ASUS ROG Strix X470i Gaming Review

Conclusion

It’s not often that a motherboard appears which manages to give such a consistent set of results in both setups.

Whenever you’re looking at an ITX motherboard you might be considering running everything at stock as a media server or similar. The connectivity options on the Strix X470-i – USB 3.1 Type-C aside – are more than enough to perform such a task admirably. Equally if you just want a system that can do the gaming and browsing that forms such a large part of all our PC time then there is plenty of performance available to keep you satisfied. Only if you’re absolutely thrashing it with either 3D rendering or video encoding will the minor deficit it has over other X470 motherboards prove a light frustration. It by no means is disgraced or tailed off, just fairly consistently down the lower end of our graphs. This is, though, something you might come to expect from an ITX form factor motherboard prior to purchase.

What you definitely wont be expecting is the overclocking prowess the ASUS Strix X470-i Gaming brings to the party.

Overclocking is a breeze on any ASUS BIOS and the Strix i is no exception. What is a particular treat is how well it responds to that overclock, often finding itself at the top of our graphs whether we were looking at synthetic benchmarks such as AIDA64 and Sandra, or the fuller Passmark and similar tests. Whatever we threw at it we saw a high level of results which showed that a smaller form factor is no limit to performance. Particularly good is the excellent VRM cooling ASUS have supplied the Strix with. Whether at stock – the lowest X470 VRM temperature we’ve yet seen – or overclocked – well beneath the 90°C point at which we start to worry – the ASUS Strix X470-i Gaming makes a mockery of any worries people might have had about the Zen architecture and its ability to keep the power phases under control.

Elsewhere the Strix ticks all the boxes one might expect from a X470 chipset motherboard. There are two M.2 ports including a large heatsink for the front one which blends into the connectors for the SupremeFX audio. Whilst the Strix has USB 3.1 ports there aren’t any of the Type-C versions. In general there aren’t enough USB ports on the Strix, although ITX motherboards rarely have enough if you’ve got a particularly good selection of peripherals on hand. The positioning of two of the SATA ports will be problematic if you’re the neat freak type as it will be impossible to route the cables anything other than over the top of your RAM.

The ASUS ROG Strix X470-i Gaming is a worthy addition to the ASUS Strix range, providing decent stock performance and outstanding overclocking capabilities in a compact package. If you’re willing to compromise some expanded connectivity options and spend a little time sorting out the overclocking then it ticks a lot of boxes and is a worthy winner of our OC3D Performance award.

  

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