Mini itx articles

A roundup of all the AMD AM5 Mini-ITX motherboards we could get our hands on, from the likes of Asus, Asrock, Gigabyte, and MSI. Compared and benchmarked.

The Origin PC Omega is a small, quiet gaming machine that comes in a few different shapes, all of which are based on Silverstone's great line of mini-ITX SFF cases. Our review unit is built on the slim desktop design of the Silverstone RVZ01, which houses an overclocked Skylake Intel Core i7-6700K and a full-sized Geforce GTX Titan X graphics card.

With some 16 months having passed since our first look at the RVZ01, Silverstone has returned with another compact gaming chassis. The Raven RVZ02 is 15% smaller than the original while promising to support graphics cards up to 13" long. Silverstone believes that the RVZ02 is one of the easiest compact Mini-ITX cases to build a gaming system in and we'll be putting together multiple hardware configurations to test this claim.

Asrock doesn't mind taking chances with design and proof of this is the X99E-ITX/ac, the first and only Mini-ITX X99 motherboard to support an Intel Extreme-series chipset. Though we were skeptical at first, it delivers the performance of a full-sized EATX X99 board in a 170mm x 170mm package that manages to carry enthusiast trappings from Wi-Fi & Bluetooth to SATA Express & M.2 connectivity.

Just when we were starting to think that the Sugo series lost its Mini-ITX mojo, after the last couple of models moved to MicroATX, Silverstone has stepped forward with the itty bitty 11.5L SG13. The thirteenth Sugo isn't quite the smallest to date, but it may be the most capable. Its 11.5L body is said to be capable of housing a standard ATX power supply up to 150mm long, a 120/140mm radiator and a 10.5" dual-slot graphics card.

In our budget CPU roundup earlier this year, AMD's Kabini Athlon 5350 squared off against Intel's Bay Trail-D Celeron J1900, showing itself to be better at gaming and encoding workloads. The new Asrock Q2900-ITX ships with a Pentium J2900 on a Mini-ITX board for $104 and is aimed straight against the same AMD offering.

Enter the Nebula by Xigmatek, a striking solution with a neat cube design that offers a 2.2L capacity. It's safe to say the Nebula is unlike anything we've seen before, and that tends to come at a premium. The case is pretty new and pricing isn't entirely clear yet in the US, but it's going for €85 or about $115 in other regions – over twice the Elite RC-130's price.

Even if the Asrock M8's style is not your thing, there's less room to argue that this is a unique gaming PC barebones kit and that was enough to earn our attention. We've been impressed with the looks of previous Asrock products – including its mini PCs – but the M8 is a clear step up having been designed by BMW Group DesignworksUSA, the driving force behind Thermaltake's Level 10 chassis, a case as overpriced as it is iconic.

The idea behind the Thin Mini-ITX form factor, besides the obvious which is to create seriously compact computers, is also to allow for DIY all-in-ones (think of little PCs you can attach to the back of your monitor). Having that said, we don't fully intend to go the all-in-one route in this article, but are aiming to build a powerful Thin Mini-ITX system that can be used in the office or at home as a media PC.

This is what our finished system should look like: extremely compact, powerful, and near silent operation, as in no-moving-parts silent. For less than $700 including a 256GB SSD, we believe you'll love what the final product will look like.