Looking for a good ITX motherboard

[Axel1]

Hi guys,

 

Going to build a SFF PC soon, and as much as my general knowledge goes, it kinda stops at motherboards.

I need a good one for under 100$ that supports Ryzen 5, 2 RAM slots are enough, light occasional overclocking, wifi preferrable but optional. If useful, I am planning on going with a GTX 1060/70, not sure yet.

 

Thanks a lot.

[chris76816]

As far as I know, Gigabyte AB350N-GAMING-WIFI ITX is the cheapest and most reliable motherboard that supports Ryzen.

[just_dave]

4 minutes ago, chris76816 said:

As far as I know, Gigabyte AB350N-GAMING-WIFI ITX is the cheapest and most reliable motherboard that supports Ryzen.

No, definitely not most reliable. Has the worst VRMs

[just_dave]

ASRock's ITX boards are very good

[chris76816]

1 minute ago, dave_k said:

Biostar X370GTN or ASRock's ITX boards are very good

Asrock is more expensive. I meant cheapest and most reliable for the price. The Biostar board is rubbish.

[just_dave]

Just now, chris76816 said:

Asrock is more expensive. I meant cheapest and most reliable for the price. The Biostar board is rubbish.

In this form factor the VRMs matter and Gigabyte screwed them up

[Axel1]

16 minutes ago, chris76816 said:

The Biostar board is rubbish.

Why?

[Axel1]

Asrock goes for a wide range of prices. What is the difference between a simple 70$ one, and a 150 Gaming one?

[chris76816]

10 minutes ago, Axel1 said:

Why?

Horrible Bios

[Narnash]

1 hour ago, Axel1 said:

Why?

The BIOSTAR one has probably the worst UIFI, no Wifi+BT, Realtek LAN.

 

The GIGABYTE one has crap VRMs, Realtek LAN and a wierd connector layout which can cause serious issues with many SFX PSUs and lead to even worse cable management than usual for SFF PCs.

 

 

 

Edit: Some people reported that the x370 version didn't shipped with the 5 mm thermal pad, they seam to come with a proper version were the aluminium reaches all the way down and comes with a 1mm thermal pad installed. Many people in the AsRock Forums (and some german forms, too) report that a mail to AsRock support will lead into a free shipped heatsink of the "proper" heatsink version.

After that the heatsink should be usable even though it has a kinda small surface area for a heatsink.

 

The ASROCK (B350) is the "best" (as best to deal with) of the available ITX AM4 boards in my opinion, the VRMs itself are okayish even though nothing special. But the VRM COOLING IS ABSOLUTELY INSANELY BAD to a point were the temps are probably better without the heatsink and the 5 + mm thermalpad. Yeah you read right I highly advice you to remove the stock VRM heatsink to replace it with some 3rd party ones of your choice, this thick blue moster is covering the whole VRM line underneath it! As a hint how bad it is in idle you will measure with an IR thermometer arround 85-90°C (R5 not R7) idle temperatures on stock voltage on the bottom of the motherboard, even though these VRM's are rated for up to 125°C I'm sure they will run near that on stock with an R7 1700 if you cramp it in a small case with near to nothing airflow.

 

So yeah the fact which makes the Asrock one the best choice of the available models (in my opinion) is that a heatsink is the easiest thing to fix in comparison to the other boards, hell removing this isulating gum and leading a bit of the top blower cooler air in that direction could be suffcient for a fix.

[Axel1]

So apart from the mentioned above, and considering I am not confident with modifying the board, do I have any other choices?

And is there anything good under 100$?