Where have all the small boards gone? Long time passing.

[trents]

Those of you who have been around for awhile might recognize the parody of my subject line with regard to an old Kingsont Trio tune.

Seriously, though. There are only a handful of mATX and mini ITX X570 motherboards available to date. I count four total on NewEgg and only one of those is mATX. Why is that? Been enough time now to get those out in my opinion.

 

[Alaric]

It seems that SFF boards in general have been on the decline for a while. With so many features being "standard" fare anymore I wonder if bigger boards are just pushing the little ones out. Then again, my exposure to this is mostly limited to OCF, so I could be way off.

 

[mackerel]

Haven't seen higher end microATX boards in a while. Not to say they can't exist, just that you don't get much space saving. X570 is supposed to be a high end chipset. How many features are you willing to give up for a slightly smaller board?

While a similar argument could be made for ITX, the size is smaller enough to make a real difference, filling a niche.

I think more smaller boards will be available once the lower 500 series chipsets come out.

 

[trents]

Haven't seen higher end microATX boards in a while. Not to say they can't exist, just that you don't get much space saving. X570 is supposed to be a high end chipset. How many features are you willing to give up for a slightly smaller board?

While a similar argument could be made for ITX, the size is smaller enough to make a real difference, filling a niche.

I think more smaller boards will be available once the lower 500 series chipsets come out.

But why is this taking so long? I mean we already have lower end Ryzen 3xxx chips out and have for a while. And running them on 400 series chipset boards has proved to be problematic for many.

 

[mackerel]

What problems are we talking about here? About the only hurdle is the gamble if older chipset boards have a new enough bios to support Zen 2 without fuss. The odd incompatibility here or there is nothing new with any mix and match hardware.

Anything lower than a 3500 is Zen+ so wont really make any use of PCIe 4 and there's no meaningful benefit to having 500 chipset. Even for 3500 and up, about the only new selling point is PCIe 4. A nice to have for sure, but far from being a must have, and wont be for a while outside of specific use cases. Taking that into consideration, lower 500 chipset might start making more sense with the 4000 series APUs as they can take advantage of PCIe 4.0 then.

 

[trents]

Even with newer bioses for Zen 2 there are plenty of folks having compatibility issues with 400 chipset boards unless something has changed. And I would think the Zen 2 chips would be more likely to attain their rated frequencies on boards made for them.

 

[mackerel]

I ask again, what problems specifically?

Requiring a firmware update to support the CPU is a side effect of AMD's implementation so not a surprise.

Ram compatibility was and always will be a thing regardless if it is Zen/old chipset, Zen 2/old chipset, Zen 2 + 500 chipset. Likewise the boost thing doesn't seem to be limited to Zen 2 on old chipset.

I'm hearing things about 1.0.0.4 but I'm not sure if that is even a full release yet, and again it seems to also impact 500 chipset as well as older...

 

[Woomack]

It seems that SFF boards in general have been on the decline for a while. With so many features being "standard" fare anymore I wonder if bigger boards are just pushing the little ones out. Then again, my exposure to this is mostly limited to OCF, so I could be way off.

I wouldn't say so. There are more ITX/mATX mobos each year and more users are interested in SFF. The only problem is to put everything on a small PCB so all depends on used chipset and if manufacturers want to waste time on expensive project.
There were a lot of ITX boards for Intel CPUs from every brand, also for the AM4 300/400 series. Each generation in the last couple of years there were cheap and expensive motherboards. There was even the X299 ITX mobo. X399 couldn't be installed on so small PCB, but it was released on the mATX.

But why is this taking so long? I mean we already have lower end Ryzen 3xxx chips out and have for a while. And running them on 400 series chipset boards has proved to be problematic for many.

Even with newer bioses for Zen 2 there are plenty of folks having compatibility issues with 400 chipset boards unless something has changed. And I would think the Zen 2 chips would be more likely to attain their rated frequencies on boards made for them.

300/400 chipsets were not designed for 3k Ryzens. When AMD released them then they didn't know full requirements of new chips. In theory, it should work but in reality, a lot depends on the motherboard design and manufacturer. Some care to fully support older products, some want to sell new products.

I have no idea why AMD is waiting with lower 500 series chipsets. They would already sell a lot of motherboards (maybe not them directly).
On the market are barely any ITX mobos on the X570 chipset because of how hard is to make it compared to expected profits. The X570 heats up a lot so not all manufacturers decided to release ITX size boards on this chipset. There is one ASRock - a weird design that has problems with cooler compatibility, and one Gigabyte. Actually, I was surprised how well it works as most Gigabyte boards that I was testing in the last two years were disappointing. ASUS decided to release one Strix in ITX size but I haven't seen it in stores even though was on the list 3 months ago. There is also one STX ASUS which is pretty much ITX with wider PCB by 1 PCIE slot. Except the Strix, I had a chance to test all of them so if you have any questions then just ask.
From mATX X570 boards there is only ASRock which has mixed reviews.

I'm hearing things about 1.0.0.4 but I'm not sure if that is even a full release yet, and again it seems to also impact 500 chipset as well as older...

It's officially out and looks like already with an additional fix as mobos get 1.0.0.4 "patch b" AGESA. I see no difference on my ASUS but it adds new APU support or maybe is fixing some issues with APUs.

 

[trents]

I wouldn't say so. There are more ITX/mATX mobos each year and more users are interested in SFF. The only problem is to put everything on a small PCB so all depends on used chipset and if manufacturers want to waste time on expensive project.
There were a lot of ITX boards for Intel CPUs from every brand, also for the AM4 300/400 series. Each generation in the last couple of years there were cheap and expensive motherboards. There was even the X299 ITX mobo. X399 couldn't be installed on so small PCB, but it was released on the mATX.






300/400 chipsets were not designed for 3k Ryzens. When AMD released them then they didn't know full requirements of new chips. In theory, it should work but in reality, a lot depends on the motherboard design and manufacturer. Some care to fully support older products, some want to sell new products.

I have no idea why AMD is waiting with lower 500 series chipsets. They would already sell a lot of motherboards (maybe not them directly).
On the market are barely any ITX mobos on the X570 chipset because of how hard is to make it compared to expected profits. The X570 heats up a lot so not all manufacturers decided to release ITX size boards on this chipset. There is one ASRock - a weird design that has problems with cooler compatibility, and one Gigabyte. Actually, I was surprised how well it works as most Gigabyte boards that I was testing in the last two years were disappointing. ASUS decided to release one Strix in ITX size but I haven't seen it in stores even though was on the list 3 months ago. There is also one STX ASUS which is pretty much ITX with wider PCB by 1 PCIE slot. Except the Strix, I had a chance to test all of them so if you have any questions then just ask.
From mATX X570 boards there is only ASRock which has mixed reviews.



It's officially out and looks like already with an additional fix as mobos get 1.0.0.4 "patch b" AGESA. I see no difference on my ASUS but it adds new APU support or maybe is fixing some issues with APUs.

Good answer. I had some of the same thoughts but wanted to hear others' opinions. I also think one issue in producing the small boards was the extra space required by the chipset fan. As far as power requirements, I would think the 4 core APUs and the 6 core Zen 2 CPUs might not pose that problem. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there who would like to build a mini ITX or HTPC SFF box using the newer Zen chip family but who don't need 8+ cores.

 

[Woomack]

The main problem is X570 chipset. Even larger motherboards have problems with cooling and all of them require fans which were already disappearing from even higher OC series motherboards. The chipset heats up more when more PCIE lanes are in use. On ATX motherboards usually, graphics card slots are next to the chipset heatsink so if there is something that is heating up a lot then also chipset fan will spin faster and cause the noise. On available ITX motherboards, there is no problem like that but because of small PCB, chipset heatsinks are tall. For me, ASRock failed that because they used unnecessarily tall heatsinks and because of that is not possible to install maybe 90% of available cooling solutions on the market.
Even though ITX supposed to cause more problems with cooling then users mostly complain at full ATX motherboards. All ITX/STX X570 motherboards are well designed regarding power delivery or components cooling. Even Gigabyte with 2x M.2 PCIE (above and under the chipset) had no problems with overheating.
I assume that lower AMD chipset won't have problems with high temps and we will see more ITX motherboards.

I have no idea how TDP will look in real for APUs. I was checking 3600, 3600X, 3700X and 3900X. All 6-8 cores had about the same temps +/- 1-2°C (can be an error margin) while the 3900X had 6°C more on the same coolers. The TDP supposed to be 65-105W but in reality, it was more like 150W+. Power usage is more like 150-200W, depends on the chip. I just don't know if AMD releases real 65-95W TDP APUs or will be next 130W+.

 

[mackerel]

I have no idea how TDP will look in real for APUs. I was checking 3600, 3600X, 3700X and 3900X. All 6-8 cores had about the same temps +/- 1-2°C (can be an error margin) while the 3900X had 6°C more on the same coolers. The TDP supposed to be 65-105W but in reality, it was more like 150W+. Power usage is more like 150-200W, depends on the chip. I just don't know if AMD releases real 65-95W TDP APUs or will be next 130W+.

AMD are doing the same thing as Intel. TDP is not indicative of max power draw. For 65W TDP parts, there is a PPT power limit of 88W, and practically unlimited with PBO on. Similar for higher TDP parts, and I assume same for APUs too but I never owned one. The fixed PPT is why same TDP models end up about the same temps, since they're running the same power limit.