ASUS reveals their ROG Strix B450-I Gaming AM4 motherboard

ASUS has officially unveiled their ROG Strix B450-I Gaming motherboard, their first AMD B450-series ITX motherboard. Like most other 400-series AM4 motherboards, ASUS has redesigned several aspects of this mainboard to deliver more features than its last-generation counterpart. 

For starters, ASUS’ ROG Strix B450-I offers users an HDMI output, a vital feature for users of AMD’s Raven Ridge (Ryzen+Vega) APUs, allowing users of the board to output images to connected displays. This feature was not available on ASUS’ original X370 and B350 ITX motherboards, as at the time Ryzen-based APUs were not available, making the feature pointless for most end-users.   

Another easy to spot change is remodelled heatsink designs, with the bottom M.2 heatsink/cover offering a black gamer aesthetic on the Strix B450-I Gaming, while the VRM heatsink appears to be slightly larger and provide more surface area for heat dissipation, extending further over the motherboard’s rear USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports. 

Another change is ASUS’ promise to offer two M.2 slots, one of which is under the ROG heatsink which appears above the PCIe 16x slot, while the other is likely to be at the other side of the motherboard. The ROG Strix B450-I Gaming also offers users four SATA 3.0 ports and support for two DDR4 memory DIMMs with speeds of up to 3600MHz.