ASRock Working on a Haswell Mini-ITX Gaming System

By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

ASRock is showing off its new mini-ITX gaming system that it is working on, and it looks quite nice.

ASRock clearly sees a market for mini-ITX gaming computers and has shown off its mini-ITX system that will be based on Intel's upcoming Haswell chip. The system's eye-catching enclosure was designed in collaboration with BMW design and was kept sleek through the use of a PCIe riser that allows the GeForce GTX 680 GPU to be mounted horizontally rather than vertically.

The system features the impressively well equipped Z87E-ITX motherboard which uses a 6-phase VRM to give the LGA1150 CPU its juice and includes two DDR3 memory slots, a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and a mini PCIe 2.0 slot in which rests the WiFi and Bluetooth card. Connectivity is handled through six SATA3 ports, one eSATA port (at the cost of one SATA3 port), six USB 3.0 ports (four on the rear I/O, two through the front I/O header), 7.1 audio with Optical TOSLINK, Gigabit Ethernet and a PS/2 port.

The system will utilize Lucid Virtu's graphics switching software which enables both the on-die HD 4600 Intel Graphics and GTX 680 to be outputted through the system's HDMI, DisplayPort and DVI ports.

Although we can expect the system to come to market around Haswell's launch, we still have no information on its options, pricing and regional availability.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

21 Comments Comment from the forums
  • wolley74
    that chassis is actually pretty good looking, looks like it has a pretty decent vent on the side as well, depending on price i'd buy just the chassis
    Reply
  • retrophe
    While these mini itx systems are nice . . . when will we see mini itx cases that allow for a full size card using a pci riser? THAT is what most of us would prefer to a prebuilt system.
    Reply
  • DarkSable
    10495220 said:
    While these mini itx systems are nice . . . when will we see mini itx cases that allow for a full size card using a pci riser? THAT is what most of us would prefer to a prebuilt system.

    ...it's GOT a 680. What more do you want?
    Reply
  • lpedraja2002
    DarkSable...it's GOT a 680. What more do you want?
    Hahah I think he didn't even read the article lol. This is exciting, I've always had a mini-ITX system in mind for my next build but the options were very limited at the time. I'll just wait after the PS4 and Xbox 720 hit the shelves until I build my Mini-ITX monster, then I'll be the envy of all my console gamer friends buahahah.
    Reply
  • anonymous_user
    I think retrophe is wanting to build his/her own Mini-ITX system. With the current ITX chassis available, they have to be sufficiently wide to accomodate full-sized cards. If we had a riser, we could have thinner (though taller) computers.
    Reply
  • adgjlsfhk
    What I really want is for a motherboard company to partner with coolermaster or someone to make low end case-mobo combos that don't have the motherboard separately mounted, but is just installed in the case. It sucks for upgrading, but it could make some nice low end small systems.
    Reply
  • mikenygmail
    680 is overkill and makes the system too expensive.
    An AMD system with 7870 LE aka "7930" would make a lot more sense.
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    anonymous_userI think retrophe is wanting to build his/her own Mini-ITX system. With the current ITX chassis available, they have to be sufficiently wide to accomodate full-sized cards. If we had a riser, we could have thinner (though taller) computers.
    You can buy risers. They're mostly used in server chassis, but they're available.
    Reply
  • grokem
    I think it's awesome that someone is finally noticing the need for mITX in the gaming space. I just built a 16GB, i7-3770, TI-660i, Samsung 840 pro mITX system so you can have a serious mITX gaming system as long as you don't want to overclock or go liquid cooling. You can have those too but the logistics get complex quickly.

    What amazed me is that the GPU is the largest component by far. It was 2x the volume of my mITX MB. Maybe about the same as the MB, CPU and cooler combined. After the GPU the PSU was the next biggest component and I got a very small PSU. While putting the GPU on a riser is certainly part of the answer, I think the end game is for the GPU and the MB to get combined completely so you just add the processor of you choice.

    I paid ~$300 for my GPU. I'd pay another $100 easy if the GPU was a standard mITX MB. Nvidia has been building MB for years, why not just do the whole thing?
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    If there was only a way to install a mCard, I'd be interested. Sorry. No thanks!
    Reply