while the one on the rear of the board is connected to the chipset. They're joined by four SATA ports. That's about as good as it gets for a B760 Mini-ITX board.

The rear I/O has some highlights, but it also has one notable omission. It's disappointing not to see a BIOS flashback feature. So, while 12th and 13th Gen processors are supported out of the box, it's likely you'll need to flash it with an older CPU to get support for a 14th Gen model—depending on how long your particular sample has been waiting for you to take it home. 

The USB complement consists of eight ports made up of USB Type A and C 10Gbps ports, four 5Gbps ports, and two USB 2.0 ports. A 20Gbps port would be nice, but eight USB ports is a solid number for any Mini-ITX board. The USB ports are joined by DisplayPort and HDMI 2.1 ports, with three 3.5mm analogue jacks connected to an aging ALC897 codec. A Realtek RTL8125BG provides 2.5Gbps Ethernet and there are two Wi-Fi antenna connections for the onboard WiFi 6E.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

We stuck with a trusty Intel Core i9 13900K for this review. Apart from the even more demanding i9 14900K, the fact that the B760I Edge WiFi can handle this chip without its VRM getting really hot is a good indicator the board will handle any realistic workload you care to throw at it. Ideally though, you'd want a good high airflow case if you go down that path.

The little MSI didn't throw up any surprises in the benchmark tests. Nor should it or any LGA 1700 motherboard in 2024 as the underlying microcode and bugs have long since been ironed out. 

The MSI MPG B760I Edge proved itself to be a capable little board. I've always liked the layout of MSI's UEFI design and it's got a reasonable VRM for a B-series Mini-ITX board. Its heatsinks are better than reasonable, its networking and storage complement is about as good as anything in this price range, and you'll have to go ATX if you want more storage capability.

Perhaps the biggest issue the Edge faces, though, is its strong competition. The newly released ASRock B760I Lightning supports 14th Gen chips out of the box, and its VRM and memory support are superior, too. The kicker is it's at least $20 cheaper.

But the MSI B760I Edge is far from being a bad board. It will happily live at the heart of a compact gaming system. It's mature, and it looks good. It just lacks something that would elevate it ahead of the competition. If MSI were to drop the price a bit, or it comes up on sale, by all means grab one. But, now that LGA 1700 is at the twilight of its career, there are more compelling Mini-ITX options to choose from.

The Gigabyte A620I AX is very much an entry level Mini-ITX option. As the name suggests, it is built around AMD's budget A620 chipset. Even an ATX A620 option won't come with the goodies of the premium chipsets, while Mini-ITX A620 boards have to sacrifice even more. You won't find PCIe 5.0 or CPU overclocking support, and you'll have to give up usable PCIe lanes, SATA ports and fast USB. 

As you might have guessed after reading that, the Gigabyte A620I AX isn't what you'd call a feature rich board, but at $139 / £162 / AU$259, you wouldn't expect it to be. A mid-range option like the MSI MPG B650I Edge WiFi I reviewed recently costs nearly twice as much, and an X670 board will set you back even more. The Gigabyte A620I is a no frills board that's built to house a single graphics card, an SSD or two, and a mainstream memory kit with a standard set of peripherals. 

The A620I AX won't win any beauty contests. Not that looks matter much in a small form factor system when the board is often hidden. It's a socket AM5 board that supports AMD Ryzen 7000 and 8000-series processors. The good news is, Gigabyte has already released a Zen 5 supporting BIOS, and given that AMD has stated it plans to support AM5 for some time yet, there's every chance you'll be able to insert a Zen 6 chip into it a couple of years from now.

The board supports mainstream memory kits at up to DDR5-6200 . That's not a lot by current standards, but that's fine for a budget gaming PC. The VRM is very much an entry level design, too, being a 5+2+1 system. At least it's got a reasonable heatsink. Gigabyte's CPU support page lists support for chips including the Ryzen 9 7950X. It might be capable of handling it, but I'd suggest something a bit more upmarket in the motherboard stakes if you plan to run such a high-end chip. 

The board's real weaknesses are in its storage and connectivity capabilities. It supports just a single PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD and two SATA drives. That is the absolute minimum any PC gamer should put up with in these modern times of ours. The M.2 slot doesn't include a heatsink, and the underside is actually the chipset heatsink, which will only add heat to an SSD. I'd certainly recommend buying an SSD with an integrated heatsink. 

The rear I/O isn't filled with ports, either, and it lacks an integrated shield, which is a rare thing these days. There are six USB ports, made up of a single 10 Gbps port, two 5 Gbps ports—one of which is Type-C—plus three USB 2.0 ports. There's a BIOS flashback button, DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports, which are essential for using integrated graphics and especially 8000G-series chips. Incidentally, if used with the latter, you'd have yourself an appealing and affordable little gaming system.

The networking capabilities are as good as you can hope for in this price range. Realtek 2.5G LAN and WiFi 6E are all you'd reasonably expect on boards costing twice the price. It's Realtek all-round as the audio codec is ALC897. Again, not unexpected in this price range.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

For testing, I used a Ryzen 7 7700X rather than the 7950X I would normally use for AM5 testing. It just makes more sense to use such a chip with an entry level board, and even the 7700X has a 105W TDP, and can use up to 142W at default. A 65W option makes more sense with an A620 board like the A620I AX. The VRM heatsink proved to be adequate and didn't get hot to the touch.

When compared to a couple of B650 motherboards including the ASRock B650E PG-ITX WiFi, the little Gigabyte did what was expected of it. In fact, in the CPU limited gaming tests, the Gigabyte squeaked out a consistent lead, which bodes well if you plan to build a gaming rig with the A620I AX.

Whether you should consider buying the Gigabyte A620I AX will essentially come down to how large or small your budget is. If you've got a 105W CPU, then I'd recommend looking upmarket. But if you're on a tight budget, then there are some key characteristics that make it an interesting option.

I believe it will be a solid choice if you plan to build a small form factor system with a Ryzen 8000-series APU. You'll be able to game at 1080p, and the savings you make from not having to buy a GPU could be significant.

It's also the kind of board that only really makes sense for a fairly basic system, even if you use a high-end graphics card. Add an M.2 SSD for your OS, a SATA drive for a game library, and 32GB or 64GB of memory and you've got the core of a capable SFF system.

There's not much competition in this price range. The ASRock A620I Lightning WiFi is an option. It can house a second M.2 SSD, but it lacks a rear DP port, which I'd consider essential for gaming with integrated graphics. The choice in the end would be yours.

The Gigabyte A620I AX is a no frills board that does the realistic minimum. It's a solid but unspectacular option, though its important to keep expectations in check at this price point. It'll happily sit at the heart of a budget gaming system, and with its ability to house upcoming Zen 5 CPUs, it'll also have a good life ahead of it.

Gigabyte has both Intel and AMD's next generation of motherboards on display at its VIP suite during Computex. The Gigabyte X870E Aorus Extreme is the least mysterious—the new chips are out in July and it only makes sense that the motherboard for AMD's Ryzen 9000-series Granite Ridge chips are already finished. More mysterious were the Intel boards.

With the processors and socket redacted with white tape it's almost impossible to know what this new "Next-gen Z Aero G" could possibly be. Almost, but because I think collectively we're bordering on the verge of genius at times, the PC Gamer hive mind has got together, and we think this might actually be a Gigabyte Z890 motherboard.

How on earth did we work that out, eh? Well, Gigabyte couldn't tell us on pain of being told off by Pat.

But the clues are... Gigabyte slapped a massive Intel badge on the socket, and it's well, obviously an Intel socket. Then there was the fact that stamped into the CPU retaining clip are the letters "LGA 1851" which just so happens to be the number of pins in the new Intel CPU socket. 

The "Next-gen" bit in the name card beneath the board was the next clue because the next generation of Intel motherboards will be the Z890s that Intel's Arrow Lake chips will slot into. 

Sherlock Holmes, me. And with those powers of investigation I also managed to encourage the socket protector off to get a good look at that new socket. And what a view it is. All those 1851 pins in all their one-errant-thumb-and-you'll-kill-them-all glory.

Next to it was another, equally mysterious "Next-gen Z Aorus Elite X Ice" board. But what can it all mean?

Your guess is as good as mine.

What I will say though is that Gigabyte Ice range of boards and that white Aero board, do look rather lovely. I'm definitely into the more restrained look of the Aero G, with its clean lines and simple styling. Though if you're not into the cold white look then Gigabyte also has the classic black finish for its "Next-gen" boards, too.

Aside from the AMD X870E boards, Gigabyte also had its reverse connector boards back in action again. It was the first to release under the Project Stealth guise, before legal issues in the US put a halt to that until an agreement had been come to with the patent holder.

And it's now looking good. A host of case manufacturers I spoke to at Computex where fully behind the reverse connection thing, making sure to tool up in order to support the new designs from Gigabyte as well as MSI and Asus.

So, it looks like it's here to stay.

But in a sign that next-gen graphics cards are hitting the buffet, or in the gym getting bulked up prior to their next gen reveal, Benchlife shared a preview of the Gigabyte B650E Aorus Pro X USB4. It revealed the board's PCIe 5.0 slot has a rather shocking weight tolerance of up to 58 kg. That's 128 pounds!

Gigabyte refers to this slot as the PCIe UD Slot X. The slot itself doesn't appear to be significantly different to those on currently available boards, which often feature metal reinforcement and strengthened soldering. Gigabyte goes beyond though, as a look around the back of the board shows a small backplate secured with four screws. If you use this board, your graphics card surely won't be ripping out the PCIe slot.

These days, boards with some kind of reinforcement are not prone to failure, unless the slot is subjected to stresses caused by improper installation. The problem of sagging graphics cards can be alleviated by the use of support struts or brackets, but still, there are examples of cards with cracked PCBs around the slot finger area, which is the load bearing part of a sagging card. If the weight of your GPU is not properly balanced, PCB cracking can definitely happen.

Why would Gigabyte go to such lengths to reinforce a primary PCIe slot?  If we follow logic, it would suggest that next-gen graphics cards are going to be even chunkier than they already are. Some high end cards such as the RTX 4080 Super take up four slots, and reach—or exceed—35 cm in length, the PCIe slot does have to put up with stresses it was never designed for. 

If some next-gen cards take up five slots, then properly balancing and distributing the weight of such a beefcake card will become more important than ever.

Aside from the reinforced PCIe 5.0 slot, the B650E Aorus Pro X USB4 looks like a premium board, with a powerful VRM, lots of connectivity options and a comprehensive rear I/O. In fact, assuming it supports Zen 5 out of the box, one wonders why Gigabyte is using B650E chipset at all, when this could easily pass for an X870 or B850 board.

Next week's Computex is shaping up to be a mega one, as manufacturers are expected to unveil motherboards supporting next-gen Zen 5 and Arrow Lake CPUs. The PC Gamer team will be roaming the halls looking for all the goodies.

I'm very much a Mini-ITX fan, and I've had the pleasure of testing multiple mini motherboards recently; first there was the ASRock Z790I Lightning and now the MSI MPG B650I Edge WiFi. As the name suggests, it's an AMD B650 board that aims to strike a balance between affordability and a decent feature set.

I like the look of the board. It'll blend in with black or white themed builds. It supports Ryzen 7000 and 8000-series processors, and will surely receive BIOS updates allowing it to run upcoming Zen 5 CPUs too. Its two memory slots support up to 128GB of memory at speeds of DDR5-7200, although DDR5-6000 or a touch above remains the sweet spot for the AM5 platform, because you'll be sticking to the optimal 1:1 RAM and memory controller ratio.

The board includes an 8+2+1 phase VRM with 80a stages. That's not extreme compared to some of the VRM systems you'll see on boards built for Intel 14th Gen processors, but It's easily sufficient to run a Ryzen 9 7950X, which means any other AM5 CPU, including X3D models will run on the Edge without a hitch. The VRM heatsink is quite chunky, meaning potential buyers will need to make sure your choice of cooler will fit, though that's an issue common to all ITX boards.

The board comes with a PCIe Gen 4 x16 slot and a pair of Gen 4 M.2 slots, one of which is on the rear of the board. If you want Gen 5 SSD and GPU support, you'll have to look to B650E or X670E, though Gigabyte's competing B650i Aorus Ultra does include a single Gen 5 SSD slot. Not that Gen 5 SSDs are a must have for gamers right now.

It's nice to see four SATA ports. With PCB space at a premium, and M.2 taking over, SATA ports are becoming rarer, with many ITX boards including just two. If you're after a board with the ability to support several SATA SSDs or hard drives, there are fewer options than you might expect.  

You might have noticed that the chipset and SSD heatsink has an integrated fan. Yuck. But it is a necessary evil in this case. A single chipset B650 board with its 7W TDP can be cooled passively, but when you add a high performance M.2 SSD as well, a small ITX sized heatsink can't keep both cool without some help. Luckily it is quiet in general operation, though you might need to tune the fan curve in the BIOS depending on your accompanying graphics card (if any) and the airflow characteristics of your case.

The key controllers aren't bad at all for a board at this price point. You'll get Realtek ALC4080 audio, Realtek 2.5G LAN, and AMD RZ616 WiFi 6E.

The rear I/O is fairly typical for an ITX board, which can't incorporate high numbers of USB ports. I am pleased to see a 20Gbps Type-C port. It's joined by three 10GBps ports and a pair of 5Gbps ports. A couple of basic USB 2.0 ports for a keyboard and mouse would be nice, but there is the option for a front-connected pair of USB 2.0 ports, a pair of 5Gbps ports and a single Type-C 10Gbps port. At least with that rear 20Gbps port, you can connect a speedy dock or a hub to add some more USB ports if you need them. 

System Performance

Gaming Performance

Performance wise, the board ended up performing a little bit behind some of the other B650 boards I've tested. I can't really give a reason for that other than to suggest it was due to my 7950X sample downclocking by a tad more than usual when it hit its 95°C threshold. That bears out when looking at the on-par gaming tests which aren't as CPU limited. The VRM temperatures were well within limits, so I would not put these small deficits down to the board itself. 

In summary, I was generally impressed by the MSI MPG B650I Gaming Edge. I quite like its aesthetic, though it's a bit sad to see chipset fans make a return to many SFF boards. You can thank hot M.2 drives for that. Luckily, the little MSI fan isn't obtrusive, and its speed can be controlled in the BIOS. 

It's got a good set of controllers. ALC4080 audio is welcome over cheap ALC897, while WiFi 6E and 2.5G LAN are pretty standard these days. It's the inclusion of a Type-C 20Gbps USB port and four SATA ports that give the MSI a well balanced feature set for its $259 / £199 / AU$349 asking price. 

If I had to nitpick, I'd like to see a DisplayPort for use with a Ryzen 8000G-series processor. The single HDMI 2.1 port is the bare minimum.

If you're after an affordable AMD socket AM5 option, this affordable wee MSI deserves consideration. It does lack Gen 5 support which doesn't mean much right now, but might in the years ahead. It's sure to support Zen 5 CPUs and probably Zen 6 CPUs as well. Depending on what AMD launches, I don't think I'd go thrashing a possible 32-core CPU on any AM5 Mini-ITX boards, though, that might be pushing the VRMs just a little too hard.

If your SFF motherboard requires ports for storage, you want 20Gbps USB and you want a solid upgrade path, then this MSI might just have the edge.

Even though anticipation is slowly building towards next generation LGA 1851 motherboards and Arrow Lake processors, there's life in the old LGA 1700 dog yet. 12th, 13th, and 14th Generation processors will be available in one form or another for years to come, and a late LGA 1700 era board will remain desirable, especially if it includes updated controllers, a capable VRM, and optimizations for high speed DDR5 memory.

The ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi is a third generation LGA 1700 board. It's been given some tweaks and an upgraded power delivery subsystem that's better able to handle the even steeper demands of 14th Generation Intel CPUs.

At $279, the Z790I Lightning WiFi is quite fairly priced. At the time of writing, UK and AU pricing are not yet available. Even though they are not exactly apples-to-apples, that price is very competitive indeed when compared to the likes of the Gigabyte Z790I Aorus Ultra and MSI Z790I Edge. 

It's also worth noting that ASRock has released a B760I Lightning WiFi alongside the Z790I version I am reviewing here. The B760I version costs $185 and is very similar in terms of spec.

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi overview and specs

Despite its diminutive size, there's a lot to cover spec wise. In my opinion, the highlight is the support for DDR5-8600+ memory. That might not mean a lot to gamers right now, but with JEDEC recently extending the DDR5 spec to 8800MT/s, faster memory is coming in the years ahead, so that ability will come in handy. Most ITX motherboards get a memory speed bump from having just two memory slots, a feature that's common to high-end overclocking boards. Two slots will limit you to 96GB of memory, but that'll be more than enough for gaming for years to come. 

The biggest weakness of all ITX boards is a lack of PCB real estate, which means the board only supports two M.2 SSDs. One slot is located above the x16 slot, while the other is located on the rear of the board. Both support PCIe Gen 4 drives. The front slot has its own heatsink, while the one on the back does not. It's possible to install a drive at the rear with an integrated heatsink, but that will likely break compatibility with most cases. Given that, I'd advise the use of a low power drive in this slot, perhaps a Gen 3 drive or one used for storage only, so it doesn't overheat. It won't get much airflow back there after all.

These slots are joined by three SATA ports. It would have been nice if the board's primary slot supported a Gen 5 SSD, but that doesn't mean a whole lot right now in terms of tangible performance gains and the stubbornly high price premium of Gen 5 drives. 

The VRM of the Z790I Lightning WiFi is the most powerful I've seen on any ITX motherboard I've covered to date. It's a 14+1+1 phase solution with 105a stages. That will provide more than enough power to a heavily overclocked Core i9 14900K or KS. I would suggest that the single 8-pin EPS connector would eventually become limiting, but that didn't stop overclockers from belting out multiple i9 14900KS world records with this board.

A VRM of this spec and the demands of 14th Gen i9 processors means the board requires some beefy cooling, which the Z790I Lightning WiFi absolutely has. The two main sections are connected via a heatpipe, and there's a dreaded embedded fan. Luckily it was hardly noticeable during my testing, though who knows what might happen after a few years of dust accumulation.

There's a chunky heatsink with thermal padding on the rear of the motherboard too. ASRock knows that i9 chips are demanding and it's done all that's realistically possible on a ITX board in terms of power delivery and cooling. Well done, ASRock.

The Z790I Lightning WiFi is a bit lacking in the rear I/O. That tends to be a common theme among modern ITX motherboards. It's good to see DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports for use with integrated Xe graphics silicon, but the USB complement is made up of just six ports, with four Gen 1 (5GB/s) ports and two Gen 2 (10GB/s). There are additional headers for up to two USB 2.0 and three 5GB/s ports, but there's no sign of a 20GB/s Gen 2x2 port.

2.5G LAN duties are provided by a Realtek RTL8125BG controller, while an Intel AX210 M.2 E-Key card gives WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 support. WiFi 7 is far from ubiquitous in this price range. Audio is provided by an aging ALC897 controller and, honestly, I'm finding it harder to understand why manufacturers are opting for this chip over an ALC1220 one aside from the fact that it's cheap. 

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi performance

System Performance

Gaming Performance

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi analysis

Honestly, there's little to separate LGA 1700 boards from one another these days. The underlying microcode of LGA 1700 processors and motherboards is mature at this point in the platform's lifecycle. What differences there are mostly fall within a margin of error.

For my testing, I have used a Core i9 14900K with default out-of-the-box settings, which up until now has meant the board tells the Core i9 14900K to do whatever the hell it likes with few, if any constraints. That means these results end up with the processor running at its highest turbo bins for unlimited periods.

I did a quick test with the new Intel baseline setting and saw performance in Cinebench R23 drop from just over the 40,000 mark to just over 35,000. That's a big drop to be sure. I'll re-evaluate my methodology when the next generation platforms launch. For now, assume that motherboards with baseline settings applied would result in similarly small differentiating margins, assuming all the manufacturers follow Intel's default parameters to the letter.

One thing I did note was that the Z790I Lightning WiFi performed well in the 3DMark storage test. Is this a result of the board having fewer M.2 slots? Probably not, as the secondary slots of ATX boards are connected to the chipset. Still, it's better to lead the pack than trail it. Notably, ASRock's excellent Z790 Riptide WiFi was strong in this test too. Perhaps some ASRock special storage sauce?

I don't bother with CPU overclocking a lot these days, as the results are mostly cooling limited and not motherboard limited. You are free to overclock if you want, as this is a Z790 board. However, I feel the idea of heavily overclocking a 13th or 14th Gen i9 defeats the purpose of having a small form factor system in the first place, as you'll need a large 360mm cooler to tame it. In fact, I'd recommend not running an i9 K-series chip in a Mini-ITX system at all. A 65W processor with a relatively compact air cooler makes a lot more sense to me.

But there's CPU overclocking and then there's memory overclocking. A good electrical layout, dual slots and a mature BIOS are prerequisites for a really good memory overclock. I'm pleased to say the ASRock Z790I Lightning allowed me to run a set of Teamgroup DDR5-8200 out of the box with just XMP enabled. I have not been able to achieve that on any other motherboard to date. I was able to get to DDR5-8400, but without stability. I believe I'm at the limits of my 14900K's memory controller as even steep voltage increases and the loosest of loose timings made no difference.

A final shoutout to ASRock for its BIOS layout. I've always liked the simplicity and easy to navigate design of ASRock's BIOS. The sub-menus are intuitively named, and the important settings easy to find. It's got an easy learning curve for those unfamiliar with ASRock boards.

ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi verdict

At $279, the ASRock Z790I Lightning is among the more affordable Z790 ITX options. However, I have seen it for as low as $259, which makes it very well priced indeed.

ASRock appears to have aggressively aimed for affordability with the Z790I Lightning. It prioritized performance, with an excellent VRM and support for high speed memory. You can run any LGA 1700 processor you care to name, up to and including a Core i9 14900KS. In that area, ASRock succeeded. 

But in order to hit its price target, some sacrifices had to be made. Its USB support is quite average, both in terms of the overall number of ports and the lack of 20GB/s support. The audio is nothing to rave about, and there's no WiFi 7 or Gen 5 SSD support. None of these are deal breakers given the strengths of the board, but if you want a more comprehensive feature set, you'll either have to pay more, or fall back to an ATX option. The ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi is an example of a board that's cheaper, with a lot more to offer. But it's not an ITX board, so in the context of this review, it's a non-starter.

It stacks up well against the more expensive Z790I Aorus Ultra and to a lesser extent, the MSI Z790I Edge. But the problem for the Z790I Lightning isn't the Z790I competitors, it's the B760I ones. At $185, the B760I Lightning WiFi is pretty much the same board apart from bifurcation support for its primary PCIe Gen 5 x16 slot and the lack of CPU overclocking support. It still supports fast memory, and from what I can see, all the other features are identical.

If you can live without the feature list you'd expect from an ATX board, the little ASRock Z790I Lightning is a board that power users will appreciate. It'll handle any LGA 1700 CPU and the fastest memory you can get right now. It doesn't have the frills, but it's got it where it counts. Don't overlook the value on offer from the B760I Lightning WiFi, though.

So far only Asus has directly responded (via Videocardz) to the growing report of game instability with high-end 13th and 14th Gen Intel CPUs, but other motherboard vendors are sure to follow suit. By default, Asus automatically engages its Multicore Enhancement (MCE) system which sets the long-term and short-term power limits to way over the stock Intel values.

Delving into the BIOS of the Asus TUF Gaming Z790-BTF motherboard shows that MCE sets the PL1 and PL2 power limits to 4095 W, with a core current limit of 512 A for a Core i5 13600K. Those values are supposed to be 125 W, 181 W, and 194 A respectively, so it's not hard to see why this could result in problems. Up until now, the only way around this was to enter the BIOS, disabling MCE, and manually forcing the motherboard back into the land of common sense.

Asus has now added an 'Intel Baseline Profile' (IBP) that will sort of do this for you—after updating the BIOS to the latest release, head back into the BIOS and switch to Advanced Mode. There, go to the AI Tweaker section and you should see the option to enable the profile.

However, it seems that Asus just can't resist a bit of extra juice, because the latest BIOS for that Z790-BTF motherboard sets the PL1 and PL2 to 181 W when you enable IBP. The PL1, also known as the TDP, should be 125 W for an i5 13600K.

Long-term users of Asus motherboards might be wondering how is the Intel Baseline Profile any different to the 'Enforce All Limits' choice in the Multicore Enhancement options. Because if you enable that, you get the same PL1/PL2 values as for IBP.

In the case of the new profile, it all enforces current protection limits (CEP) for both the cores and system agent in the CPU, whereas 'Enforce All Limits' leaves them on Auto, the default for which is 'disabled.' What that means is that all of Asus' settings lets the CPU draw more current/power that it's supposed to, whereas IBP properly forces those limits. Apart from that for PL1/TDP, of course.

In the case of my gaming PC with the TUF Gaming Z790-BTF motherboard, the power consumption can reach 230 W but only in extreme tests. Running Cinebench R23, with the default BIOS settings, only results in a peak of 186 W, with a maximum CPU temperature of 72°C.

Switching to the new BIOS and enabling, the same test saw a peak power consumption of 202 W and a max temp of 83°C. Wasn't IBP supposed to reduce these figures to make things more stable? It is possible that it was a reporting error, but the indicated temperature is unlikely to be wrong, so it looks like it did use more power.

There are various changes underneath the hood of the BIOS with the profile, as it's not just power limits that are altered, so one of these may be causing this. However, using IBP did result in a lower Cinebench score, although it was only in the order of 6%—not that much to be worried about and unlikely to be noticeable in games.

The Core i5 13600K wasn't one of the processors being used by most people experiencing the game crashes, but if IBP makes things worse for all users of that chip, in terms of increased power and heat, it's not exactly the right way forward.

However, the significant thing to note here is that Asus still isn't implementing all of Intel's stock power limits, unless you go in and force them all manually. For the many thousands of PC gamers who don't like to mess about with the BIOS, let alone update it, the changes implemented by Asus aren't necessarily going to address the stability issues.

If you have been experiencing the problem, you'll need to get your hands dirty, I'm afraid—either update the BIOS and then activate the Intel Baseline Profile, or don't bother with the update, just disable MCE and set the power values manually.

For the latter, you'll need to go into the Internal CPU Power Management section. Once there, look for the Long and Short Duration Package Power Limits—Short is for PL1/TDP and Long is for PL2. If you're not sure what values to set these to, look up your CPU in Intel's Ark database.

I strongly suggest you do this over using the Intel Baseline Profile anyway because if you don't enable it and then want to go back to Asus' default settings, then you're in for some real fun and games. Just activating MCE again isn't enough, you'll need to set all of the current limits back to Auto as well.

If Asus managed to provide a single-click BIOS option for IBP, why couldn't it have done the same for its 'max limits' default profile? As things currently stand, I simply can't recommend using the Intel Baseline Profile. If you want a 100% stable system, then just disable MCE altogether. Your gaming PC will drop in performance but it'll be cooler, quieter, and more stable.

It's great that Asus has responded to the gaming stability issue but I think it could have done a much better job here.

News of the work was reported by ETH Zurich (via Sweclockers), the institute that carried out the research in question. If you take a look inside any gaming PC, especially a fully kitted out desktop, you'll see lots of large electronic circuit boards and many of the interconnects within it contain gold and other valuable metals. 

Extracting these from old boards isn't easy, though, which is why there's this kind of research going on.

Normally, to get hold of the rare metals, the e-waste is put into a large acid bath, which dissolves the materials into a solution. Floating around in that liquid are gold ions but how to get hold of them? Enter stage left, whey.

This is the liquid that you see when milk goes off, rising to the top as the solid curds fall. It's also a by-product of the cheese industry and since it comprises lots of nice proteins, it has multiple uses, such as food or health supplements. The team of researchers wasn't interested in bulking up, though.

What they did was take the whey proteins and use them to form fibrillar amyloids; think of these as being groups of proteins in long, thin tendrils. They knit together and once dried, take the form of a sponge, which is then placed into the acid solution containing the gold ions. Once it's absorbed as much as it can, the sponge is removed and then heated, to make a gold nugget.

The ETH Zurich report says that 20 motherboards were used to test the method and together they yielded a total of 450 milligrams of gold, worth around $30/£25, depending on the market. It's not 100% pure gold, as the sponge does absorb other metals, but they were in sufficiently small quantities to rate the nugget at 22 carats.

And best of all, this method isn't just a laboratory exercise: It's genuinely cost-effective according to the researchers, as the combined cost of the materials and energy required is 50 times less than the value of gold recovered. That means it has a far greater chance of being properly commercialised and scaled to the size required to tackle the vast amount of e-waste generated each year.

Cheese: Is there nothing it can't do?

Take a look at any of the good X670E motherboards on the market right now and you'll see that there are two AMD-stamped chips embedded in the circuit board; one so-called upstream chipset and one downstream chipset. Well, they're usually buried under heatsinks, so they're not always obvious. 

Some manufacturers will sometimes include another chip, just to expand the connectivity options. For example, the Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero has an Intel Thunderbolt chip for its USB4 ports. For its next generation of motherboard chipsets, AMD is apparently requiring that all manufacturers (via ChipHell) do this for any that will use the forthcoming X870E chipset. 

More specifically, it's being claimed that it has to be an ASMedia ASM4242 USB4 master chip, though its possible that other makes could be permitted at a later date.

X670E motherboards are generally quite pricey, with those already sporting a triple-chip chipset configuration being the most expensive. If AMD is going to demand that this becomes the norm for anything using X870E, then the chances of seeing a 'budget' version looks pretty slim.

If all of this is true, it does raise a simple question: Why hasn't AMD included a USB4 controller in its own chips? In other words, why does it need a third party solution?

It's probably down to good old fashioned cost saving. Designing and implementing a USB4 controller isn't quick nor cheap, and it's far easier to just let motherboard vendors use whatever solution they like to add USB4 support. However, in this case it's no longer optional so it will be interesting to see how many X870E board variants we'll actually see.

As to why AMD is apparently insisting on everyone using a specific ASMedia chip, that's probably down to the chipset engineers wanting to design something that will work perfectly, no matter what make or model of X870E motherboard you get. And the easiest way to achieve that is to limit what USB4 chip vendors can use.

If you were looking to upgrade your gaming PC to a Zen 5 Ryzen 9000-series configuration this year, you may want to set aside a little more money than you'd originally planned for. One extra USB4 controller shouldn't cost very much, you can bet vendors will hike up their prices anyway. 

Now, feel free to dredge this article back up in a year's time when motherboards with the connectors on the rear are nothing but a distant memory, but during my time seeing what's on offer at CES 2024, it seriously looks like these motherboards could make it mainstream.

If you're not familiar with the concept, there are two main families of motherboard mullet (party in the front, business in the back): MSI's Back-connect and Asus' BTF (Back-To-The-Future). One of which is a snappy name that might stand a chance of mainstream adoption. The other, uh…

Neither MSI or Asus concept is particularly new—both companies showed off these concepts back at Computex 2023. However, over at CES 2024 I started seeing a lot more of these motherboard concepts from PC builders, case manufacturers, and PC component companies.

Let's start with MSI. MSI has Back-connect boards and builds all over its CES 2024 booth. The three boards available out the gate are:

• B650M Project Zero | AM5 socket, Micro-ATX
• B760M Project Zero | LGA 1700, Micro-ATX
• Z790 Project Zero | LGA 1700, ATX

As for PC builds, MSI has a row of PCs all built with Back-connect boards. Two are of its own design, the Project Zero ATX Showcase, but it also has a couple builds from Maingear. Maingear is stuffing Project Zero boards with either an MSI or Phanteks compatible case.

Asus also had BTF products over at its booth, though unlike MSI it also offers a solution for hiding GPU power cables entirely. Paired with a BTF motherboard, a BTF GPU, like the Strix one at the booth, can make for one entirely cable-free case—until you take off the back panel, anyways. 

You'd expect MSI and Asus to make a big fuss about visibly cable-free motherboards. Yet heading over to Thermaltake's booth I also found various hidden connector motherboard machines, including a baby blue build to celebrate the company's 25th Anniversary that uses both BTF motherboard and graphics card. 

Thermaltake has designed entire cases to support these sorts of motherboards.

That's the thing: you can't use any case with hidden connector motherboards. Most won't have cutouts in the correct placements to run the cables through. Instead, case manufacturers have to explicitly support them, though it looks like they're more than happy to oblige.

Thermaltake's Ceres 330 TG case supports hidden connector motherboards. Admittedly it had other new cases that didn't offer hidden connector cutouts, but even one specialised case design feels like tacit admission that manufacturers are quite keen on the idea.

And if that's not enough, I was over at PC builder Yeyian's booth and spotted the PC manufacturer was planning a PC case that offered the cutouts necessary for hidden connector motherboards.

There was evidence all over CES 2024 that PC gaming manufacturers are onboard with the idea. Perhaps it's a touch of professional vanity—you can really make some beautiful showcase builds with these hidden connector boards. Though I can see these boards taking off with the general PC gamer. We're vain too, you know, and it seems this idea might actually have legs.

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PC Gamer's CES 2024 coverage is being published in association with Asus Republic of Gamers.

And I don't even just mean in terms of form factor—though teeny mini-ITX mainboards all the way through to monstrous extended ATX mobos impact what size case you can build into—because your board can come as festooned with LEDs as any mechanical keyboard of the past decade. And have a ton of aRGB connections on them, too.

Though relative performance between different boards on the same chipset has almost entirely plateaued, there is still a huge amount of difference between motherboards in terms of feature set, memory support, and especially power componentry.

We've reviewed many different boards in the latest AMD and Intel chipsets this year, and a lot of them have been very good (if damned expensive), but only three have a chance to win its own PC Gamer Hardware Award. And the nominations are...

The best motherboard of 2023: the nominees

The winner of the PC Gamer Hardware Award for the best motherboard will be announced on New Year's Eve. All three of these motherboards are in with a shot of taking home the big prize, so tune in to find out which one it'll be.

As reported by our chums at Tom's Hardware, the latest model in Asus' anime-themed motherboards is festooned with colours and images for fans of the influential mid-90s mecha anime Neon Genesis Evangelion or just Eva, for short. However, critical eyes around the Internet soon spotted a wee mistake on the I/O cover.

Instead of saying Evangelion Production Model -02, the main image on the product's page clearly shows Evangenlion. However, other shots of the motherboard don't show this mistake, so you'd be forgiven for thinking it's just a tiny design error on the picture. Except it's not, as proved by one YouTuber who bought the product and made an unboxing video of it.

At around the 2:30 minute mark, you can clearly see the typo which suggests that it isn't just a mistake on a webpage but a boo-boo running through the entire production run of the board. Sure, it's not a massive issue but if I was a huge Eva fan and wanted this motherboard to be the front and centre of my PC tribute, I'd be more than a bit miffed.

While we were musing on this typo in the office, Jacob drew our attention to another new motherboard, this time from Colorful. In the official PR material, there's a somewhat blurry image of the iGame Z790D5 Ultra board. Just cast your eyes over it in the gallery below. You might want to take an extra glance or two at the M.2 SSD covers in the middle of the board.

I know what it's meant to say and I dare say the low resolution picture really isn't helping, but you can't tell me that it doesn't read as 'love shat you play' at first glance. The main page for the motherboard has a better image for it, of course, but even then the choice of font isn't a great one.

So not a typo in this case, just a combination of a bad design choice and poor quality press images. That said, I do kind of want a new line of Shat signature PC components. Hell, who wouldn't want a Shat Radeon RX 7900 XTX Obliterator or a Shat Master 9000 case? The possibilities for infantile comedy would be endless.

The mistake by Asus may just give the new Eva-02 Edition a bit of a sales boost, just because of a few extra people wanting one for posterity, but if I wasn't poor, I'd be ordering that Colorful Z790D5 Ultra board right now, just for that M.2 cover. Yeah, I know how juvenile I am.

Just don't ask when.

As reported by Hardwareluxx, the fresh BIOS files contain the 1.1.0.0 version of AMD's Agesa software. This is essentially a checklist for PCs to follow when they first boot up, to ensure that the CPU, RAM, and motherboard chipset all correctly initialise. Any new processors have to be included in the lists, otherwise, the BIOS won't function properly.

In this latest revision, there are clear entries for Phoenix 7xxx APUs. At present, desktop PCs sporting Ryzen 7000-series CPUs are host to Raphael processors, which use one or two 5nm chiplets for the Zen 4 cores and a single 6nm IO chip, that also houses two RDNA 2 compute units for very basic graphics output.

On the other hand, laptops that have a Ryzen 7040-series CPU are home to AMD's Phoenix architecture. This is a monolithic design (i.e. no chiplets) that uses the same Zen 4 cores as in Raphael but with less L3 cache. However, the integrated GPU is much better, with models offering up to 12 of the latest RDNA 3 compute units for a spot of gaming.

In previous Ryzen series, AMD has nearly always made a desktop version of the monolithic chips, calling them APUs (accelerated processing units). Think of these as a cheap CPU+GPU all-in-one chip, helping to give PC gamers on a tight budget a way to play games without resorting to spending a fortune on a graphics card. For example, the Ryzen 7 5700G was an excellent APU, with much better gaming performance than any Intel integrated GPU.

A desktop version of the Ryzen 7 7840U, as used in the Framework 13 laptop, and the best gaming handhelds, would be an ideal entry into cheap 1080p gaming, and with eight cores, 16 threads and 12 compute units (768 shaders), it would be a good platform to expand upon. Whether we actually get anything like that is another matter entirely.

Motherboard vendors are clearly getting ready for some new AM5 desktop APUs. All we need now is for AMD to actually pipe up and let us know exactly what's going on.

Here's a surprise. The Tomahawk Max WiFi costs less than its predecessor did at the time of its launch. Apart from our exchange rate handicapped Aussie friends, that's less than the $319 / £337 / AU$569 of the non-Max MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk WiFi. Straight away MSI has done gamers a service! Compared to its predecessor, the Tomahawk Max WiFi features native 14th Gen and faster memory support, PCIe 5.0 M.2, and additional SATA port and WiFi 7. That makes the Max a no brainer purchase.

Still, $300 isn't what you'd call cheap for a motherboard. The Tomahawk Max WiFi compares favorably to a board like the Asus TUF Gaming Z790-Pro WiFi at the same price. The MSI adds WiFi 7, PCIe 5.0 SSD support, a more powerful VRM, more SATA ports and a larger number of USB ports, however. Though the Asus does feature 30W power delivery to its 20Gbps USB header if that's important to you. However, The Tomahawk Max faces strong competition from below. The ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi is an excellent choice for $50 less.

These Z790 refresh boards represent the best the LGA 1700 generation has to offer. In contrast to the teething issues common to Intel 600-series motherboards which introduced DDR5 memory and the complexities of the 12th Gen hybrid architecture, Z790 refresh boards tend to be highly mature offerings. They're more than last year's Z790 boards with a fresh coat of paint. Though you can update the BIOS of 600 and 700-series motherboards, a buyer new to the LGA 1700 platform should be looking at Z790 refresh boards for the best overall experience. 

But now, back to the motherboard itself. In my opinion the Tomahawk Max WiFi is one of the best-looking motherboards on the market. It's all black design with some subtle green highlights. I've never been a fan of designs with RGB lit logos that look more like billboard advertisements, so thanks for that MSI. 

MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Max WiFi overview and specs

The board itself doesn't include any RGB lighting, however, there are three ARGB headers and a single RGB header. There are eight fan headers too, so the Tomahawk Max WiFi will happily accommodate a system with RGB and watercooling.

The Tomahawk Max WiFi comes with a well balanced feature set. Its four memory slots support speeds of 7800MHz+. Dual rank modules are supported at 6600MHz+ while a full 192GB complement of four dual rank modules can run at 5600MHz+. That's a big upgrade over the support offered by first generation LGA 1700 boards and it's a good advertisement for the capabilities of 14th Gen processors.

The Tomahawk Max WiFi's storage spec is very good. It supports up to four M.2 drives, with the primary slot supporting PCIe 5.0 drives. The rest support PCIe 4.0. All are cooled by their own heatsinks. The primary slot is the only one of the four to be cooled by an easily detachable heatsink. The others are screwed in. However, the primary heatsink really lacks surface area compared to some boards. You'll need good airflow to keep a hot running Gen 5 SSD from throttling under sustained loads.

The four M.2 slots are joined by eight SATA ports. That's becoming a rarity at any price. Though the cheaper ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi also has eight plus one more M.2 slot, the Tomahawk's storage potential is still very good.

The PCIe slot complement is around par, as M.2 slots take up PCB space that used to be reserved for expansion card slots. The primary PCIe slot supports Gen 5 speeds. It's joined by a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (x4 electrical) and a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. Both are positioned away from the primary slot allowing you to use them unhindered by a triple slot graphics card.

Now we come to the VRM, and it's excellent. MSI has traditionally overspec'd the VRM of its Tomahawk models, and that continues here. The 16+1+1 phase solution with 90A stages wouldn't have been out of place on a flagship board just a couple of years ago. This board could even power a liquid nitrogen cooled CPU, so us regular users won't face an issue even with an overclocked Core i9 14900K.

A strong VRM isn't of much use if the heatsinks are weak, and they aren't. Though they don't have the huge surface area of high end or finned designs, they functioned perfectly well in my testing.

The rear I/O of the Tomahawk Max WiFi is a real highlight. There are a total of ten USB ports, made up of a single 20Gbps Type-C port, five 10Gbps ports (one of which is Type-C), plus four 5Gbps ports. MSI includes a CMOS clear and BIOS flashback buttons. You never know if you might need the latter to update the BIOS to add support for future non-K CPUs, or even a 14900KS.

You get a DP 1.4 port and HDMI 2.1 port. Though not relevant for gaming purposes, I like to see these ports included so you'll have options should you repurpose the system without the need for a discrete graphics card.

Most, but not all boards around this price incorporate WiFi 7. It's one of the highlights of this generation of motherboards. WiFi 7 is joined by Intel 2.5GbE.

MSI didn't resort to a cheap audio codec either. It includes Realtek ALC4080 audio with a complete set of analogue ports and S/PDIF. It's more about the implementation than the base codec, and to that end MSI equipped the Tomahawk Max WiFi with high quality capacitors and de-pop protection circuitry. It's tough to expect much more in this price range.

MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Max WiFi performance

System Performance

Gaming Performance

MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Max WiFi analysis

The Tomahawk Max WiFi is the fourth Z790 refresh board I've tested. I've been quite surprised at how similarly the boards perform to one another, even when they are left at their auto settings with a bit of a free-for-all when it comes to Intel's power limits and turbo ratios. But having said that, these are third generation boards. The underlying microcode and hybrid architecture are well known quantities at this point, and it's not surprising to see that the motherboard makes next to no difference compared to a CPU or GPU upgrade or downgrade.

In the system tests, the MSI threw up no surprises, though I did note it got the best result in the 3DMark storage test. 

A stable baseline is a good thing. If nothing else, a solid and reliable Z790 mid-range board like the Z790 Tomahawk Max Wifi showed that it'll happily mate with a high end combination like an i9 14900K and RTX 4090, even though such a combination will be rare in the real world.

Now its time for my usual memory test. As has been the case across my testing, I was able to hit DDR5-8000 but moving past that required unreasonable levels of IMC voltage. Soon I'll be getting my hands on a Teamgroup DDR5-8200 kit, and that's something that will require a capable BIOS to run properly. If at all!

MSI's BIOS has changed little since the introduction of its first UEFI, and why should it? The basic settings are easy to find, while it's advanced mode contains well labeled and easy to navigate sub-menus. Is it overdue for a new skin or a layout change? Maybe, but my thinking with BIOS layouts is simple. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

MSI MAG Z790 Tomahawk Max WiFi verdict

The MSI Z790 Tomahawk Max WiFi is an excellent offering with a high quality set of features that make it a very competitive offering in its price range. MSI deserves credit for not pushing the price of the Max version above its non-Max predecessor. That's a pretty rare thing for any product in today's inflation hit economy, so well done MSI.

A typical gamer needs to ask themselves what they value most in a motherboard. As the performance differences between third generation motherboards mostly falls within a margin of error, your choice will come down to features, aesthetics and if you're so inclined, brand loyalty. If features are at the top of your list, then the inclusion of WiFi 7, 4x M.2 plus 8x SATA, a high quality VRM capable of powering anything from the 12th, 13th and 14th Generations, and rear mounted USB 20Gbps port should all rate highly.

Looks are always in the eye of the beholder, but I love the understated look of the Tomahawk Max. Its splashes of green and the absence of retina scalding RGB branding and logos is pleasing to me. You be the judge if that's important to you. You can still add RGB to your rig, but this way you can do it in a style of your own without having MSI or Aorus or ROG advertisements in your face. Minimalism is not a common trait among motherboard makers. Though MSI, particularly with its Unify range, leads the way.

The main problem for the Tomahawk Max is not from above, but below. The ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi includes a similar feature set, but for $50 less. If the MSI included a front 20Gbps header, perhaps with high power delivery support, then it might have taken out our top gong. Still, its superior rear I/O and VRM make it a highly appealing offering.

Considering its spec list, minimalistic good looks and high quality VRM, its a board that should definitely be on your shortlist in the $300 range. It's the kind of solid and mature board that will happily sit at the heart of a rig made up of mid range to ultra high end components, and look good while doing it.

Some will say these latest Z790 motherboards are the same as their predecessors with a new coat of paint. There is a case to be made for that viewpoint, but not everyone upgrades every year. If you're upgrading from a system that's a few years old, then Z790 refresh models have a lot of appeal. They include the latest connectivity features, electrical refinements and support for fast memory for starters. And although many Z790 refresh boards have taken yet another step up in price, some boards like the ASRock Z790 Riptide still manage to offer a whole lot for your money. 

At just $250, The Z790 Riptide WiFi has features that make some more expensive boards look pretty average in comparison. It includes WiFi 7, support for DDR5-8000+ memory, five M.2 slots and eight SATA ports. Add to that PCIe 5.0 SSD support and you've got an excellent core feature set.

The Z790 Riptide WiFi is a clear step forward over its Z790 Riptide predecessor. As the name suggests, the latter doesn't include WiFi at all. The new model features faster memory support, an improved VRM, a refined audio section, and curiously, an rear-mounted embedded DisplayPort connector suitable for use with ASRock's 13.3-inch side panel kit. 

The Z790 Riptide WiFi features a simple all black aesthetic with a little splash of metallic blue and purple above the rear I/O. There's a strip of RGB LEDs under the bottom most M.2 heatsink which is very bright if you look directly at them. On top of that you get three ARGB headers plus another RGB header that supports 36W strips. There are seven fan headers, so it's a cooling and RGB friendly option.

ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi overview and specs

Spec wise, there's a lot to cover. The four memory slots support speeds of 8000MHz+. Dual rank modules are supported at 6800MHz+ while a full 192GB complement of four dual rank modules can run up to 5600MHz+. That says a lot about the improved memory controllers of 14th Gen processors and the electrical tweaks of Z790 refresh boards that are now better able to handle large amounts of high-density memory.

Storage-wise, the Z790 Riptide WiFi puts some boards at twice the price to shame. It features no less than five M.2 slots. The primary slot supports PCIe 5.0 SSDs and it comes with a reasonably high surface area heatsink that's attached via a simple screwless mechanism. That's becoming an increasingly common feature, and a welcome one at that. The other four slots all support PCIe 4.0 drives and all slots are covered by screw-in heatsinks.

Affordable boards with five slots are uncommon enough, but when you add to that eight SATA ports you've got a motherboard with best in class storage potential. There aren't many boards at any price that support that many drives.

A standard ATX board only has some much area, so with five M.2 slots, the PCIe slot complement is somewhat restricted as a result. The primary x16 slot supports PCIe 5.0 cards. There's a secondary physical PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (x4 electrically) and a PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. The secondary slots are well positioned, and won't be impeded by a triple slot graphics card.

The VRM is a strong one for a board at this price. It's a 16+1+1 phase design with 90a stages, which means it will handle any LGA 1700 processor you care to name. The heatsinks are relatively chunky, but they are not connected via a heatpipe, and I found them to get hot to the touch. Not alarmingly so, but you'll definitely need a good amount of airflow if you plan to regularly thrash a Core i9 14900K or 13900K. That's a combination that probably is not going to be too common with a $250 board, so I have no real complaints.

The rear I/O has a decent enough complement of ports. Though I would like to see a 20Gbps USB port, I can't really complain at this price. There is a 20Gbps case header, so that all but makes up for it. The rear USB complement is made up of two Type-A 10Gbps ports and five 5Gbps ports, one of which is a Type-C. There are also two USB 2.0 ports. ASRock refers to two of the 5Gbps ports as Lightning Gaming ports. It says they are connected to two different controllers with the aim of minimizing mouse and keyboard latency. Sounds good. I guess.

The Z790 Riptide WiFi comes with a DP 1.4 port and HDMI 2.1 port. That's in addition to the aforementioned eDP connector which supports 1080p at 60Hz.

Ethernet duties are provided by a Killer E3100G 2.5G controller. That's becoming a rarer sight on modern motherboards as manufacturers tend to use Intel branded i225 and i226 variants for 2.5G networking . The star of the networking show is the inclusion of WiFi 7. I wouldn't have criticized ASRock if it went for a 6E controller at this price, so the inclusion of WiFi 7 is very welcome indeed.

Audio duties are handled by a Realtek ALC1220 codec. It's a welcome upgrade over the ALC897 of its non WiFi predecessor. ASRock has added separate PCB layers for each stereo channel and there's impedance sensing for different types of headphones. Nahimic software is included.

ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi performance

System Performance

Gaming Performance

ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi analysis

The Z790 Riptide WiFi, when tested with a 14900K performed adequately. I did note that the bus speed ran at around 99.75MHz. In theory that'd lose you 0.25% of performance. Not that it matters. 

The same general conclusions apply to all Z790 refresh boards. After years of experience, BIOS engineers are very familiar with the underlying microcode of LGA 1700 processors and motherboards. Like-for-like systems are almost exclusively differentiated by small performance differences.

The ASRock did particularly well in the 3DMark storage test. Though not the last work in SSD testing, the two runs were both faster than any other refresh board I've tested to date. That's a cherry on top for the Z790 Riptide WiFi's class leading storage potential.

When it comes to gaming performance, the motherboard makes little difference compared to the CPU and particularly GPU. The Z790 Riptide WiFi won't have any problem at the heart of a gaming system, even with a 14900K and RTX 4090, as long as you have good case airflow to keep the VRM cool with that kind of combo.

Armed with a set of G.Skill Trident Z DDR5-7200, I was able to hit DDR5-8000 but couldn't get 8200Mhz stable. It's possible my kit is not capable of reaching those speeds. I won't know until I get hold of a DDR5-8000 kit, which I will get my grubby mitts on soon. In general, the board did everything I asked of it. Boot times were good—particularly compared to AM5 systems, and I've always liked the sub-menu layout of ASRock's BIOS.

ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi verdict

The latest generation Z790 motherboards begin at around the $190 to $200 mark, but those with WiFi 7 begin at about the ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi's $250 price. That alone would earn a compliment, but when you add to that five M.2, one of which has PCIe 5.0 support, eight SATA ports, a VRM that's a step above that of entry level boards, front 20Gbps USB and DDR5–8000+ support and suddenly a whole lot of more expensive motherboards look overpriced.

Sure, if you want 10GB LAN, a fancy OLED screen, an M.2 add-in card, or a gazillion amp VRM for ln2 overclocking then you'll have to pay more, but for those of you looking for a solid, mature and feature packed budget option, I find it hard to look past the ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi.

Would it be nice to have a rear 20Gbps USB port? Sure it would. Having VRM heatsinks with a little more beef would be nice too, but you can't have everything at the $250 price point. Admittedly, you won't be able to drop a next-gen processor in, but that's true of all LGA 1700 boards.

But one or two shortcomings are not even that. They're wishlist items. In the end, the ASRock Z790 Riptide WiFi doesn't miss a beat. It's a class leading LGA 1700 motherboard with an unbeatable set of features for the money. I have no problems giving it an Editor's Choice award.

Not everyone wants to buy a nuclear Core i9 14900K and a $1000+ graphics card though, so if you're looking at upgrading on a more worldly budget, a board like the Asus TUF Gaming Z790-Pro WiFi is one you'll probably come across. It looks like a solid pairing with with the excellent Core i5 14600K, for example. At $299/AU$609, the TUF Z790-Pro is still a relatively pricey option, but it costs less than Asus' ROG Strix and Maximus boards. The TUF Z790-Pro promises a good balance of features and affordability, and like all products in Asus' TUF range, it comes with a focus on reliability.

The Asus TUF Gaming Z790-Pro WiFi is a standard ATX board that features a fairly utilitarian design free of expense-adding bling and design flourishes. I'm not really sure I like the wall of text above the rear I/O panel, but it's not like you'll spend much time looking at it instead of your monitor. The board is predominantly black with some hints of grey. There is a tiny RGB section on the right side of the board next to the memory slots.

At a high level, features such as a capable VRM solution with chunky heatsinks, four M.2 slots, WiFi 6E, support for DDR5-7800 memory and two 20Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ports means most gamers will be covered with a decent core feature set.

Generally, the board is similar to the TUF Gaming Z790-Plus WiFi, though the newer Pro adds native 14th Gen and faster memory support and 30W fast charging via the internal 20Gbps USB case header. Additionally, the audio section has received de-pop protection circuitry and the BIOS has been tweaked a little. Note there is no Z790-Pro DDR4 option. 

Asus TUF Gaming Z790 Pro WiFi overview and specs

I'll begin with a look at some of the essentials. The TUF Z790-Pro comes with seven fan headers. Not a huge number, but it's enough for an AIO setup and a handful of case fans. There are three ARGB headers plus a single RGB header, a Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 add-in card header and support for two 5Gbps USB ports, four USB 2.0 ports and the aforementioned 20Gbps Type-C port with 30W support. That's a good inclusion for those that want to charge up devices a bit quicker.

The PCIe slot complement is good. It's made up of a single reinforced PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, a PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (x4 electrically), a PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot (x1 electrically) and a physical PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. That gives you a good level of flexibility should you need to install expansion cards. 

The four memory slots support speeds of up to 7800MHz. Some boards support speeds of 8000MHz or above, But 7800MHz is more than adequate for what is ostensibly a mid-range board. It's a good step up from the DDR5-7200 support of the TUF Z790-Plus. It'll also handle 48GB sticks as expected.

Moving onto the storage complement, the TUF Z790-Pro's primary M.2 slot only supports PCIe 4.0 SSDs. That means you're out of luck if you want to take full advantage of the fastest SSDs. The other three slots all support PCIe 4.0 too. Three of the four M.2 slots are cooled by screw down integrated heatsinks. There are four SATA ports consisting of two in the traditional side position, with another two located at the bottom of the board.

The VRM heatsinks of the TUF Z790-Pro are above average, but are not a match for more expensive boards. I could not read the VRM temperature via software, but I can say a 14900K under an extended load presents them with a challenge. They were on the hot side to touch, though not alarmingly so. Not that too many will run a 14900K in this board, but if you do, good airflow will be a necessity.

The VRM itself is decent for a board in this price range. It's a 16+1+1 design with 60A stages. That's easily enough for an i9 processor and easily capable of powering any other 12th, 13th or 14th Generation processor. Your CPU cooling will stress out long before the VRM does.

The I/O at the rear of the board is best described as adequate. The inclusion of a 20Gbps Type-C port is the highlight. It's joined by three 10Gbps ports (one of which is a Type-C) and four 5Gbps ports. That gives you just eight USB ports. Also, credit to Asus for labeling them according to their speeds, instead of the ridiculous and confusing official various USB names.

The rest of the ports include DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports. It's nice to see the inclusion of these higher bandwidth video ports. The omission of CMOS clear and particularly BIOS flashback buttons is notable, though not as critical as it would have been on a 12th or 13th Generation board.  The antenna ports are non-standard. Asus calls them Q-Antennas. WiFi support is 6E only, while the single network port supports 2.5GbE speeds.

The boards' audio is provided by a Realtek S1220A codec. It comes with high quality capacitors and a de-pop circuit. It's not a bad solution but the base ALC1220 codec is a few years old now. 

Asus TUF Gaming Z790 Pro WiFi performance

System Performance

Gaming Performance

Asus TUF Gaming Z790 Pro WiFi analysis

The benchmark performance of the TUF Z790-Pro is generally good. When comparing it to the three other Z790 refresh boards I have tested to date, It manages to eke out a lead more often than not.

Its gaming performance is strong too, though in the end, all Z790 refresh boards are expected to perform very similarly to one another, especially given the engineers have had ample time with Intel's hybrid chips, and the underlying BIOS microcode is mature.

Do note the the 14900K is a very hot running chip. Even my 360mm AIO was not sufficient to stop some instances of thermal throttling when presented with a heavy load.

Given its heat limitations, I didn't even attempt to overclock with the TUF Z790-Pro, You'll certainly have more luck with an older generation chip or an i5 or i7 chip, The 14900K is just too much of an ask to overclock unless you have custom watercooling, The same can be said of the i9 13900K too.

However, memory overclocking is an area that has seen a dramatic improvement. It's partially due to improvements in the 14th Gen memory controller, but Z790 refresh boards have been designed with the faster Hynix chips in mind. I was able to hit DDR5-8000 on this board, something that was impossible for me to achieve with my 13900K sample. That's slightly behind the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X, but that board is close enough to twice the price of the Asus.

Asus TUF Gaming Z790 Pro WiFi verdict

There are plenty of reasons to like the Asus TUF Gaming Z790-Pro WiFI. It's one of those boards that works equally well before and after you tweak it. In contrast to the early BIOS of Z690 boards and accompanying 12th Gen processors, everything runs smoothly. Its accepts different types of memory its performance is remarkably consistent. Asus' BIOS are rock solid.

I really like it's 30W supporting case header. That will make it easy to charge your devices at your desk, lessening the need to relocate your device to a separate wall charger. Its expansion capabilities via its variety of PCIe slots and VRM capable of handling a fully loaded 14900K are noteworthy. If the TUF Z790-Pro can handle that, it'll handle any LGA 1700 processor you care to throw at it.

But there are two significant shortcomings. Firstly, it lacks WiFi 7 support, which was seen as one of the key differentiating features between 1st and 2nd generation Z790 boards. I don't see that as a deal breaker as personally I have no plans to upgrade my home network to support WiFi 7 anyway, but the second issue is a bigger one.

That issue is price. The TUF Z790-Pro has some very strong competition in its price range. The MSI Z790 Tomahawk Max in particular costs the same, yet includes WiFI 7, more SATA ports, more USB ports and PCIe 5.0 SSD support. It does however, lack that 30W power delivery support and has fewer expansion slots, so it'll be up to you as to what features are most important.

Many people are happy to pay a little extra for the Asus name. If you do buy it, you'll be rewarded with a highly refined board that's happy with a variety of memory speeds and capacities, features good expansion card support, a quality BIOS, and has that 30W power support.

If Asus were to drop the price a bit, perhaps in line with the TUF Z790-Plus—and it surely will drop in time—then the TUF Gaming Z790-Plus WiFi will certainly become a more compelling option. If only it had WiFi 7…

Gigabyte's Z790 Aorus Master X is one of several new Gigabyte Z790 'X' boards. Much like it's predecessors, the Aorus Master X can be considered a high end board. Although the Aorus Extreme X sits above it, that board costs a whopping $999, compared to the still expensive, but far more palatable $549 price of the Aorus Master X.

It's important not to write off a board like the Master X as being the same as the non-X with a fresh coat of paint. It adds WiFi 7 support, which is one of those features that will remain relevant for many years to come. It's got new M.2 EZ-Latch retention mechanisms and a redesigned BIOS. But perhaps the most impressive highlight is the Master X's support for memory speeds of up to DDR5-8266. That's very impressive. There are surely some tweaks in the electrical layout to enable that. These are all examples of features and specifications that elevate the Master X over its predecessor.

Apart from the new features, the Master X is every bit a premium motherboard. It's got a very strong VRM and cooling to match, loads of fast USB ports (though curiously, no USB4 of Thunderbolt 4), Five M.2 slots, high quality audio and 10G LAN.

Aesthetically, the Aorus Master X looks the premium board that it is. And it's heavy. All that cooling plus a full-cover backplate makes the board feel like it's built to last. Its predominantly grey-on-black theme is neutral enough to blend in with a wide variety of builds.

Maybe the era of peak RGB is behind us, well, at least on the motherboard side of things. There's just one RGB-lit section atop the VRM heatsink adjacent to the rear I/O. I will say, the matte 'nanocarbon' coated finish of the VRM heatsinks looks nice too.

Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X overview and specs

Beginning with a tour of the board, it includes no less than 10 4-pin fan headers, with two thoughtfully placed at right angles next to the SATA connectors. There are three ARG headers, a single RGB header, power and reset buttons, a diagnostic LED, temperature headers and voltage measurement read points. It's definitely a water cooling and overclocking friendly board. 

The Master X is well suited to big enthusiast tier cases. It's an E-ATX board for starters, but the inclusion of dual USB 3.2 Gen 1 headers and a Type-C header with USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 support mean you're not going to be left wanting for case I/O support.

The board includes three physical x16 slots. The topmost PCIe 5.0 slot is heavily reinforced to suit the latest 3 tonne graphics cards. Like most Z790 boards, it will run at x16, but drops to x8 when the primary M.2 slot is populated. The bottom pair of slots run at PCIe 3.0 speeds and support x4 and x1 respectively. I hope Intel adds more PCIe lane support to its next gen platform.

As mentioned, one of the highlights of the Aorus Master X is its high speed memory support. DDR5-8266 is a particularly impressive number for a 4-slot board. Gigabyte lists only a handful of QVL supported 8266MHz kits right now, but if you have memory with Hynix M or A dies—even in 24GB module sizes, the Gigabyte should handle it, as long as the memory controller of your CPU is up to it. That's more likely to be the case with 14th Gen CPUs than it is with 12th or 13th Gen chips.

In terms of storage, you get five M.2 slots and four SATA ports. Six or eight SATA ports would be nice, but that's becoming less of a concern as SSD prices continue to plummet. The topmost M.2 slot supports PCIe 5.0 x4, while the others support PCIe 4.0 x4.

The M.2 cooling of the Master X is excellent. The primary slot features a chunky heatsink with what Gigabyte calls the EZ-Latch mechanism. The entire chipset and M.2 cooling plate is attached in a similar way. The entire plate detaches with one click. Masterful!

Moving onto the VRM. This is an area that separates a premium board from a mid-range one. It's 20+1+2 phase solution with 105a stages. Even if you were to run a Core i9 14900K under LN2 cooling, this VRM won't have any trouble. If you're a regular water or air cooling user, CPU temperatures will be far more of a limitation.

The cooling of the board is excellent too. I'm a big fan of finned heatsinks as it provides a lot more surface area over a block of metal. Gigabyte shows it can combine form and function, and long may it continue. During my testing, the heatsinks were barely warm to the touch, with a reported VRM temperature at under 45 degrees at all times.

The I/O options around the back are top notch. Almost. A board this level should include USB4 or Thunderbolt 4, but if you can live without those, you'll get no less than 14 rear USB ports, including two Type-C 3.2 Gen 2x2 (20Gbps) ports. The other Type-C port supports Gen 1. They're joined by seven 3.2 Gen 1 (10Gbps) ports and four Gen 1 (5Gbps) ports.

Additional ports and buttons include CMOS clear and BIOS flashback buttons, WiFi 7 antenna connectors, a DP 1.2 port and a 10G LAN port. The board includes a Marvell AQtion AQC113 network controller.

The audio ports consist of mic in and line out ports, along with optical S/PDIF. The codec is the now aging ALC-1220VB. A newer codec would be good to see. Still, the audio solution is very good, with an ESS Sabre ES9118 DAC and high quality components.

Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X performance

System Performance

Gaming Performance

Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X analysis

The Aorus Master X is a third generation LGA 1700 board, so the microcode is mature, and engineers have had a couple of years to optimize electrical designs. The main differentiating factor in performance comes down to variations in CPU turbo performance and power settings, and in the case of the i9 14900K, throttling behavior, if any.

My methodology involves leaving the motherboard BIOS as close to default is possible, in order to reflect out of the box performance. It's not ideal from a heat and power consumption perspective, but users are free to dial in pretty much any power setting they like if they choose to.

The Master X performed as expected, and outliers are not expected from a now mature platform. As you can see, the 13900K still puts up a pretty good show in almost all cases. My 14900K bounces off thermal limits a little too much for my liking. 

Did I say the 14900K runs hot. Yes, yes I did.

If you're looking at a board at the price level of the Aorus Master X, chances are you're aware the 14900K in particular generates a lot of heat. During my testing, even at stock, my 360mm AIO cooler was barely able to keep it from throttling. So with that in mind, attempting to overclock all of its cores is pretty much restricted to those with custom watercooling. The cooling of your chip will be by far the limiting factor when it comes to overclocking. The board itself won't break a sweat.

I was keen to test out the memory overclocking capabilities of the board. That is an area that separates the wheat from the chaff. I plugged in a 2x16GB set of G.Skill DDR5-7200. Armed with the superior memory controller of my 14900K sample, I was able to hit DDR5-8000 for the first time and run benchmarks. Pushing beyond that, even with looser timings and excessive IMC voltage wasn't possible, but still, It's a big improvement over my 13900K's 7600MHz limit.

Gigabyte has introduced a redesigned BIOS. It's a big improvement over previous versions. Most of the core functionality is the same, but the fonts and layout while in the advanced mode are definitely easier to read. The layout of the easy mode has been improved too, with all of the base functionality accessible from there.

Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master X verdict

There are a couple of different ways to approach my conclusion for the Aorus Master X. Fundamentally it's a very good motherboard. It's mature, its memory clocking capabilities are very good and it ticks most of the feature boxes. But on the other hand it's still a refresh motherboard—as all 14th Gen optimized boards are. That makes it all but impossible to recommend to anyone with an existing LGA 1700 board.

It will appeal to a user upgrading from a pre 12th Gen system. You'll be getting one of the most mature of all LGA 1700 boards. If you don't upgrade frequently, the Master X will give you the best the platform has to offer (almost). It'll happily chug away in your rig for years, giving you WiFi 7 and 10G LAN, neither of which will become obsolete for many years to come. You'll be able to pop in a next generation PCIe 5.0 graphics card and happily game away for years to come.

It's not perfect though. Motherboards over $500 are always a difficult proposition. Unless you need a specific feature, it's priced at the level where diminishing returns well and truly kick in. If you got the cash, go for it, but those on a budget will always get better performance by adding a faster CPU or graphics card.

It also lacks USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 support, which would add a little bit more future proofing. Just four SATA ports isn't ideal, when some like the ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite come with eight. The audio solution, while very good, uses the aging ALC-1220VB codec. 

Finally, there's no getting around the fact that LGA 1700 is now in the final third of its life. Once you upgrade to 14th Gen, that's it. Next generation CPUs will use the LGA 1851 socket, leaving all Z790 boards with no upgrade path.

Still, in the here and now, the Aorus Master X is a very good motherboard. I love the VRM and M.2 cooling and the EZ Latch mechanisms. It's got future looking WiFi 7 and Its memory capabilities have taken a step forward. It's absolutely packed with USB ports, including up to three 20 Gbps ports.

If you need to upgrade, absolutely do consider the Aorus Master X, but for those already using a Z690 or Z790 board, you're better off updating the BIOS and upgrading to 14th Gen that way. Whichever path you choose, is entirely up to you.

The full details on exactly how it all works were issued as a blog on Asus' website and it involves the addition of extra circuits and components that monitor the temperature of the DDR5 modules, feeding the information back to the CPU. If the RAM or power management chips are running too hot, then the board will tell the processor to slow things down a touch.

But if they're both under a set thermal limit, then the CPU will adjust its integrated memory controller, boosting clock speeds or dropping timings, to eke out a little more performance. At stock settings, DDR5 isn't going to run hot enough to cause problems, but those with a high XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) can hit a bit of a thermal wall. This leads to the whole PC becoming unstable and the only way to avoid this is by using plenty of fans or by reducing the RAM speeds.

DIMM Flex essentially does the latter for you by using a sensor on the motherboard, near the DIMM slots. The signal it sends out is fed into a discrete controller, which in turn sends info back to the CPU, telling it to change the memory settings accordingly. The blog post doesn't offer much detail on how rapidly this all works but Asus did show the results of it all in two benchmarks, Metro Exodus and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Compared to the default RAM settings, using DIMM Flex gave a 17.6% boost to the average frame rate in Metro Exodus, running at 1440p with the Extreme preset. Don't ask me what CPU, RAM, or GPU were used, because Asus chose not to say but I'm guessing (from how high the frame rates are) that it's all high-end stuff.

You can tweak DIMM Flex further, by manually setting what clock and timing changes occur, at the temperature levels you choose. There are three levels available for configuring, with Level 1 being the standard timings you've set up (e.g. stock clocks or the XMP profile). Levels 2 and 3 then kick in at higher temperatures, allowing you to fine-tune your DDR5.

It looks like DIMM Flex won't work with any DDR5 kit, though, probably because it needs access to the specific makes of power management controllers on the modules. At the moment, the list of support memory kits is pretty short and they're ultra-fast DDR5-6800+ models.

Marketing fluff aside, I like the idea of this, even though my days of spending hours on RAM timings are long gone. The ability to make the RAM automatically slow down when it's really hot, to maintain stability, is a welcome addition. It's a shame that it's only on the more expensive Z790 motherboards in Asus' portfolio but who knows, it might just become a common feature across all of them in time.

The Taiwanese manufacturer invited me to check some of its upcoming Z790 X motherboards and get hands-on time with the Z790 Aorus Master X, Pro X, and Elite X WiFi 7.

Extracting as much speed as possible from DDR5 RAM seems to be Gigabyte's big mission here. The redesigned BIOS of the Z790 X will let overclockers increase DDR5 memory frequencies with the help of an auto-boost that will automatically set DDR5 modules to the highest profile, increase bandwidth, and shorten latency, all with one click. The dual-channel DDR5 board will also support up to DDR5-8266+, which is pretty wild. 

Gigabyte says its exclusive back-drilling technology will reduce "signal reflections and timing issues" and enhance "signal integrity, improving system performance and reliability." It's tough to see in photos, but I could make out the back-drilled spots in person once the backplate of the board is removed. They are not quite holes but more like little bumps. We'll have to take their word on the benefits of the technology for now.

The new I/O design, on the other hand, does feature holes. Well, they are being called "vents." Gigabyte says it's for cooling efficiency, and this design has a temperature difference of up to 7 degrees Celsius.

The three boards are Wi-Fi 7 compatible and come with a redesigned antenna. Gigabyte is really future-proofing with these boards. For instance, the PCIe UD slot (where the graphics card goes) has been reinforced to hold our increasingly heavy video cards better and prevent them from sagging.

All the boards feature some variation of an EZ-Latch, which are screwless M.2 slots that also accommodate heatsinks. You can slot in the SSD and secure it with a latch instead of a screw. I got a chance to pop an SSD on and off each of the boards, and it was a painless experience, which made me question why more motherboard manufacturers don't do this.

The board that caught everyone's eye at this event was the Z790 Aorus Pro X, with its stunning white paint job on both the front and back. Apart from the alabaster coating, what makes this Pro X special is its Sensor Panel Link, which makes installing the board in a chassis with a built-in screen much easier and avoids unsightly cables.

If you're looking for a more budget-friendly motherboard to pair with an affordable Intel CPU, I'm quite impressed with what the Aorus Elite X WiFi 7 has to offer. Priced under $300, it presents a compelling option.

Speaking of CPUs, each of the Z790 Xs I observed is designed to support "next-gen processors," which, using my keen powers of deduction, are most likely Intel's anticipated Raptor Lake CPUs rumored to launch in October However, if you're curious, the Z790s will also be compatible with the previous 13th and 12th-gen processors. So, even if you don't have immediate plans to upgrade your CPU, these motherboards still provide a solid foundation to work with.

Naturally, Gigabyte didn't delve into specific CPU performance details, as Intel hasn't yet officially unveiled its new chips. According to recent leaks , the refreshed Raptor Lake is expected to deliver multi-core performance gains ranging from 8% to 15%. However, until we can test these motherboards and CPUs ourselves, we'll see if those numbers hold true.

Regarding pricing, Gigabyte provided us with pricing information for the five motherboards announced today, starting at $280 for the Aorus Elite X Wi-Fi 7 and going up to $1,000 for the Aorus Extreme X. We should anticipate more details on release dates soon; it appears they are aiming for a late September launch.

Perhaps the most interesting thing from ASRock's blog post (via IT Home) is a summary of performance estimates. It says it expects single-core performance to improve by 4% to 8% and multi-core performance by 8% to 15%. These estimates are mostly in-line with what we can expect without an architectural change. These increases are going to be due to clock speed and power budget increases, and E core count increases.

The ASRock post states that 14th Gen processors will come with support for DDR5-6400 memory, the fastest JEDEC-supported speed yet. That's a substantial increase over 13th Gen Raptor Lake's DDR5-5600 support. Of course, even 12th Gen CPUs unofficially support faster memory, but these speeds are categorized as overclocked.

This would point towards a decent improvement for the memory controller of 14th Gen CPUs. Universal DDR5-6400 support is not a thing to introduce on a whim. It's a good sign that DDR5 speeds will continue to advance. Look for a bunch of crazy DDR5 memory world records to be posted on the day of the launch.

And speaking of the launch, ASRock says that it's set for October. We'll know more at Intel's Innovation event beginning on September 19th. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is scheduled to give a keynote, and a reveal at that time is likely. 

ASRock has confirmed that 600-series motherboards will include support for the new CPUs via a BIOS update. This includes boards with DDR4 memory support, so you'll be able to carry your DDR4 over for one last hurrah before the industry switches to DDR5 completely.

H610 owners are in luck too. Like the other ASRock LGA1700 boards, a look at H610 download pages reveals support for "13th Gen & 12th Gen and next gen Intel® Core™ Processors (LGA1700)". That's all pretty much expected to be honest, but it's nice to see back and forward compatibility confirmed across the LGA 700 range.

ASRock motherboards will receive badges to indicate if they have newer 14th Gen supporting BIOS' installed. That'll be helpful for consumers.

PC Gamer will have full coverage of the launch. Will the new chips be able to take some of the spots on our Best CPUs for Gaming list? We love the i5-13600K. Will the presumably named i5-14600K dethrone it? We'll know in a few weeks.

The update allows users to run memory in the DDR5-7000+ range. MSI's press release demonstrates two systems. The first shows a Pro B650-P WIFI running at DDR5-7200, while the second shows an impressive DDR5-8000 on a high end X670E Ace.

The update in question, AGESA PI 1.0.0.7c, introduces some notable tweaks and bug fixes. It will be incorporated into all AM5 platforms, ranging from X670E all the way down to A620. The support for faster memory will be welcomed by some, but you shouldn't rush out and put money down just yet.

The problem is latency. Games typically prefer low latency over raw megahertz. AMD's memory subsystem functions best when the memory and memory controller run in a 1:1 ratio. A Ryzen 7000 CPU's memory controller is usually happy to run up to the 3000MHz range or a bit higher (giving you DDR5-6000 at 1:1), but moving up to DDR5-7000 and higher requires this ratio to be set at 2:1, which means you'll get a latency hit because of the resulting slower memory controller speed. 

According to information provided by AMD to Andreas Schilling of HardwareLuxx, The main tweaks to the BIOS code are an expanded range for the tWR timing, and txDFE / enhanced memory training. The timing of this release is interesting as it's been almost a year since the launch of the AM5 platform, but perhaps there's a simple explanation as to why this feature is coming now.

DDR5 memory prices have plummeted. DDR5 below 6000MHz will hardly save you any money over a 6000MHz kit, while kits at 6800MHz are barely $20 more. It makes sense to allow users to make use of good value kits, even if they are faster on paper than they are in the real world.

Of course, there are other use cases. As DDR5 prices drop, higher density modules become more attractive. 2x24GB like this G.Skill DDR5-7200 set, or 2x32GB kits are only going to take more market share, and updates that help high-density memory perform better are very much welcome.

Expect a flurry of vendor announcements this week as vendors release BIOS updates for their boards. We'll be seeing higher frequency EXPO kits too. Again though, unless you're running apps that take advantage of the higher memory bandwidth, don't feel as though you need to rush out and buy an ultra fast memory kit.

Having said that, I think it's time for a new DDR5 memory analysis article. In the meantime, if you're in the market for a shiny new DDR5 kit, take a look at our best DDR5 RAM for gaming picks.

The concept behind the ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite I have here for review is simple. It retains all of the features of its non-Lite counterpart, but drops the premium aesthetic, knocking $100 off the price in the process.

ASRock says the admittedly lovely cogs-and-wheels styling of the $479.99 Z790 Taichi costs a lot to make. I totally understand if you have a glass-sided case and want to show off your build, but once you add a graphics card, a large air cooler or water tubing, much of the board gets hidden. That's if you can see it at all. Many users with closed cases will not.

Historically, I've been impressed by Taichi boards. They made their debut in the mid 2010's during an era of RGB overload and seemingly every product had the word 'gaming' attached to it. ASRock's Taichi range bucked that trend with a typically excellent blend of affordability, a simple black and white aesthetic, and a solid feature set. 

In recent years, ASRock has elevated the Taichi brand to the flagship tier. Their cyberpunk aesthetic with its cogs and wheels and retro analogue kind of styling looks fantastic, but it also added to their prices, so in many ways the Taichi Lite is a return to the early days of the brand. 

Looks aside, the Z790 Taichi Lite retains all of the premium features of the Z790 Taichi. Its long feature list includes dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, high-end audio and VRM solutions, lots of storage capacity and dual LAN. There's no other motherboard in the Z790 Taichi Lite's price range that ticks all of those boxes.

ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite overview and specs

The Z790 Taichi Lite still has some RGB lighting. The white printed cogs and wheels combined with a primarily black design is not ugly, but it does give it a mid tier, almost utilitarian appearance. But you're anything like me and value function over form and value for money over excessive bling, this is a board that should appeal.

The Z790 Taichi Lite is an E-ATX board with plenty of highlights. You get a total of eight fan headers making this a water-cooling friendly board. Just below the bottom M.2 heatsink is a series of RGB LEDs, and there are four more RGB headers too, three of which are addressable. The board itself may be a little plain, but the ingredients are still there if you wish to light up a fully featured build.

You'll note the presence of a 6-pin power connector adjacent to the front USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port. Connecting power to it gives the front port 60W fast charging support. Without it, the port is limited to 27W.

You get dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots and support for up to 192GB of DDR5 at 7200MHz. The Wi-Fi card looks a bit unsightly, but that will be hidden underneath a graphics card, so it's not a concern.

The board comes with five M.2 slots, though only four can be used at a time. That might seem odd, but the twin primary slots can be used with either a PCIe 4.0 or a PCIe 5.0 drive. It means a PCIe 4.0 drive can benefit from the enlarged heatsink, while leaving the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot at full speed. When the PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot is populated, the primary x16 slot drops to x8. 

It's all a little confusing once you start populating lots of slots, so it's well worth checking the motherboard manual before buying the Z790 Taichi Lite (or any Z790 board for that matter).

The board also comes with eight SATA ports. That's becoming increasingly rare. Add them to the M.2 slots and you've got a ton of storage potential.

The VRM is a real highlight. It's a 24-phase design with 105A stages cooled by big chunky heatsinks. The Z790 Taichi Lite will happily power a liquid nitrogen cooled Core i9 13900K without breaking a sweat, and it'll handle any upcoming refreshed K model under the same conditions.

Moving on to the connectivity options, the Z790 Taichi Lite has a feature set that exceeds anything else in its price range. Beginning with the rear I/O, the highlight is the dual USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 ports. They support 27W PD and display connectivity. They are joined by two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, six USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports and a pair of USB 2.0 ports.

The audio section is top notch. A Realtek ALC4082 codec is matched with an ESS Sabre 9218 DAC and WIMA capacitors. It'll be hard to find a better integrated solution.

The networking capabilities of the board are a bit hit and miss depending on what you need. Intel WiFi 6E is joined by Killer E3100G 2.5G and Intel I219-V 1G wired LAN ports. These will appeal to those requiring dual LAN, but I'd like to see 5G, if not 10G. This would give you high speed SSD NAS support. I do understand Asrock's thinking behind including dual LAN over a single faster port though.

ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite performance

System Performance

Gaming Performance

ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite analysis

The Z790 Taichi Lite is built around a now mature platform. Engineers have had time to optimize PCB layouts, while the underlying BIOS microcode has a couple of years of bug fixes and tweaks behind it. This means Z790 boards should perform within a margin of error of one another.

For previous LGA 1700 testing, I have set the test CPU to Intel's default settings. In the case of an i9 13900K, this would mean a 125W PL1, 253W PL2 and 56 second Tau, however, this is a fiddly thing to set, with several settings to change and submenus to navigate. That's something most users won't want to delve into, so starting with the Z790 Taichi, I've left it and the other boards in the graphs above to their default settings. It's not ideal from a heat and power consumption perspective, and motherboard makers do take liberties, but it best reflects the out of the box performance of a given motherboard.

Onto the results then. The Z790 Taichi Lite throws up no surprises. It puts up good multithreaded results and its PCMark results and 3DMark Storage score show it to be a good all-rounder. There's little to worry about when it comes to gaming either.

I generally skip CPU overclocking these days. Cooling is by far the limiting factor and with a top spec VRM like that of the Z790 Taichi Lite, it would reveal nothing about the board itself. I did note the VRM heatsinks were quite warm under default settings while looping Cinebench. With a 60°C reported temperature, some airflow is definitely recommended.

Fast memory needs a well-optimized trace layout and BIOS. I was able to boot 2x 24GB of G.Skill DDR5-7200 at 7600MHz, though doing so requires excessive IMC voltage. My CPU just doesn't handle very high memory speeds that well. It's a trait I have seen with many boards. I think I'll need to plug a Raptor Lake refresh chip in to see if I can pass DDR5-8000. From what I hear, it'll be a lot easier, and the Z790 Taichi Lite is a board I'm sure will happily pair well with one of these future CPUs.

ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite verdict

The ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite is a refreshing change in a market that has seen nothing but price increases over the last few years. Spending $500 on a motherboard before even considering a GPU, memory and CPU is a tough pill to swallow when you can get a console for a fraction of the overall price. I really hope other motherboard manufacturers sit up and take notice. Sometimes less really is more.

It's a board that's packed with high end hardware. Apart from 10G LAN and some extras like a PCIe M.2 add-in card or integrated LCD, there's really not that much more to add. And boards that do have those things are definitely not priced at $379.

If you value function over form, the Z790 Taichi Lite is one of the best options out there. It's a flagship tier board without any unnecessary bloat that in many cases, becomes entirely useless once the case side panel is shut. Put simply, there is nothing else out there that offers what Z790 Taichi Lite does.

I am pleased that ASRock has somewhat returned to the Taichi's roots. Its rich feature set, less emphasis on costly aesthetics and great price are traits I'm all too happy to see. It's easy to highly recommend the ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite.

At the time of writing, only the US pricing has been announced. This review will be updated once UK and AU pricing and availability are confirmed.

But rather than watching piles and piles of the stuff grow, there are companies out there doing something about it. One great way to tackle e-waste is to recycle electronic parts, since they're an untapped source of rare Earth materials. Then, of course there's the potential for a complete change in materials.

Rather than coming up with new ways to fix things after the fact, semiconductor manufacturer Infineon technologies AG has gone back to the source itself, and is looking to utilise a plant-based PCB design known as the Soluboard. Designed by a British start-up Jiva Materials, not only do these eco boards "have a significantly lower carbon footprint than traditional glass fibers", they also dissolve in water (via ComputerBase).

The company has been working in accordance with the circular economy of the European Commission's Green Deal, and the WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) Directive, to research new ways to tackle e-waste, all without losing out on precious materials. What's great about this design is that dissolving these boards in water doesn't just break them down so their other valuable components are lost to the ether. 

"Adopting a water-based recycling process can lead to greater efficiencies in recovering valuable metals," says Jonathan Swanston, CEO and co-founder of Jiva Materials. 

"In addition, replacing FR-4 PCB materials with Soluboard would result in a 60 percent reduction in carbon emissions—more specifically, 10.5kg of carbon and 620g of plastic can be saved per square meter of PCB." That's not a bad set of figures if they can pull it off at the scale of current circuit board use. 

Right now, Jiva is working with some unnamed companies to produce advanced beta prototypes of the boards, but due to their simplicity and reusability we could well see these being adopted by big tech companies around the world, as we move into a more eco-conscious future.

Whatever Lake(s) ends up appearing in 2024, we're sure to be getting a new LGA1851 socket to replace the nearly two year old LGA1700 socket that's present on current 600-series and 700-series motherboards.

Igor's lab has been on a roll. Following its performance projections for Arrow Lake, Igor has now revealed a treasure trove of information regarding the LGA1851 socket, which will accompany not just Arrow Lake processors, but surely a generation beyond that. The LGA1851 socket will be present on Intel's 800-series chipset motherboards, presumably debuting in the form of Z890.

As the name suggests, LGA1851 comes with 151 more pins than the current LGA1700 socket does. The extra pins are primarily there to improve support for PCIe 5.0 SSDs. This means 800-series boards will support a full bandwidth PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for a graphics card and a PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe SSD at the same time. The CPU should support a directly connected secondary PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD too. 

That all but matches AM5 motherboards with Extreme chipsets. In the case of AMD though, a secondary PCIe drive can run at PCIe 5.0 speeds too, albeit in a x8/x4/x4 configuration. Current LGA1700 boards will support a PCIe 5.0 drive, but that means sharing bandwidth with the primary x16 slot, even with only one drive installed. LGA1851 is a definite improvement in that regard.

Now let's talk about the socket's dimensions, and what it means for current CPU coolers. The good news is the X, Y, and Z dimensions are the same, and therefore the motherboard mounting holes likely will be too. But the dynamic pressure maximum has nearly doubled, from 489.5 N to 923 N. That means LGA1851 CPUs will require more downward pressure from CPU coolers. In turn, that means many coolers will require LGA1851-specific mounting kits.

There's another interesting thing to note. Intel has faced some issues with bowing of LGA1700 CPUs, yet Igor's Lab notes that enquiries regarding transient bend strain should be directed to local engineers. This would refer to socket manufacturers such as Lotes or Foxconn. Though the mechanisms look mostly the same as they currently do, manufacturers will certainly be implementing tweaked mounting mechanisms. This should eliminate any warping issues which could be exacerbated with increased downward pressure.

It's a little disappointing not to get something like the LGA2066 mechanism with retention clips on each side of the CPU. Maybe it'd cost 2.764 cents more to make? Personally I'm a big fan of AMD's Threadripper mounting mechanism, but that requires an additional hex screwdriver and it'd never be implemented on budget B810 or B860 motherboards for cost reasons. 

So while the LGA1700 and LGA1851 sockets will look similar and have similar dimensions, they're essentially completely different in terms of CPU compatibility and probably cooler compatibility too. 

Upgrading will come at a steep cost. DDR4 support is to be axed, so if you buy a new Arrow Lake CPU, you'll need a new motherboard, DDR5 memory and potentially a new cooler (or at least a mounting kit) as well. AMD buyers took the pain with a similar requirement at the time of the launch of the AM5 platform. Though cooler support carried over from AM4, buyers were hurt by the horrendous pricing of DDR5 memory at the time. 

Assuming Intel sticks to its trend of retaining socket support for two generations, the good news is that 800-series boards with the LGA1851 socket should support Lunar Lake CPUs too. It's no leap to assume we'll see LGA1851 900-series motherboards accompanying Lunar Lake, though that's looking like a 2026 proposition at best. Start saving, even though AI might kill us all by then anyway.

A quick check of a couple of B550 boards on the Eclypsium list, however, highlights that they're still missing the new BIOS update, though I have seen the new firmware available for Intel boards.

After the Asus debacle I am waiting for a response to confirm that the use of a beta BIOS won't affect your motherboard warranty. 

In terms of what Gigabyte has done to shore up the security vulnerability, it has said the following:

To fortify system security, GIGABYTE has implemented stricter security checks during the operating system boot process. These measures are designed to detect and prevent any possible malicious activities, providing users with enhanced protection:

1. Signature Verification: GIGABYTE has bolstered the validation process for files downloaded from remote servers. This enhanced verification ensures the integrity and legitimacy of the contents, thwarting any attempts by attackers to insert malicious code.

2. Privilege Access Limitations: GIGABYTE has enabled standard cryptographic verification of remote server certificates. This guarantees that files are exclusively downloaded from servers with valid and trusted certificates, ensuring an added layer of protection.

Original story, June 1, 2023: It's not a great time to be a motherboard manufacturer. First, Asus risks burning up your Ryzen processor with overly aggressive voltage settings in its firmware (even the supposed 'fix') and now Gigabyte is accused of using the same sorts of backdoor techniques as "threat actors" looking to hack into systems.

The vulnerability has been discovered by security company, Eclypsium (via Wired), and points to millions of Gigabyte motherboards out in the wild with the same invisible firmware updating mechanism. 

"We are working with Gigabyte to address this insecure implementation of their app center capability," reads its report. "In the interest of protecting organizations from malicious actors, we are also publicly disclosing this information and defensive strategies on a more accelerated timeline than a typical vulnerability disclosure."

Eclypsium has published a list of the affected motherboards (pdf warning), but basically if you have a modern Gigabyte motherboard the chances are that your current mobo is going to be on this extensive list. There are reportedly 271 different models on the list, but I've not counted because the pdf file runs over three pages and three columns of pretty small typeface. Suffice to say, it's a lot of boards.

It also doesn't matter if you're running an AMD or Intel system; the vulnerability affects both platforms.

All it would theoretically take is someone on the same network as your machine intercepting Gigabyte's insecure updater and pointing it to a different URL than the standard firmware repositories. One of the worst parts of this is that, of the three possible download locations, one of them is using a plain HTTP address, not the far more secure HTTPS.

Eclypsium has stated that it doesn't currently believe there has been an active exploit of the vulnerability, but that "an active widespread backdoor that is difficult to remove poses a supply chain risk for organizations with Gigabyte systems."

It lists the potential risk and impact as follows:

• Abuse of an OEM backdoor by threat actors: Previously, threat actors have taken advantage of legitimate but insecure/vulnerable "OEM backdoor" software built into the firmware of PCs. Most notably, Sednit group (APT28, FancyBear) exploited Computrace LoJack to masquerade as legitimate laptop anti-theft feature.
  
  
• Compromise of the OEM update infrastructure and supply chain: Gigabyte does have documentation on their website for this feature so it may be legitimate, but we cannot confirm what is happening within Gigabyte. In August 2021, Gigabyte experienced a breach of critical data by the RansomEXX group and then experienced another breach in October 2021 by the AvosLocker group.
  
  
• Persistence using UEFI Rootkits and Implants: UEFI rootkits and implants are some of the stealthiest and most powerful forms of malware in existence. They reside in firmware on motherboards or within EFI system partitions of storage media, and execute before the operating system, allowing them to completely subvert the OS and security controls running in higher layers. Additionally, since most of the UEFI code exists on the motherboard instead of storage drives, UEFI threats will easily persist even if drives are wiped and the OS is reinstalled. The rate of discovery of new UEFI rootkits has accelerated sharply in recent years as seen by the discovery of LoJax (2018), MosaicRegressor (2020), FinSpy (2021) ESPecter (2021), MoonBounce (2022), CosmicStrand (2022), and BlackLotus (2023). Most of these were used to enable persistence of other, OS-based malware. This Gigabyte firmware images and the persistently dropped Windows executable enable the same attack scenario. Often, the above implants made their native Windows executables look like legitimate update tools. In the case of MosaicRegressor, the Windows payload was named "IntelUpdater.exe"
  
  
• MITM attacks on firmware and software update features: Additionally, the insecure nature of the update process opens the door to MITM techniques via a compromised router, compromised device on the same network segment, DNS poisoning, or other network manipulation. It is also important to note that the third connection option, https://software-nas/Swhttp/LiveUpdate4 , is not a fully qualified domain name, but rather, a machine name that would presumably be on the local network. This means an attacker on a local subnet could trick the implant into connecting to their system, without the need for DNS spoofing.
  
  
• Ongoing risk due to unwanted behavior within official firmware: Backdoors hidden within UEFI or other firmware can be hard to remove. Even if the backdoor executable is removed, the firmware will simply drop it again the next time the system boots up. This challenge was demonstrated before when trying to remove Computrace LoJack and Superfish tools from Lenovo laptops.

The whole thing takes place during the Windows startup process where the Gigabyte updater, without any input from the user, can go off and download and then execute payloads from different locations on the internet.

The fact that one of those locations is on an insecure HTTP address makes it easily compromised by a so-called Machine-in-the-middle attack. Though Eclypsium also notes that even on the HTTPS locations the actual remote certificate validation (the part that should theoretically make it more secure) isn't implemented properly, which makes them vulnerable to the same sort of attack, too.

It's a bit of a security nightmare if you're running an organisation on Gigabyte-based systems, though arguably less of a concern for solo PC gamers. But it's still not a good feeling knowing that an insecure Wi-Fi network could lead to anything getting loaded onto your machine without you knowing anything about it.

The recommended fix

The key thing you can do about it to help secure your personal machine is to dig into the BIOS of your PC and disable the 'APP Center Download & Install' feature. You can also set a BIOS password, which will also help avoid any future changes you haven't chosen to make.

You can enter your BIOS using the usual hammering of the Del or F2 keys during that brief startup window or, alternately restart your PC from Windows while holding down the Shift key. That will take you into a startup options screen where you can go into your UEFI BIOS.

We've reached out to Gigabyte for comment and will update as soon as we hear anything back.