The AM1 Kabini Motherboard Preview: Analyzing the Hardware

ASRock AM1B-ITX 

Moving to $40 and above brings a raft of changes – even by moving up a dollar does the AM1 landscape seem to change rapidly enough. To coin the eponymous phrase, ‘And now for something completely different’. The AM1B-ITX does what a motherboard above the base should do: add functionality and reduce complexity. Here we get double the SATA 6 Gbps ports and double the USB 3.0 ports, as well as three fan headers and an integrated parallel port on the rear panel whilst at the same time removing the need of a 4-pin CPU power connector.

ASRock has placed the 24-pin ATX connector, the four SATA 6 Gbps ports and the front panel header outside the DRAM slots (to the right), making cable management with this mini-ITX motherboard a lot easier. The SATA ports are also alternate facing to aid removal of locking SATA cables. Just inside the DRAM slots at the bottom are some of the additional headers – the COM header, the TPM header, the USB 3.0 header and two USB 2.0 headers. It might actually be a little too cramped in there.

Despite removing 4-pin CPU power connector, the top of the motherboard does look extremely busy with all the components on board. Two of the fan headers are in this area at the top left, while the third is at the bottom right. As with the other motherboards in this preview, the main PCIe 2.0 x16 slot runs at x4 mode due to the PCIe lane allocation, and of the lanes that are left ASRock has diverted one each to ASMedia controllers for the extra USB 3.0 and SATA 6 Gbps ports respectively.

While we lose the two extra USB 2.0 ports from the AM1B-M on the previous page, the rear panel gets access to more video outputs and a parallel port instead. When an antiquated port is added to a modern product, some users will bemoan its presence. More often than not, these are added because companies that use old equipment that communicates via the parallel port can cost six figures and is only updated once every few decades, so it is easier to update a $400 PC than a $400000 milling machine.

Price wise, the ASRock AM1B-ITX blows the AM1B-M out of the water. For a few extra dollars there are more ports for more of the things most users will want. There is still the issue of that bottom-of-the-barrel Realtek ALC662 though.