Overall and Final Verdict

While the excitement of AM4 finally having ITX boards has gone away a little bit for me now, every time I use one of the AM4 ITX boards it has been easy to find things that could be improved. For a lot of them, it was because they hurried to get the motherboards out and others have just been designed to be a lower budget board for them at the time upcoming APU launches. Well with the Asus Strix X370-I Gaming I think a lot of that has changed. For starters, Asus didn’t even include display connections because this isn’t designed to be a small budget build board. This is their X370 flagship ITX board and you can tell.

For starters in the UEFI they have left all of the overclocking options available and while I think there are limitations on the cooling potential of the board this is going to be the best option for overclocking Ryzen in an ITX form factor. More importantly, they actually laid the power connections out in locations that are easy to reach. In fact, it's not just the 24-pin and 8-pin, every connection is right on the edge of the board and easy to get too. Good wire management will go well with the standard Strix styling. That means a color neutral theme and the built-in addressable RGB lighting under the board and on the M.2 cooler. You also get an original RGB header and a new addressable one as well to let you get creative with your lighting if you want. Of course, it all looks good even when the lighting is turned off.

Speaking of looking good, the M.2/Audio riser setup that Asus went with is awesome. They managed to slip in both a second x4 M.2 and completely separated audio without taking up any space on the motherboard. I also really like that the audio connections (while only three of them) all have LEDs lights inside of them that light up to let you know where they are and what each plug is. Hooking up audio is always the least exciting part about hooking a PC up. Especially at a dark LAN party or back behind a desk.

Nothings perfect right? Well the X370-I did have a few things I would love to see improved on. For starters, and really this applies to almost every motherboard, I think it could use a few more USB ports. USB 2’s would be fine, I just hate to have to use a USB hub to get everything hooked up. I do like that you get two of the new USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports though. One Type-C would have been nice though. For the wireless, the performance was good. But I was surprised to see Asus not use Intel, they typically use Intel on all of their boards. I also think the included antenna could use some improvement to be able to stand up on its own better and have a few mounting options like a wall mount.

As for pricing, well I wasn’t really sure what the actual price of the X370-I is. Currently, you can buy it for $229 on Amazon but when looking at Newegg they have it listed for $189.99 normally but it's not in stock. At either price, it is the most expensive X370 ITX board on the market, but with it also being the best board as well that isn’t too big of a stretch. Paired up with a current Ryzen CPU and a fast video card (if you can find one) this setup is one of the only ways to get an 8 core CPU in an ITX form factor. Sure there is an X299 ITX board, but this setup has a lot fewer sacrifices. The hardest decision for me is if I should build an ITX build now with the 1800X or should I wait for the second gen Ryzen CPUs, one consistent is that the Strix X370-I will get used either way.

fv5

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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