ASRock's B650E PG-ITX is a strong performer but...

[@ChiickenTM]

I hope your channel becomes as big as Optimum's tech. I started my ITX Journey with an NR200 and your videos on how to orient the fans for optimal cooling! Thank you for the amazing videos!

[@TheJamesKF]

As a long time SFF builder I couldn't agree more. Lots of great points, info and experience being shared here.

[@timblakely-savage8445]

Nice to see a thorough review of my board! I didn’t realize the M.2 heatsink had GPU clearance problems as I use a Meshroom S case so I have a riser cable. I did have some issues mounting an NH-L12S though. Thankfully I noticed before I damaged anything but it hit the M.2 heatsink and I had to flip the whole cooler around the other way to make it fit. Just a heads up for anyone trying a similar build.

[@skulu]

Fantastic in depth coverage for SFF motherboards which is sorely lacking elsewhere! I hope you cover the new Asrock B650I ITX motherboard too!

[@AP4055]

Great review as always. I've removed the fan from the m.2 heatsink and I use the header for the top fans. My KC3000 hits a max temp of 56°C

[@AutodidactEngineer]

Absolutely love the vibe of this channel

[@Outright_Table]

I just finished a build with this board and am pretty happy with it so far. The motherboard flashes the power button during memory training to make up for no debug lights. This is the only AM5 board I have worked with but I noticed it defaulted in BIOS to prioritizing the iGPU which causes ReBAR to not function. Changing to prefer dGPU in BIOS fixed that issue. Not sure if that is a common issue or not on AM5. I used the 2a fan header to run 4 case fans while still using the M.2 Fan in a air cooled setup in a Sliger Cerberus. I like how many USB 2.0 ports this board has. Mice and audio interfaces have given me weird issues on higher spec ports for some reason, but work fine on USB 2.0.

[@MachinesMore]

Ah, that’s what the flashing is, thanks for chiming in with that! The BIOS settings are clunky for ASRock in general.

[@_dev_null_]

This videos and breakdowns on this channel are never disappointing.

[@retrac314]

Really appreciate the comprehensive review of AM5 ITX boards. There was a surprising lack of review coverage when I was buying a few months back. Got the ASUS B650 and have been very happy with it. Are you planning to review the upcoming Gigabyte A620 board? I tentatively recommended it to a friend, as it looks like it should be able to handle the 7000 series pretty well, especially the lower powered ones, and if the rumored price of ~$100 is accurate, I'm sure it will be a tempting option for many small AM5 builds.

[@swlak516]

Loving all the ITX mobo content lately!

[@igavinwood]

Been looking forward to this review as it's one of the mobo manufacturers that are shipping direct into the UK, thus they will honour their warranty, unlike Gigabyte (which I have in writing from them as I made an inquirey). Now for the summary vid and hearing your thoughts on all these mobos, especially in regards to future AMD CPUs, such as a Zen 5 x3D and faster memory speeds. At present you are one of the very few channels that are doing a good job for the SFF market. Weird as a friend just dropped off an aging Dell Inspiron 660S which is ~40x28x10 cm, rocking a core i3, just to prove that SFF pcs have been in the mainstream market for quite a while.

[@mannyc19]

The pricing in Canada for these is like this the last 4 months Asus X670E , 529 to 559 B650E , 429 MSI B650 , 419! Gigabyte B650 , 329 to 359 ASRock B650E , 349 I monitored all brands QVL Lists since June,and only Gigabyte and Asus regularly update them,Giga doing The best job,with bi monthly updates ! Asus being monthly,and minor at that. Only a few kits being added,8000+ Mts and mostly name brand big three, whereas Gigabyte has added all brands NEW Kits low end ,to ultra high end. I decided to go ASUS B650E + 2x32Gb 6000 this Black Friday and a 7600 non X, and or a 7800X3D depending on discounts for the X3D. Great video as always !

[@MajidKamran]

Thanks for the informative video .Motherboard is out of focus. I cant see where you are pointing at.

[@rmartin987]

Great review. Few questions. 1. For gaming only builds do you think users would notice the low speed rear USB? 2. Have you thought about doing any type of air cooler compatibility test? The asus and asrock boards seem to be more centrally located where the gigabyte appears to be a further north. Probably would be more noticeable on top down coolers. 3. Any thoughts on a long term follow up in regards to bios support as we all hope AM5 is as long lasting as AM4.

[@MWONG06]

I've owned this PG-ITX MB since July so to answer your questions: 1. No. The rear USB 2.0 is zero issue when I have simple Thrustmaster Flight Controls plugged in and it's actually nice knowing they aren't wastefully occupying USB 3.2 ports. 2. I used a NZXT H1 V2 so can't comment on air cooling, but I did have to remove the huge SSD heatsink because it blocked the AIO tube routing and replaced it with the Sabrnet SB-HTSK which works perfectly fine. 3. Asrock has been constantly updating the bios since I got it and it's always improved my experience. Updating via the bios menu is super simple too and the clear CMOS jumper pins were conveniently accessible when I needed it in the NZXT H1.

[@rmartin987]

@@MWONG06 Thanks for the reply, I have an old asrock x370 itx which is still chugging along. Haven’t looked to much into USB needs so it’s nice to know peripherals aren’t demanding more. Part of the reason I went for the asrock was due to socket location as I wanted the option of air cooling in a NCASE M1. Worked out great as I switched from an AIO to a Thermal Right Silver arrow 130 after watching the review done here. Asrock has done a great job of keeping my board up to date, I was more wondering how the other brands are doing. For the price/performance/support it was a great buy and will probably get another despite any flaws. Just want to give the other guys a chance

[@speedgoat7496]

Hi great channel. Do you know if the bios can be updated with an incompatible cpu like 7800x3d installed to enable compatibility? Or will you need another none x3d, 7000 series cpu at hand for bios update?

[@danrob7449]

Asrock listed the 7800x3d as bootable from first bios,so you can Update the bios to the newest easily. Some RAM could not be compatible before Update.

[@mocasso]

Thank you for the review. I chose this board over the asus b650e-i even though the asus is cheaper in germany. The reason was the vrm fan and problems i had with the prior b550 variant. I just wanted to let you know that i observed the same clock frequency behaviour on my 7700x. Allowing the 200mhz boost fixed it as you suggested and it also fixed my stability issues. Thanks for the help!

[@Aruneh]

I ended up buying this board after weighing the pros and cons versus the Asus B650E. It just had the better overall featureset for my needs, the main one being Intel LAN and wifi chips. So far I’m quite happy with it.

[@vincentvega3093]

For me it was the other way around. I would have to pay 50€ more for the asrock.

[@andrewmorris3479]

The ASUS B650E-I has Intel I-225 Lan.

[@_TrueDesire_]

I only have horrible experiences with intel NIC on desktop/consumer but on workstations they work much better... might just be bad luck for me who nows 😅

[@gxcreator]

@@_TrueDesire_ Same. On the other hand, Realtek ones were good.

[@kwedl]

If it wasn't for the colour scheme i would have probably gone with this one over the Asus board. This one definitely has some of the best feature set, layout and the m.2 slot doesn't have a dauhterboard so it's not raised up like on the Asus board, which can be annyoing for m.2 cooler compatibility.

[@hardware_freak_on_a_leash]

It's not like there is much of a choice but the PG is my fav AM5 Mini ITX board thus far. The m2 fan is trash but easily taken care of...

[@vlmxs]

Fingers crossed for the same review of B760 ITX boards ;) I am going to build in Jonsbo D31 with 13600KF. It is an upgrade from Nr200 on 11600KF, maybe you can touch into mATX as well?

[@CLASSYX]

is it safe to remove the m.2 heatsink and use an m.2 ssd with built in heatsink? + at the end you are only able to use 3 fans?

[@MachinesMore]

Yes, absolutely. A passive cooled M.2 is fine.

[@djmorris666]

Thanks a lot. Finished a fractal design itx build yesterday and was looking for some answers on why it does not boot, respectively why the front light is flashing. Seems to be a ram issue and I will need to double check the slots. Any other ideas?

[@Robbertdelange]

Just picked this board over the asus one. The VRM and much! better memory support did it for me. I will upgrade this after a certain amount of years to the best this board can handle.

[@gezimlimoni2319]

Nice review as always!!!

[@julfy_god]

thank you for these reviews!

[@Spork888]

I really enjoyed the music in this video. What is the song in the beginning?

[@visionary4787]

Amazing. I subscribed. I am buying this board. Thank you.

[@Lucas-fp9zd]

I just put together a build in the NR200 with a 7800X3D and a 6950XT and I used this motherboard. It's been absolutely killing it so far.

[@jakobjensen8228]

Exactly same here, how did you power your fans? I've got 5 fans running off of the single fan header at the bottom left with a lot of splitters.

[@guiT39]

just out of curiosity... If you're going ITX (which is the most expensive route) anyway, why not use a 4090?

[@Lucas-fp9zd]

@@guiT39 Fair question. I bought a Red Devil 6950 on amazon for $630, which is less than half the price of a 4090, and I could not possibly care less about ray-tracing at the moment. Also, gaming in 1440p. 6950 eats every game for breakfast on ultra at 1440p. But mostly because it was $900 more for very little return in this use case.

[@guiT39]

@@Lucas-fp9zd I see. tks

[@speedgoat7496]

Did you have to bios update for the x3d cpu?

[@emperorfloch]

Honestly all the Ryzen 7000 mini itx boards have been a big let down imo. Also that m.2 fan cable is atrocious 😅😅😅

[@Dalex3333]

Any chance you could test stock wifi performance of the b650 itx boards?

[@covvy]

Very happy with mine. It's a UK-supply board, no chipset fan (which would drive me mad) and a decent not-over-the-top feaure set. I removed the m2 fan and used as a passive heatisnk as I don't see a need for active cooling on a Gen4 M2.

[@vincentvega3093]

As much as i disliked the X3D scandal surrounding Asus, the asrock would've cost me 50€ more in my region. I found the config/ features would be enough for a gaming rig (and possible ROG resale value).

[@RangerAmateur]

If it's not weird it's not ASRock. Quirky but often good.

[@jans9539]

hello, thanks for the review but nex time could you please move the boards the botto left so we can see well how the audio ports are thanks in advance

[@kiraitachi]

I bought this motherboad. To me this is the best motherboard available in EU. Great to see it covered. You might ask why I said this is great, let me explain: -MSI motherboard has CMOS issues for ITX where most come with empty CMOS battery because of the long button for reset CMOS hitting the box and consuming the battery. Bought one and after building it had to dissasemble it to return it. Waste of time and effort. -Asus scared me off because of the burning CPU issues. Its a huge NO-NO. -Gigabyte is the winner if you can buy it, sadly not available in EU or craaaazy expensive in EU. -Asrock keeps the PCIE Gen 5 and a good price and stable. Solid as-a-rock 😂 Built my NR200 Ryzen 9 7900 server with 64GB DDR5 and 7 fans (2 top, 2 bottom, 2 middle and 1 in noctua NHC14-S heatsink)for homelab proxmox with it and runs PERFECT and silent. Specially because Vmware and other Virtualization solutions only support Intel NIC. So yeah great!

[@Edward135i]

I got the MSI MPG B650I, and I think that was the best choice outside of the very expensive ASUS offerings, not because of its features but it's lack of weirdness like that cable for the M.2 Fan, why did they do that!?!?

[@andrewvirtue5048]

I hope ASRock will release another good 'e' chipset in iTX. Strong sources say the next generation CPUs will be officially revealed and released this year.

[@zack9692]

When I was considering the 7800X3D this was the board I was going to get just because of how many usb ports it had. There weren't really any other options if you need 6-7 usb ports when i was looking to upgrade. Just decided to skip this gen all together though.

[@samm928]

Will this board run ryzen 9000 series like a 7950x3d ?

[@MachinesMore]

Yes, I assume you mean 9950X?

[@samm928]

@MachinesMore I guess ryzen 7950x3d is a 7000 AMD series 16 cores 32 threads .. I didn't now there was a 9950x3d

[@pdureska7814]

Cant you just leave the cover off and remove the fan and cable and just add an M.2 with a heat sink?

[@MachinesMore]

Yes, you can.

[@Saimeigaming]

Thank you !

[@PipDude13]

Is that simcity on the shirt?

[@MachinesMore]

Yup

[@dothings6646]

almost half of review is about heatsink... Does it really matter?

[@samm928]

Gen5 nvme drives get pretty hot ..

[@chionyenkwu2253]

Understanding is that current generation of pcie5 nvme drives (especially the faster ones) get very hot==> the apparently ridiculous cooler is actually very justifaiable 🤨🤨

[@GlassPup]

I think I'll stay with Z690 for now. The MSI Z690i unify really checks every box. Maybe AM5 boards will have a decent refresh with Zen 5.

[@MachinesMore]

I would, that’s one of the best, if not the best ITX board for current gen CPUs.

[@GlassPup]

@@MachinesMore Keep up the great work!

[@EvilEng9]

I have this motherboard. My RTX 4080 runs at PCIe 4.0 x8, not x16 like it should. Anyone seeing this issue?

[@mtaufiqn5040]

Have you resolved the issue?

[@EvilEng9]

Yes. I got a new riser cable. The one that came with the Meshlicious case was defective.

[@vladimirljubopytnov5193]

Woth mentioning: the fan on asus does not kick in.. at least mine doesn't at 60degrees.

[@RollingTaro]

Nice

[@adhmadhm2373]

i have Dell Alienware Rtx 3090 MSI x570 godlike Ryzen 5800x overclock to 4700 corsair vengeance rgb pro sl 64gb 4x16 3600mhz Power evga 850 + 80 custom loop 2 x 360 is this good or not for 2k and one thing more can you tell me best overclock for Ryzen 5800x ..😊 Thx .. you are the best ❤

[@MachinesMore]

Subtle flex there 😎 seriously though, solid build. 4.7 on all cores is good, assuming voltage is still safe. Can you get there with PBO2 or is this a manual all core clock?

[@adhmadhm2373]

​@@MachinesMoremanual with cpu core voltage offset mode 1.3 volt ☺️ Still need to water block my rtx 3090 both sides... Save money for that 😂🎉

[@JohnSmith-sh1sy]

Asus coil whine goes Bzzzz

[@feralkid9315]

That M.2 heatsink is too big and the tiny fan is loud. Stupid idea all around.

[@andrewvirtue5048]

Yeah, just throw a shorter heatsink on it. I'll get it properly cooled with six 140mm fans and one 120mm exhaust. Four of the 140 being intake, and two being exhaust.

[@covvy]

The fan isn't loud, and to be honest it's not necessary either - it does a good job at passive cooling. You can replace it with a generic heatsink if you hate it that much.