Ever since Ryzen launched many enthusiasts have been eagerly waiting for mini-ITX motherboards to build mean and lean compact machines around AMD's brand new popular number-crunchingprocessors. If you're one of those folks, we've got good news for you. The first ever mini-ITX AM4 motherboard for Ryzenis here and it's packed full of features.

The board in question is theX370GTN from BIOSTAR and it's quite the little scrapper. Amazingly, it features AMD's top of the line enthusiast X370 chipset. This is slightly surprising as Mini-ITX AM4 motherboards were said to either come with the X300 or A300 chipsets. But it looks like BIOSTAR has somehow managed to cram in thefull-fledged X370 chipset in this little board.

Meet The FirstAMD Ryzen AM4 Mini-ITX Motherboard

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In terms of graphics and storage expansion themotherboard features one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, 4 SATA 6Gbps connectorsand 1 M.2 slot. On the networking side we're looking at a standard Realtek gigabit ethernet LAN controller, no Wi-Fi. The integrated audio solution is based on a physically separated circuit featuring the Realtek ALC892 8-channel high definition codec.

The internal I/O includes :

1 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Header

1 x USB 2.0 Header

1 x Front Audio Header

1 x Front Panel Header

1 x CPU Fan Header

1 x System Fan Header

2 x 5050 LED Header

And the rear I/O includes :

1 x PS/2

1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C Port

1 x USB 3.1 Gen2 Port

4 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Port

1 x HDMI Connector, resolution up to 4096 x 2160 @24Hz or 3840 x 2160 @30Hz

1 x DVI-D Connector, resolution up to 1920 x 1200 @60Hz

1 x RJ-45 Port

5 x Audio Connector

1 x S/PDIF Out Port

All in all this is a very well rounded motherboard with a robust set of features. Paired with a Ryzen CPU this could make for an affordable and potent small form factor workstation. In fact, because the highest core count and highest performing CPU you can get on the Intel side in the same mini-ITX form factor is a quad core i7 7700K, mini-ITX Ryzen 7 builds shouldprove to be very popular among builders looking to cram in incredible amounts of performance in a small form factormachine. With 8 cores, 16 threads and a frugal 65W power envelope the efficient Ryzen 7 1700 CPU isuniquely suited for high performance mini-ITX systems.

AMD Ryzen CPU Lineup