ASUS at Computex 2016: The 10 Years of the Republic Of Gamers (ROG) Booth Tour

The three major form factors for custom build personal computers, in order of popularity, are ATX, followed by micro-ATX and then mini-ITX. That also happens to be the order of size as well, from largest to smallest. Earlier in this piece we spoke about how motherboard design has not really changed from these three as of late, mostly due to compatibility and how everything in the industry currently works. However, at IDF in 2015, Intel announced a new form factor for mini-PCs relying purely on integrated graphics: the Mini-STX platform (also known as 5x5, for 5-inch square).

5x5

Before I left for Computex, I asked our editors want they knew would be at the show and what they would like me to cover. One of the responses from Ganesh was ‘anything Mini-STX’. We saw a couple of things at CES, although mostly pre-built mSTX systems. Luckily for Ganesh, ASUS had three motherboards on display.

The first up is the Q170S1, using the Q-series chipset for business level customers and vPro support. We haven’t typically covered the Q-series at AnandTech, however the Q170 attempts to mirror a lot of what the Z170 does but under the provision of a professional grade, managed system that doesn’t go into Xeon. This includes business level support, a separate firmware with control options, and a number of other things. There is an extra cost to the Q-series over the H-series chipsets, around $12 list price, but for the business side benefits this is usually a small price for manageability. In this case, the Q170S1 can use any Skylake processor up to 65W (up to i7-6700), two DDR4 SO-SIMM modules, and supports M.2, SATA, M.2 for WiFi, and rear panel 19V power. All graphics capabilities come from the CPU, and there’s also a vPro enabled network port to facilitate network control.

On the cheaper side of the coin are the H-series variants. These are strikingly similar in board layout, with the S2 version having dual network ports (one Intel I219-V and one Realtek 8111H) whereas the S1 version only has a single Intel I219-V. Specifications match up to the Q170S1 motherboard otherwise, with 65W processor support, but nothing vPro related.

Mini-STX is a drive for Intel towards the more industrial side of the market that wants upgradability. There are a number of platforms already in that space, such as the Intel NUC, Core-M, Atom, ECS LIVA, the MSI Cubi and others, however they are all using soldered down processors. Mini-STX enables a bit more customization within Intel’s platform structure, as well as more performance.