Gigabyte has gone and quietly introduced its first mini-ITX form factor motherboard based on AMD’s X870 chipset, and from the renders we’ve seen, it’s quite the looker. As the model name implies, Gigabyte’s new Aorus X870I Pro Ice mostly ditches a darker colorway for a white (and off-white) motif that, in the right build, could make a small form factor (SFF) gaming PC really pop.
The caveat is that since this is a smaller motherboard, there might not be a whole lot to look at once you’ve crammed a pile of gaming hardware inside. Even so, some parts of the board will inevitably stick out, like the I/O housing.
One of the trade offs with a mini-ITX board like this is you only get two DIMM slots. Fortunately, memory makers have started pushing out more capacious memory modules, with this board supporting up to 128GB (2x64GB) of DDR5-8800 memory.
There’s a single, full-length PCI Express 5.0 x16 slot for your graphics card, which is a single-piece design that’s anchored to a backplate for a 10X load-bearing capacity to accommodate heavier GPUs. Gigabyte calls this a PCIe UD Slot X, and it also includes an inner lining (a rubber strip) to prevent scuffing your graphics card’s printed circuit board (PCB).
Other notable features include two M.2 slots (1x PCIe 5.0 on the front and 1x PCIe 4.0 on the back) with screwless designs, two SATA 6Gbps ports, Wi-Fi 7 support, a 2.5Gbps LAN port for wired connections, and generous I/O connectivity on the rear that consists of the following…
- 1 x Q-Flash Plus button
- 1 x HDMI port
- 2 x antenna connectors (2T2R)
- 1 x USB4 USB Type-C port (DisplayPort
- 1 x USB Type-C port, with USB 3.2 Gen 2 support
- 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (red)
- 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports
- 2 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 1 x RJ-45 port
- 2 x audio jacks
There are also various headers for more expansion options and for different types of cooling setups, as well as a reset jumper, a clear CMOS jumper, a chassis intrusion header, and a few other odds and ends.
The board itself employs an 8+2+1 (CPU vCore + SOC + MISC) phase VRM design, as well as 10-layer PCB with premium components, according to Gigabyte.