Biostar Announces Mini-ITX AM4 Motherboards For Ryzen

[Guest]

So far, the manufacturers rushing to release AM4 motherboards to support AMD's new Ryzen processors have focused on the Micro-ATX form factor. Biostar decided to buck that trend with its new Racing X370GTN and Racing B350GTN.

Biostar Announces Mini-ITX AM4 Motherboards For Ryzen : Read more

 

[gggplaya]

Not really going to take off until they release Ryzen APU's. Just makes more sense to get

 

[epobirs]

The lack of onboard graphics on Ryzen chips makes it strange that they bothered to produce these, with no current product that can use the onboard video outputs. Unless the new ZEN based APUs are a lot closer than we've been lead to believe, wouldn't it have made more sense to release boards without video ports and more USB or something else useful? Or perhaps just a reduced price?

 

[Oneatopmedic]

@gggplaya seriously? I've got customers on hold waiting for AM4 mITX boards. Have several that want this biostar board as soon as it's made available.

There is PLENTY of demand for it. I'm sure I'm
Sure I'm not the only system builder with customers lining up for Ryzen 7/5 mITX systems.

Once Asus/msi /Gigabyte start rolling out their mITX boards I'll be getting one. Have an 1800x just waiting.

 

[MovingPixels]

@ ONEATOPMEDIC any word on those Asus/msi/Gigabyte boards? I was waiting for an AM4 Mini ITX, but I'd like to see a board that's a little more flashy, or at least has built in WiFi.

 

[Jagwired]

I must be an edge case. If Vega doesn't show up next month, I'll use this board with a Ryzen 1700 and RX 580 in a Cougar QBX case. The specs say it can handle a 95W CPU, but I don't trust it with a full sized graphics card attached.

 

[arakisb]

did they say when they will be available?

sorry if I missed it in the post

i checked all the usual sites, but no sign of them

 

[Nickygurl]

Biostar in a Facebook comment said early May they will be available at retailers.

 

[Michael_624]

Finally!!! I've been waiting for so long for an ITX AM4 board to drop, hopefully it does well in the reviews. The only things I dislike are the PS/2 port and lack of WiFi. Still, if nothing else drops I'll gladly pick one of these up as long as the reviews are k.

 

[warmon6]

Not really going to take off until they release Ryzen APU's. Just makes more sense to get

I really doubt that. There a lot of people (including myself) that have been switching over to ITX systems over the last few years for multiple reasons. Gaming, portable Work station, small foot-print case on the desk, Ect. (There a reason there been an explosion of gaming capable ITX cases since 2014 on the market).

If you start browsing around the web, you find plenty of people that have been asking for these ITX board before the launch of the R7 cpu's.

Now of course, the HTPC market is still a big area for the ITX board (where APU's make sense) but the other market segments for ITX boards have become fairly large and would benefit from having these more powerful R7/5 Cpu's.

The lack of onboard graphics on Ryzen chips makes it strange that they bothered to produce these, with no current product that can use the onboard video outputs. Unless the new ZEN based APUs are a lot closer than we've been lead to believe, wouldn't it have made more sense to release boards without video ports and more USB or something else useful? Or perhaps just a reduced price?

Eh... You could make a few arguments for both sides, having video ports and no video ports.

You could have it just like you said, without them, you could have more useful ports or a cheaper price for the lack of ports (because of lack of products to use the video ports).

For other people, they could view it as the ability to swap hardware to fit your changing needs (maybe you want a lower power bill and dont use the power of your gpu/cpu anymore) or giving someone a part of your system as your upgrading said part.

(could be the motherboard where you needed some features that your current one lacks but you'll still be using the same GPU and CPU. That new owner of your old motherboard can just a slap an APU in it to get it up and running.)

So you could view it a long term flexibility for the reason why they're on there. Or could just view the motherboard markers as crazy fools that dont know what processors are currently on the market. lol.

 

[warmon6]

@ ONEATOPMEDIC any word on those Asus/msi/Gigabyte boards? I was waiting for an AM4 Mini ITX, but I'd like to see a board that's a little more flashy, or at least has built in WiFi.

I've been hearing rumors about and ITX board from gigabyte coming around the end of this month to sometime next month.

Although I would take it with large quantities of salt until gigabyte announces it.

Havent heard about the others.

 

[gerald191146]

The lack of onboard graphics on Ryzen chips makes it strange that they bothered to produce these, with no current product that can use the onboard video outputs. Unless the new ZEN based APUs are a lot closer than we've been lead to believe, wouldn't it have made more sense to release boards without video ports and more USB or something else useful? Or perhaps just a reduced price?

It's for the eventual release of Ryzen APU's. Motherboard manufacturers are future-proofing their motherboards so that they don't need to release new motherboards just for Ryzen APU's.

 

[kinney]

I'll be placing an order for the X370GTN immediately. I really want an Asus mITX but there's no word on that at all, this will hold me over until that arrives. No reason to wait in the meantime considering this is $130. Got me an R7 1800X, 32GB of DDR4-3200 Samsung-B, Intel 600P 1TB SSD, Geforce 1060 Founders Edition and Node 202 ready to roll. Pretty odd combo but I use what I like best and I got the FE at a fair price. Can't wait to test it all out.

 

[jbheller]

I can't wait to see the ITX motherboards actually ship. It does concern me that there is basically nothing to differentiate between the X370 and B350 models though. The boards seem to have identical features.

You can't run two graphics cards on an iTX system, so what else would be the advantage.

I would like to see an AM4 ITX board with more SATA ports and a raid controller card that is on the Hardware Compatibility List for VMware. You could ditch the x16 slot to make room for more 2 more RAM slots, add ECC support to the board (as Ryzen supports ECC). This could be used with an APU, or you could put a basic video card like an RX300 on the motherboard to drive a video output port. This would get great with something like an Ryzen 7 1700 chip. Lots of threads, lots of speed and ECC ram support for 32 or 64 gigs of RAM

 

[albundyhere]

when are new motherboards coming out? its been the same 25-30 motherboards to choose from on eggy since ryzen came out. is this it until the next chipset?

 

[Tobiaswik]

Me too are excited for a Ryzen mITX board. I would like to have built in wifi but if not any other manufacturer will show off and release boards soon I'll have to settle for one of these.

 

[DerekA_C]

I want to see 5Gbe or 10Gbe, screw wifi for gaming it is so unpredictable and unreliable specially if you are really competitive in gaming. So as the x370 chipset is for overclocking and gaming focused, who would use an APU for gaming on an enthusiast chipset? a MORON that is who. @JAGWIRED Yes the PCIe slot can handle whatever GPU you put in it, the most powerful GPU's are powered solely by the PSU I have am3 itx that runs hd6950 pretty power hungry with a 6core cpu at 95watt that pulls more then 95watts I assure you and that thing is old. Some people here that have commented kind of silly like probably shouldn't build a pc and if you just want an HTPC wait for 320 chipset or get the 350 and wait for your apu or better yet wait for THIN ITX ever heard of them they are designed for tiny tiny cases the size of a few DVD cases stacked. Enthusiast overclocking like x370 and focus on higher frequencies of ram and such FOR GAMING. I personally want MSI and please MSI DO NOT put killer network on your high end itx's or you lost me, as I currently have z97 itx with killer and Intel wifi I do not use the wifi and I do not use the killer software it's just garbage.

 

[bhillyer70]

Just read over both data sheets (in word .docx btw?) and couldn't find a difference. The first articles on these weeks ago, mentioned the X370 would have M.2 at 32, and B350 at 16 speeds. The new data sheets from Biostar's website are showing both at 32. It looks like these were rushed sheets though, lots of spacing and several spelling issues per sheet.

I'm building a custom watercooled AIO, Node 202 video editing rig, so having a dedicated GPU is a must. Many of us have been looking for something like this. Especially since the X300 ITX chipset is supposedly with USB 3.1 Gen 2. Looks like I'll have to use USB wifi though.

 

[SpeedEnforcedByAircraft]

I'm silently praying that the X370 version isn't just an overkill chipset on the board. Instead, wouldn't it be really cool if it supported slot bifurcation, and with the right riser cable turned 1 PCIe x16 slot into 2 PCIe x8 slots that you could then SLI/Crossfire? That would be gorgeous on a Mini ITX case with 4 slots like the Lian Li PC-05S. Slap some hard tubing in there and you'll smoke Digital Storm's Bolt, made from the same chassis.

 

[chinaman]

Currently, the ITX motherboard is what's holding me back for a full blown upgrade to a Ryzen CPU preferably the R5 or the R3, just waiting for the right time and until they sort out all the issues regarding memory incompatibilities.

 

[spdragoo]

Not really going to take off until they release Ryzen APU's. Just makes more sense to get

they don't need to wait for the Ryzen APUs, there are already APUs out for Socket AM4/DDR4 systems:

http://www.amd.com/en-us/solutions/desktops/business

Look at the bottom of the page. Even the "previous generation" (6th-gen) A12-8870 they list is a Socket AM4 CPU with a DDR4 RAM controller.

Or, you can go here (http://products.amd.com/en-us/search/apu/amd-pro-a-series-processors) & filter out only the Socket AM4 chips, & find 8 options already available.

The only limitation I'm finding, however, is that I can't seem to find any place online that sells the CPUs by themselves...but I can find a lot of prebuilt systems that use these chips.

 

[Glock24]

I've been waiting for Mini-ITX boards since Ryzen was announced. I have some client's computers that need upgrading and this would be awesome. I would settle for one of these boards of the reviews are favorable. I would even settle with a Bristol Ridge APU if they would actually be available.

BTW, the two models are actually identical, save for the chipset. So according to Biostar, the difference is only to lure some naive users into buying the more expensive model, even though it'll make absolutely no difference.

 

[Glock24]

Duplicate post, please delete.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

I want one of the ITX boards , but from one of the big manufactures.

 

[falchard]

The m-itx layout makes a bit more sense with the integrated gpu. I suspect other board makers will be bringing them out with the APUs. Still kudos to Biostar for going all in on AM4. Very complete product stack and on release had sufficient supply. Next computer I make will be using a Biostar board.