ASRock Z370M-ITX/ac: Mini-ITX Motherboard With Dual NICs, WiFi, Triple Display For ~$130 USD

[schmidtbag]

Your benchmark are biased. Asus decided to turn MCO on by default automatically, meaning : Your 8100 is running with all the core at max TURBO frequency while normally, the maximum would be available on one core. So you did in fact compare an overclocked 8100 with a Asus board and a non overclocked 8100 on an Asrock board.

You do realize i3s don't have turbo speeds, right? So no, he in fact did not compare it as overclocked. Besides, the stock Intel heatsink would get saturated with heat way too quickly to sustain all-core turbos.
Also to my knowledge, I don't think MCO works on non-K series CPUs, but I might be wrong about that.

Edit : MCO is also not by Intel spec. I wonder if they did not get paid by Intel to do that (for when higher 8700 are benched again Ryzen CPU... to assure more win to Intel... Hard to know who the fault is. Some reviewer did contact ASUS to know about and Asus did think that it was disabled by default... So Even them, don't know what is happening on the BIOS side..)

I agree MCO is a shady move to have enabled by default. It definitely makes Asus products look better than they really are though. I'm sure Intel doesn't really care, because it makes their product look much faster in reviews. Since hardware reviewers almost never use the stock heatsink, the performance won't throttle, making the Intel CPU look a lot better than it really is.

[sdack]

I like the dual WiFi SMA antenna sockets and that it is fully shielded with IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac and 433Mbps.

[starshipeleven]

Dual NIC on a cheap motherboard.
Dual NIC on a mini-ITX board.
Dual NIC on a boad that is not a expensive, high-end workstation motherboard.

No ECC ram, so any serious use that may require 2 ports is more or less out of the window.

If you are on the cheap and don't care about ECC, you can find 2-NIC Intel PCIe cards on Ebay for like 15 bucks, or 4-NIC Intel PCIe cards for like 30 bucks, and then you can convert any kind of far cheaper mini-itx board into a pretty decent network appliance.

A USB-C/Thunderbolt port would have been more useful, given its target is client devices, not server use.

[starshipeleven]

Do not expect ECC support on consumer-targeted Intel chipsets... they stopped offering that functionality around Skylake, I think, when LGA1151 Xeon support was restricted to the C-chipsets. Which can only be found on much more expensive boards, of course. (Or at least I have not seen any good value C-chipset boards)

ECC support has been ONLY on C-chipsets since at least Sandy bridge, afaik. You can usually mount Xeons on other chipsets too, but ECC won't work (what's the point of a Xeon on such boards again?).

Which means that you can find them used relatively easily, also older Xeons and other consumer-grade processors where ECC support was turned on.

[starshipeleven]

Does anyone know if USB-C port costs extra compared to a usb 3.1 port? I mean the physical socket, does it have extra royalties? None on this motherboard, And on the motherboards I've seen that had it, it was at most a single one. I'm not sure why. I'd expect at least two or more if I was going to buy a new motherboard. Otherwise this board has a very nice layout, and I like the display port.

I'm sure there are royalties but I don't think it is the main issue.

A true usb-c port (with the alternate modes) currently requires an additional (thunderbolt?) controller to deal with sending over pcie or video signals. And it also requires sacrificing a display port as it needs to be piped back to this controller, same for pcie lines.

In other words, it's a pain in the ass for board designers.

In May 2017 there was a statement from a Intel big shot, he said that they were going to integrate this controller inside the CPUs by next year (so 2018) and remove any royalties. I assume that once that happens, we will see more USB-Cs around.
I think that if the controller is integrated in the CPU it will probably sit on the same fast on-die interconnect bus of the CPU/GPU/PCIe controllers and none of the above bullfuckery will be required anymore, board designers will just have to take the USB-C lines from the CPU socket or something like that and pipe them to the port.

https://newsroom.intel.com/editorials/envision-world-thunderbolt-3-everywhere/

[schmidtbag]

You can usually mount Xeons on other chipsets too, but ECC won't work (what's the point of a Xeon on such boards again?).

Xeons tend to offer bigger caches and more PCIe lanes, and depending on the performance tier, Xeons are sometimes better values than their desktop counterparts, if you don't intend to use the IGP.

Does anyone know if USB-C port costs extra compared to a usb 3.1 port? I mean the physical socket, does it have extra royalties? None on this motherboard, And on the motherboards I've seen that had it, it was at most a single one. I'm not sure why. I'd expect at least two or more if I was going to buy a new motherboard. Otherwise this board has a very nice layout, and I like the display port.

There are USB type A to type C converters for relatively cheap, and in theory there should be no issues using them on a 3.1 port (gen 1 or gen 2). I am pretty sure these converters are not supported on a USB 3.0 port, though I'm sure they'd still work. To my understanding, the only difference between USB 3.0 and 3.1 gen 1 is the type C compatibility (and everything that coincides with it, such as power delivery).

[starshipeleven]

Also they are the only manufacturer who did ITX mobo for x99 platform if I'm not mistaken.

And their sister company Asrock Rack is the only company I know that made server-grade mini-ITX mobo with socket 2011-3 http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/mi...-3,1-2561.html
(yes, ECC SO-DIMM ram modules exist so it is a fully-fledged server system on a very fucking compact package)

[AndyChow]

There are USB type A to type C converters for relatively cheap, and in theory there should be no issues using them on a 3.1 port (gen 1 or gen 2). I am pretty sure these converters are not supported on a USB 3.0 port, though I'm sure they'd still work. To my understanding, the only difference between USB 3.0 and 3.1 gen 1 is the type C compatibility (and everything that coincides with it, such as power delivery).

I use a usb-c to usb-a cable on my cellphone, and it works fine, does data transfer etc. I don't even really need a true usb-c port with pcie and video, I just like the socket better, and I'm sure more and more devices will have that port in the future, and not use the pcie lanes or carry video transmission. I don't want to use a converter nor have to deal with usb-a as soon as possible. It always takes me 3 tries to get the cable in (right side in but doesn't fit, wrong side and doesn't fit, right side again but now it fits).

[starshipeleven]

Xeons tend to offer bigger caches and more PCIe lanes, and depending on the performance tier, Xeons are sometimes better values than their desktop counterparts, if you don't intend to use the IGP.

Boards not using C-chipsets don't use the additional PCIe lanes of Xeons as they were not designed with Xeons in mind.

Where I live (low-end EU nation) the Xeons don't usually have a better value than a desktop counterpart until it's at least 2 year old (and can be found used for like 100$ less than an equivalent or even worse i7).

To my understanding, the only difference between USB 3.0 and 3.1 gen 1 is the type C compatibility (and everything that coincides with it, such as power delivery).

Afaik no. USB 3.0 was plain rebranded as 3.1 Gen1. Any actual change (power and bandwith) happened in USB 3.1 Gen 2. (cough*fuck USB consortium*cough)

The Type-C adapter should work fine all the way down to USB 2.0 host ports though.

[starshipeleven]

I use a usb-c to usb-a cable on my cellphone, and it works fine, does data transfer etc. I don't even really need a true usb-c port with pcie and video, I just like the socket better, and I'm sure more and more devices will have that port in the future, and not use the pcie lanes or carry video transmission. I don't want to use a converter nor have to deal with usb-a as soon as possible. It always takes me 3 tries to get the cable in (right side in but doesn't fit, wrong side and doesn't fit, right side again but now it fits).

I feel your pain, bro.