Gigabyte Goes SFF With AB350N-Gaming WiFi Mini-ITX Motherboard

[Guest]

Gigabyte has unveiled the AB350N-Gaming WiFi motherboard. If you have plans to build a Ryzen-based small form factor system, this motherboard will certainly be of interest to you.


Gigabyte Goes SFF With AB350N-Gaming WiFi Mini-ITX Motherboard : Read more

 

[DerekA_C]

looking like the sweet spot unless motherboard venders offer a passive or powered pci-e splitter type ryser thing for dual gpus in a mini itx form. a new gen of mini itx cases could be born from this.

 

[Valantar]

It has to be said: this board has a truly awful layout. That alone should be reason enough not to buy it. EPS connector squeezed in behind the rear IO, 24-pin, front IO and SATA all at the top of the board, and NOTHING at the front of the board? What were they thinking? Good luck fitting this in an SFF case with little room for cable routing around the top of the board.

 

[why_wolf]

It has to be said: this board has a truly awful layout. That alone should be reason enough not to buy it. EPS connector squeezed in behind the rear IO, 24-pin, front IO and SATA all at the top of the board, and NOTHING at the front of the board? What were they thinking? Good luck fitting this in an SFF case with little room for cable routing around the top of the board.

Agreed, terrible layout compared to the Biostar ITX board.

 

[James Mason]

looking like the sweet spot unless motherboard venders offer a passive or powered pci-e splitter type ryser thing for dual gpus in a mini itx form. a new gen of mini itx cases could be born from this.

That's called a micro ATX motherboard.

 

[Dr Croubie]

Compared to the Biostar models, which are the only other Mini ITX Ryzens around so far (at least, at newegg), this one looks both better and worse in some respects.
At least this one ditches the long-obsolete DVI and puts in DP instead, but then it's got no optical audio output so not much use as a good HTPC. More USB connectors (8) than the Biostars (5) is good for HTPC though (especially one where friends bring files on sticks to watch).
Hopefully they'll bring out one without the wifi/bt, although at least that's on a riser card so it can presumably be unplugged by people who care about security.
Not sure if anyone building an HTPC would want rgb lights flickering away distracting from the screen, but it'd probably look nice with one of my aorus 580 in there as a portable gaming box if they can make the colours sync up.

 

[warmon6]

It has to be said: this board has a truly awful layout. That alone should be reason enough not to buy it. EPS connector squeezed in behind the rear IO, 24-pin, front IO and SATA all at the top of the board, and NOTHING at the front of the board? What were they thinking? Good luck fitting this in an SFF case with little room for cable routing around the top of the board.

Its not really that bad.... Gigabyte has had a very similar ITX layout for amd board(s) for a few years now and overall its layout is fairly ok from my experience. Think it all has to do with what case your putting the board in.

GA-F2A88XN-wifi itx board i've been running since 2015 in the RVZ01 case has essentially the same layout as this board and in this case, i can zip tie the front panel and usb cable alone side of the case with no problems. Only major down side to this layout is the sata cables (almost all 4 spots i can have drives in this case makes the cables run from one side of the case to the other).

24 pin location, i can see how it could affect in some cases but in my RVZ01, it the perfect length from the PSU to the connector and runs between the PSU bracket and motherboard, So it mostly blends in (Although the air cooler inside my case just hides it all anyways.)


Now the one thing that I do like about the layout from this board vs my board is the CPU socket is farther away from the memory and PCI-e slots which is a major plus as my board has very few large air coolers that'll work with both slots. (Coolermaster Geminii M4 is one of the few. Most of the popular one however block PCI-e or ram. So you cant use both.)

ESP connector location is a certainly a con as it has been moved up from by board and im not sure why... Made it real easy (in my case) to run the ESP cable near the motherboard (out of site in the GPU compartment) and just connect it right there. Now it farther up and you have a more visible cable running from the top or bottom of the board.

Hopefully they'll bring out one without the wifi/bt, although at least that's on a riser card so it can presumably be unplugged by people who care about security.

It actually a vertical Mini PCI-e slot (the kind you find in laptops) that the wifi card is in and it is completely removable.

My board has a horizontal slot with the Intel AC 7260 half-height card and i can remove it and use it in another device (for the fun of it, I tried it in a old Pentium dual-core laptop (2008-ish) I had laying around with only wireless G in it and it fully works).

 

[Pompompaihn]

It's a little weird I'll grant you, but it actually puts the SATA and front IO in a -GOOD- position if you're doing an inverted board build, which an increasing number of SFF cases seem to support. The EPS is bizarre so I'll give you that, but compromises abound on ITX boards.

 

[artk2219]

It has to be said: this board has a truly awful layout. That alone should be reason enough not to buy it. EPS connector squeezed in behind the rear IO, 24-pin, front IO and SATA all at the top of the board, and NOTHING at the front of the board? What were they thinking? Good luck fitting this in an SFF case with little room for cable routing around the top of the board.

There is something at the front, its the mounting for m.2 in the back and the controllers and such for all of the rest. Its a bit of a convoluted layout any which way you look at it though.

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-AB350N-Gaming-WIFI-rev-10#kf

 

[warmon6]

It's a little weird I'll grant you, but it actually puts the SATA and front IO in a -GOOD- position if you're doing an inverted board build, which an increasing number of SFF cases seem to support. The EPS is bizarre so I'll give you that, but compromises abound on ITX boards.

Cant agree more! 😀

As for inverted builds, i completely forgot about them where sata location would make sense.

Guess my comment of "Think it all has to do with what case your putting the board in" rings true. :lol:

 

[plateLunch]

Don't forget. One of the applications of a mini-ITX is industrial where a PC is running a larger device. Connector location is not the biggest deal. It can be designed around.

A company I recently worked for is probably drooling over the Ryzen and its 16 threads. This board would allow them to fit a Ryzen into their current test equipment boxes. The only thing missing is integrated graphics which is used for bring-up.

 

[Wisecracker]

It's a start.

I'm happy DP finally made it to an AMD mITX mobo. Not sure why vendors don't go HDMI-2 when even the A-12s support it. Not that we can purchase individual A-12 SoCs at retail, yet, anyway (hint--hint).

I'm okay with the analog-outs (been passing multi-channel PCM via Y-cables for years) but would a coax connector be too much to ask for? The S/PDIF-out header is fine -- not sure others will be thrilled with having to buy yet another $15 bracket, though ...

WiFi? Meh -- would prefer 2xGLAN out back, but can see where others might be too cheap to buy a USB dongle
😀

C'mon, AMD. Let loose of some of those 65w 4.8GHz Excavators!

 

[jbheller]

"Don't forget. One of the applications of a mini-ITX is industrial where a PC is running a larger device. Connector location is not the biggest deal. It can be designed around.

A company I recently worked for is probably drooling over the Ryzen and its 16 threads. This board would allow them to fit a Ryzen into their current test equipment boxes. The only thing missing is integrated graphics which is used for bring-up."

There is integrated graphics, you just need to install one of the new A-series APU's

OEM's like HP and Dell have been making AM4 based systems since December, and they have access to AM4 APUs