Review ASRock B860I Lightning Wifi Motherboard Review: Is Wi-Fi 7 important to you?

[Admin]

ASRock’s budget Mini-ITX B860I Lighting offers good value and is well-rounded, but it lacks Wi-Fi 7, which its peers do not.

ASRock B860I Lightning Wifi Motherboard Review: Is Wi-Fi 7 important to you? : Read more

 

[HideOut]

Although the audio codec on this board is not the most up-to-date, it's still far better than the 8xx codex the many more budget friendly boards use. It has thunderbolt 4 and 2.5 gig ethernet. It also seems to be pretty well built and it's built by a company that should still be here 6 months from now. This is probably one of the best budget-friendly itx boards we've seen in recent memory.

 

[SonoraTechnical]

Although the audio codec on this board is not the most up-to-date, it's still far better than the 8xx codex the many more budget friendly boards use. It has thunderbolt 4 and 2.5 gig ethernet. It also seems to be pretty well built and it's built by a company that should still be here 6 months from now. This is probably one of the best budget-friendly itx boards we've seen in recent memory.

I agree.... ACS1200 is decent enough... Thunderbolt and 2.5 gig Ethernet are a surpise in a budget board too (though how budget is $200?) I'd would have liked to have seen 2x PCIe 5.0 nVME M.2 slots, but it don't think it's a show stopper for the 2nd HD in a system that is more long time file storage, rather than OS and Application launching. I'd have this direct wired, so the WiFi 6 would go unused anyway, so no issue that it's not the greatest WiFi 7 standard (my current stuff, modem, router, access point, don't even support Wifi 6 either).

If I decide to go Ryzen R9 9950X3D and Radeon RX 9070XT on my Summer build as opposed to Ryzen AI MAX+ 395 w/ Radeonn 8060S iGPU , this might be a good board to purchase to offset some costs...

 

[LaminarFlow]

Last year I was trying to self-build a NAS and was torn between cheap Zen 3 (A520) vs Zen 4 (A620) ITX boards. Zen 3 ones tend to have 4 SATA ports but only Gb Ethernet, whereas Zen 4 ones come with 2.5GbE yet only 2 SATAs. Either way I have to use an adapter/PCI-E card of some sort. Eventually I went for A620 and a 8500G. It works but still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

This thing has 3 SATA ports...what kind of monstrosity is this?😵

 

[thestryker]

I'd really like to see SATA ports dropped in the ITX format (honestly ditch them period) and replaced with SlimSAS ports because those can be dual use (SATA or NVMe). In the case of this board having just 2 SlimSAS ports would allow for one hybrid (4x SATA or 1x NVMe) and one NVMe giving more storage capability with less physical board space than the existing 3x SATA ports.

 

[thestryker]

I'd would have liked to have seen 2x PCIe 5.0 nVME M.2 slots, but it don't think it's a show stopper for the 2nd HD in a system that is more long time file storage, rather than OS and Application launching.

You're not going to see 2x (or more) PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots on the vast majority of ARL motherboards because the CPUs support 16x PCIe 5.0 lanes for slots, 4x PCIe 5.0 lanes for M.2, and 4x PCIe 4.0 lanes for M.2. That means the only way you're getting a second PCIe 5.0 M.2 is halving the lanes off the primary slot.

 

[SonoraTechnical]

You're not going to see 2x (or more) PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots on the vast majority of ARL motherboards because the CPUs support 16x PCIe 5.0 lanes for slots, 4x PCIe 5.0 lanes for M.2, and 4x PCIe 4.0 lanes for M.2. That means the only way you're getting a second PCIe 5.0 M.2 is halving the lanes off the primary slot.

Yeah, I know it's a limit with the current Ryzen architecture.... Threadripper would be different. LOL... Just speaking my mind.. Wish we had more PCIe 5.0 lanes available on the consumer grade CPUs..

 

[thestryker]

Yeah, I know it's a limit with the current Ryzen architecture.... Threadripper would be different. LOL... Just speaking my mind.. Wish we had more PCIe 5.0 lanes available on the consumer grade CPUs..

Well AMD has enough lanes for 2x PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slots and some of the 600 series chipset boards have just that. When AMD mandated USB 4 support in the 800 series chipsets that took one of those away. Given that Intel has a PCIe 5.0/4.0 split on their CPU M.2 lanes now perhaps that'll change to 2x PCIe 5.0 x4 down the road.