Last year the ASRock manufacturer added RX and GTX samples to the DeskMini PCs family. These small-size products are able to hold Radeon RX 480 and GeForce GTX 1060 discrete video cards in the form of MXM modules.



The ASRock company decided to develop its DeskMini RX/GTX models further and constructed a similar mini PC, housing the GeForce GTX 1080 3D card.


Now the dimensions are not much larger and make 213 х 154.5 х 81.9 mm (corresponding to 2.7 l). The great news is that the specialty can be equipped with GeForce GTX 1060, GTX 1070 and even GTX 1080 graphics accelerators! Presumably, the CPUs list includes the 6th and 7th generations Intel processors up to Core i7 with the 65 W TDP.


ASRock mini PCs can obtain 32 GB of RAM. Two 2.5-inch and three M.2 drives (Optane storage devices among them) can be installed. Connectivity is provided by the Gigabit Ethernet, USB-C 3.1, three USB 3.1, two USB 2.0, two HDMI and two DisplayPort ports.

ASRock is thought to be an innovator in the development of hardware know-hows. The Computex 2016 came as no exclusion: the company introduced a lineup of overclocked mainboards which joined Hyper OC series. Initially, the lineup consisted of three models – H170 Pro4/Hyper, B150M Pro4/Hyper & H110M-DS/Hyper; further on, it will be replenished by three other models – Fatal1ty H170 Performance/Hyper, Fatal1ty B150 Gaming K4/Hyper & B150A-X1/Hyper.



As seen from the codenames, the motherboards are based on Intel B150, H170 and H110 chipsets which employ ASRock Hyper BCLK Engine controller; it overclocks Intel Skylake CPUs by means of BCLK alteration, without dislocating other components. The new-comers support the installation of superfast DDR4 RAM, graphics cards with PCI-e 3.0 x16 interfaces as well as voluminous drives (including Ultra M.2).


ASRock H170 Pro4/Hyper features the following specifications:

— chipset: Intel H170;

— memory: 4x DDR4;

— storage: …

January of 2017 was marked by the emergence of new processors Intel Kaby Lake-S, while the motherboard manufacturers have released products based on fresh 200- series chipsets. The PCH execution identity allows vendors to produce different models based on the earlier designed PCB. MSI B250M Mortar is one of the kind, as the manufacturer has a similar model – MSI Z270M Mortar.


Technical Characteristics



In fact, B250 is the youngest of the latest generation products. The most significant of its innovations is supporting the work of drives with PCI-E interface, mainly implemented in the popular now format M.2. The model is equipped with an expansion slot of this type. Additional adapters are unavailable, so all the possibilities come through Intel B250. The network interface uses the Intel controller, and the sound is formed by Realtek ALC892.


The B250M’s characteristics are as follows:


• Chipset – Intel B250 • Processor socket – Socket 1151 • …