B550 and mini-ITX can go hand-in-hand for AM4 buyers, so does the ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/AX provide the necessary feature set and performance to make it a desirable option? The 8-phase power delivery solution, 8-layer PCB, and ample high-speed connectivity paint a positive picture, but let’s take a closer look.
Core to the ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/AX is its passively cooled power delivery system. Built around an eight-phase solution, ASRock deploys six 90A DrMOS power stages for the CPU VCore portion specifically.
Added to the package are dual M.2 connectors, one of which runs with Gen 4 lanes and a cooling heatspreader. You also get 2.5 GbE from an Intel adapter and 802.11ax WiFi connectivity.
ASRock clearly ticks the main boxes with the B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/AX, so let’s take a closer look at the motherboard itself.
Features (information taken from the ASRock webpage):
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- Supports 3rd Gen AMD AM4 Ryzen™ / Future AMD Ryzen™ Processors
- 8 Power Phase Design, Digi Power, 90A Dr.MOS
- Supports DDR4 5400+ (OC)
- 1 PCIe 4.0 x16
- Graphics Output Options: HDMI, DisplayPort
- 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec), Nahimic Audio
- 4 SATA3, 1 Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4), 1 Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4 & SATA3)
- 3 USB 3.2 Gen2 (Rear Type A+C, Front Type-C), 6 USB 3.2 Gen1 (2 Front, 4 Rear)
- Intel® 2.5G LAN, Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax (2.4Gbps) + BT 5.1