Monday, March 16th 2015

ASRock Unveils World's First Mini-ITX Socket LGA2011v3 Motherboard

ASRock achieved the impossible, by innovating the world's first socket LGA2011v3 motherboard in the mini-ITX form-factor, letting you give your mini-ITX build the muscle of an eight-core Intel Core i7-5960X processor, with DDR4 memory. The new X99E-ITX/ac from ASRock is a standard mini-ITX motherboard, with a bulk of its precious PCB real-estate occupied by the large LGA2011v3 CPU socket. This socket features an unconventional cooler mount, which is comparable to the 2088-pin socket found on "Haswell-EP" system boards. ASRock has included an copper heat pipe-fed aluminium fin heatsink with this board, although its ability to cool a 140W TDP chip looks suspect.

A major sacrifice ASRock had to make, to achieve this contraption, is halve the memory bandwidth. Due to space limitations, the board features only two DDR4 DIMM slots, and will support only dual-channel memory, even as the platform supports quad-channel memory. Storage connectivity includes one Ultra M.2 (PCIe gen 3.0 x4 physical layer), one 10 Gb/s SATA-Express, an eSATA 6 Gb/s on the rear panel, and four other SATA 6 Gb/s ports. Expansion slots include one PCI-Express 3.0 x16, and one mPCIe 3.0 x1, holding the board's included 802.11 ac WLAN + Bluetooth 4.0 card. Two gigabit Ethernet interfaces, both driven by Intel-made controllers, a 2-port USB 3.1 controller (type-A ports), four other USB 3.0 ports, and an 8-channel HD audio make for the rest of it. ASRock didn't announce pricing or availability.
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35 Comments on ASRock Unveils World's First Mini-ITX Socket LGA2011v3 Motherboard

#26
BiggieShady
GhostRyderI really wish they had found a way to run Quad channel memory on this size would probably be the only improvement I would seek. But that would be very hard...
I was wondering the same thing, but there is simply no space.
Also for the GPU side of things, Titan X is as fast as Titan Z, so you'll be able to build faster gaming shoe-box machine on LGA1150 platform.
When (and if) dual GM200 comes out, these kind of boards will make sense for ridiculous steam machines again.
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#27
newtekie1
Semi-Retired Folder
GhostRyderI really wish they had found a way to run Quad channel memory on this size would probably be the only improvement I would seek. But that would be very hard...
They might be able to fit triple channel in though, that would be a nice compromise at least.
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#28
iO
Caring1I reckon an AIO will fit nicely if you put it in the right itx case.
The size of the cooler shouldn't be the problem but the different mounting hole layout

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#29
BiggieShady
newtekie1They might be able to fit triple channel in though, that would be a nice compromise at least.
... or be completely batshit crazy and squeeze in four SO-DIMM slots :laugh:
Posted on Reply
#30
lastcalaveras
iOThe size of the cooler shouldn't be the problem but the different mounting hole layout

Yeah AIO for servers will work otherwise your looking at the noctua air coolers meant for xeons

Edit: Just realised this thing won't work without a graphics cards
Posted on Reply
#35
Frick
Fishfaced Nincompoop
Excellent. Now go make a FM2+ nanoITX board.
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