ASUS ROG Strix X470-I Gaming review - Introduction

ROG Strix X470-I Gaming Mini-ITX motherboard
The smallest fully packed X470 that ASUS offers for Ryzen 2000/Zen+.

Small is the new sexy, we review the all new ROG Strix X470-I Gaming. Oh you will need a magnifying glass alright as this is the smallest fully fetched X470 motherboard you will see in a while. The ROG Strix X470-I Gaming is made on a Mini-ITX form factor, that means you can seat a processor as powerful as the Ryzen 5 2600X or Ryzen 7 2700X onto a motherboard that is 17x17 CM. Amazing really, especially when you will learn it still has a fully fetched PCIe x16 slot, Gigabit Ethernet, AC WIFI, USB 3.1 and heck even two M2 slots. This X470 motherboard is residing in the high-end Ryzen motherboard spectrum. A breathtaking motherboard with extra overclock features, DDR4 XMP functions, and not one but two M.2. slots, one with a massive heatsink. Well, that and the looks to kill for, of course.

Yeah, Zen+ was launched in April, aka Ryzen 2000 or 12nm optimized Ryzen processors, the 'refresh' SKUs so to say. The new 12nm Zen+ processors will work fine with your X370 chipset based motherboard and vice versa, however, AMD launched the X470 chipset alongside these new Zen+ processors. The new chipset offers small improvements in combo with the new 12nm products. For example, to better facilitate XFR2 options. It has been a year already ever since AMD launched the first generation Ryzen processors. It had a bit of a rocky launch with the inter-core latency discussion a 1080p gaming performance as well as memory support. But the tide definitely turned for AMD as more and more people are considering to purchase an AMD processor-based PC, for their next purchase. The memory compatibility issues are mostly all gone, of course, we'll look at game performance in this article as well. But yes, things are looking good. The new 12nm processor generation can be clocked a notch higher. The upper range frequencies at 4.2~4.3 now are feasible, that also means that on the lower end of the spectrum, AMD is now capable to increase base-clock performance ion the more high-end parts. All these little tweaks bring the benefit of an overall faster processor series. Add to that improved memory latency and improved XFR2 ranges and you'll notice that the new ZEN+ generation now has become a really viable and more competitive product. So the ones that have not made a move towards AMD Ryzen just yet, now potentially could or will.  So if you go with a proper processor, you'll like want a proper motherboard as well eh? X470 will give a home to the new Zen+ procs, with socket AM4 and will provide faster DDR4 memory support (as well as all other modern usual suspects like USB 3.1 gen 2, SATA Express, as well as NVMe protocol based M.2 support and surely PCI-Express Gen 3.0). Today's tested motherboard, the ASUS ROG Strix X470-I Gaming, is based on the X470 chipset and thus its feature set. This board includes support for M.2-NVMe SSDs, USB 3.1 and comes with one full reinforced PCI Express x16 (Gen3) slot. The audio features a Realtek 1220 codec that improves input quality for streamers with a 120-dB SNR compatible with Sonic Studio. ASUS has fitted with AC WIFI and an Intel ethernet jack. The motherboard is a very feature rich product that will look terrific in any compact DIY PC build. The dark styled PCB comes with shielding and very subtle RGB light accents located at the bottom of the PCB.

Due to size restrictions, you'll get just two DIMM slots, supporting 32GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory, for 1st gen Ryzen up-to 3200 MHz, for the new 2nd Gen, that's 3466 MHz. Combine this motherboard with the Ryzen 2000 series six or eight-core processors and you'll be pleasantly surprised as to what it offers. Let’s start up the review, shall we?