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There's very little space for any styling accessories or RGB lighting zones so the ASRock X299E-ITX/ac is as plain as they come. The colour scheme is neutral, primarily black, and all the heatsinks included are functional rather than aesthetic.
The first of the daughterboards hosts six SATA ports, the USB 2.0 and 3.0 headers and is connected in to the motherboard via a custom connection (probably PCIe) near the 24 pin. ASRock secures this daughterboard to the CPU VRM heatsink through two cross-head screws.
CPU power delivery comes through a single 8-pin EPS which feeds a 7 phase VRM that we'll detail later on. There are two CPU fan headers supporting 1A/12W (CPU) and 1.5A/18W (CPU_OPT/W_PUMP) next to a header for a speaker and power LED.
The primary PCIe lane is shielded and surrounded by two SO-DIMM slots, the chipset heatsink, a BIOS_PH header (writes BIOS into flash ROM) and an A-B switch which toggles the rear I/O button between ClearCMOS (Position A) and Power (Position B).
On the other side of the motherboard there are the other two SO-DIMM DDR4 slots along with a system fan header, RGB header, system panel header (switches/LEDs) and VROC header (Intel Virtual RAID on CPU).
As is typical of space-constrained mini-ITX motherboards the CMOS battery is vertically mounted to save space and in this case affixed to the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth module.
ASRock uses Intel's 8265NGW Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 combo unit which provides 802.11ac speeds on a two-transmitter two-receiver design (2T2R). Rated throughput is up to 867Mbps with support for dual-band frequencies (2.4 and 5GHz) and MU-MIMO.
The rear I/O offers:
- 2 x Antenna Ports
- 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port
- 1 x USB 3.1 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s) (ASMedia ASM3142)
- 1 x USB 3.1 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s) (ASMedia ASM3142)
- *4 x USB 3.0 Ports (ASMedia ASM1074 Hub)
- *2 x RJ-45 LAN Ports with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
- 1 x Clear CMOS Button / Power Button
- 5 x HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone (Gold Audio Jacks)
*Will not work if X299E-ITX REAR card is removed
The audio components are tucked in by the rear I/O and chipset heatsink. These include a single Realtek ALC1220 codec with an NE5532 operational amplifier and two Nichicon Gold Series audio capacitors, both rated for 100uF and 10 volts. An isolated PCB has not been used in this instance since there is not enough space to support it.
That X299E-ITX REAR card slots into the motherboard via a custom PCIe connection and has a number of controllers and slots on it including:
- Intel i219V Gigabit Ethernet
- Intel I211AT Gigabit Ethernet
- ASM1074 USB 3.0 hub (provides 4 ports)
- M2_1 which provides a 32Gb/s M.2 port
If this PCB card is unplugged then all of those features cease to be available on the rear I/O.
CPU VRM duties are handled by 7 phases in a 6+1 configuration using an Intersil ISL69138 digital PWM controller. There are seven Intersil ISL99227F 60A SPS MOSFETs marked 27F 74AK and there are seven “premium 60A” chokes/inductors.
Memory VRM, which appears to be 2 phases total, is also handled by another Intersil ISL69138 controller with two ISL6596CRZ drivers, marked “596Z XHMZ, two Sinopower SM3337 and two Fairchild FDPC5030SG dual N-Channel MOSFETs.
VCCIO is handled by the third (and last) Intersil ISL69138 controller again with Sinopower SM3337 and Fairchild FDPC5030SG dual N-Channel MOSFETs.
ASRock also uses a ICS 6V41742B clock generated for improved BCLK overclocking.
CPU VRM cooling is handled by a small heatsink. Clearly the capability is not going to be sufficient for extreme and prolonged overclocking, unless high airflow is consistently applied, but ASRock is limited by the form factor and recognises this.
ASRock worked with Bitspower to design and produce a custom waterblock that handles VRM cooling for those happy to indulge in watercooling specifically for this motherboard. That block is the Bitspower MonoBlock ASRX299EI (BP-WBMASRX299EI) which we'll detail more later on.
On the underside of the motherboard is the remainder of the M.2 slots. There are two down here which support 80mm devices only since there is not enough free PCB space to add additional mounting points.
Underneath is the nuvoTon NCT6791D for Super IO fan control and systems monitoring, the ASMedia ASM3142 USB 3.1 controller and nuvoTon N76E885AT for RGB LED lighting control.
All mounting fixtures across the motherboard are standard cross-head screws.
I like that vertical design, sure we can save some space with designs like that.
I understand that having a lot of daughterboards increase the cost, but I live to see a day when I could be able to build a custom pc like the apple mac g4 cube.