Unboxing and Review: The New ITX Motherboard with NVMe Slot

I'm excited to unbox and review this new ITX motherboard, which features an M.2 NVMe slot. As I take out the box, I notice that there's a secondary M.2 connector on the board, but I'm not sure if it will actually support M.2. The instructions mention that the first M.2 slot is NVMe-only, and I wonder if this second one might be smaller than I expected.

The motherboard has a neat feature - instead of a full-size PCIe fan header, it uses a compact fan connector to connect to the heatsink surrounding the CPU cooler. This is actually a solid piece of aluminum, not just for show. The cooler itself is a factory-installed 3000G cooler that I had to modify by fixing the brackets and securing them properly.

As I power on the motherboard, I'm using a 3000G Athon processor with 32GB of ASRock Loki RAM installed. Since I don't have any solid-state storage at this point, I just want to see if it's compatible and if it will post successfully. The board has a USB 2.0 header area that I should be careful not to mistake for the motherboard's power headers.

The motherboard boots up without issue, displaying a nice "POST" message on the screen. However, upon further inspection, I notice that the RAM is running at an incorrect speed - it's currently set to XMP disabled and operating at 3200MHz, when it should be running at its native speed. Thankfully, I can simply enable XMP to get the correct speeds.

As for the motherboard's compatibility, I'm pleased to discover that it works seamlessly with my 3000G Athon processor. The board supports a range of RAM frequencies and speeds, including 3200MHz, but unfortunately doesn't support the higher speeds offered by newer Ryzen processors like the 3400G or 3600G.

I also notice that the motherboard has a nice touch - when you press a certain key on the keyboard during boot-up, it triggers a display of RGB lighting along the back of the board. This is not only visually appealing but also indicates that the system is online and ready to go.

Overall, I'm impressed with this ITX motherboard's design and features, particularly its clever use of compact connectors to accommodate smaller fans or other peripherals in tight spaces. While there are some minor issues, such as the incorrect RAM speed, the board has proven itself to be a solid performer, and I'm excited to see what it can do in real-world applications.

The motherboard's specifications include:

* M.2 NVMe slot

* Compact fan connector for heatsinks

* 3000G Athon processor support

* 32GB of ASRock Loki RAM installed

* USB 2.0 header area

* RGB lighting along the back of the board

If you're in the market for a compact, feature-rich motherboard with an M.2 NVMe slot, this ITX board is definitely worth considering. With its clever design and robust features, it's sure to provide a solid foundation for your next build or upgrade project.

In conclusion, I'm glad that I got to unbox and test this new ITX motherboard. While there are some minor issues, the board has proven itself to be a reliable performer with plenty of features to keep you engaged. As always, thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoyed this review!

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwelcome back everybody and thank you for tuning in to another episode and if you're here and you're watching thank you for that today we're looking at the auroras b550i pro ax motherboard this is a itx motherboard that i'm going to use in a build because i'm reviewing a case coming up and i wanted to take a look at what i'm putting in it before i get to that so guys sit back relax let's take a look at this itx board if you're looking to get this itx board i will put a link in the amazon or in the links below for amazon as an affiliate so if you're looking to buy this board you can help the channel so let's get it opened up and see what you get now also i want to point out before i go any further this was actually an amazon return it was inspected by amazon's inspection team so let's see how that works it was a way i could get the board a little cheaper now look at this you see this box and then you see this little tiny board right here so i'm going to put that aside and see what we get so this is a pull out and we're going to have some sata cables of course your wi-fi of course i like i like this wi-fi it's magnetic and it just looks kind of like a shark vendor no no no just kind of cool of course you're going to get your cd backup screws or screws for your uh nvme m.2 slots an argb cable oh that's a really cool roast badge normally you get in the roast patch it looks like this look at this one that is pretty cool that's really cool actually i ripped open sort of uh it is a uh the new fan header they're using here i'll just take this out of the bag because it's already opened uh this is where to use this smaller connector and give you a full-size fan header to give an extra fan uh ability on an itx board gigabyte came up with that and i thought that was great and correct me of course if gigabyte didn't come up with it but i'm pretty sure they did i don't know why there's zip ties and grommets in here disturbing and of course you get your manual and manuals can be kind of important when it comes normally i say toilet paper but when it comes to a motherboard it's not a bad thing to have around for sure so we know it's not sealed by any means so let's take a look at what we got here it's actually quite a bit of weight to this board and i'm gonna say that's because this board actually has a full aluminum panel on the back here and of course an nvme m.2 slot on the back so what's unique about this board over other itx boards that i've tested is you get two nvme slots because under this heatsink there's another one so that is actually really really cool i like the reinforced and metal uh ddr4 slots here that's kind of nice it just gives it that you just bought something expensive look and that's something i really really like hey check this out guys remember i said this is an amazon return this is on backwards you see that these are put on backwards now this was inspected by an amazon inspection team well they would have known or how did they test it good point huh so i need to worry and i've had it for quite a while so if anything's wrong with it now i'm gonna have to go through gigabyte and not do an amazon return because they're going to be saying i'm past that window i've had it now sitting here for a few months so i'm a crap out of luck there if something goes wrong with this so that is very unfortunate so you are greeted of course with a cpu fan header right here or water pump whatever you want to be eight phase power connector which would be pretty standard on anything newer today and then of course your vrm here an aluminum heatsink pipe down to the heatsink here for your nvme be kind of nice if i open that now and there's an nvme still in there that would be a bonus maybe we'll do that in the video just in case because this is done wrong uh your 24 pin connector four sata ports you have another usb port right here and i'm going to say that is probably an rgb header another rgb header usb 2.0 fan header right here so now we have at least two fan headers if we count the cpu header now itx boards aren't really famous for having a lot of fan headers so there's one two at this point another usb port here and your pcie 16x right here and look at that all metal shroud i mean this is actually a beautiful board like right down to the the weight and finish seeing this that really made me happy and to get the board for what i got it for it was it was pretty much a steal if it works um so in here you have another usb you'll have your uh audio or sorry that's your odd hd audio not 100 what that is it could be a tpm and then there's a weird connector right there now the connector for that mini fan oh your argb is right here so there is one it's just kind of hidden and what's surprising now is i'm trying to find that little mini connector because i don't see it so now i'm starting to wonder if that mini connector is even supposed to be in this box but it'd be kind of odd that they didn't have it to go along with giving you an extra fan so it doesn't matter we're going to take this here off in a minute because i want to see what is underneath there and of course here we have wi-fi of course your audio unfortunately this guy does not have fiber but i mean at this point he had dual hdmi you have your display port three usb well actually we'll say four five usb uh not one yeah three point twos uh so there's lots of usb 3.2s on here no usb 2.0 anymore i guess that's possible with your uh connectors on the board actually have a 2.5 gigabit lan here which is phenomenal your usbc out the back i did not see a usbc header on the board anywhere so you're not going to be hooking up a case with usbc on this whatsoever so anyway that is your basic layout it's a beautiful looking board it's got real decent weight to it and it's what i expect from auroras moving forward with you know some quality higher end parts and just the fit and finish and things that they've done on the ram and so on just tells me that these guys are definitely serious so now this is bothering me so we're going to take a look at this and i want to see if it has that extra connector for that cable that's actually in the box so was it supposed to be in the box well let's find out okay no they're not ifixit i think they're no fix-it not big enough channel have i fix the tools okay these are long screws all right i've never had one of these boards or taken any of this apart before so i'm not sure what is needed to do so looks like a little bit more on this one and a little bit more on this one wow those are seriously long okay so once you get that off that's just a big huge heatsink that i'm not even 100 was touching this so it's either for show or it actually does something which i don't see how and now we're going to take this here off unfortunately and it was used because the stickiness is right here um unfortunately there is no free solid state they screwed this up but they didn't give me something for a gift which kind of sucks but there's your other m.2 right here or nvme slot i don't know if this will actually run m.2 maybe the secondary might but usually the first ones now on the newer series of boards are nvme only and that must be that connector but i thought it was smaller this would plug in here give you your extra fan header this is a neat little thing they did on these itx boards because there's no room even though it does look like you could have possibly put a normal full-size one here they didn't so this would plug in here give you your full-size four pin and now you would have two to support any other fans you want to put on your system now with an itx build there's a chance that you're gonna have to use a fan hub you have one for your cpu and two headers for other fans so what this does this piece here actually connects to the heatsink that's surrounding everything going out to this pipe so this is actually a heatsink it's not just for show so it's one big solid piece of aluminum which is kind of neat to see at first i was kind of questioning it i'm like what the heck does it do i mean it's not connected to the nvme and the nvme has its own heatsink underneath that so guys um what do you think comment below i think it's going to be a really really nice cool board i just hope it works and yeah okay guys so what i'm going to do here now is i'm going to power this up i just happen to have a 3000 g athlon sitting around which is the am4 platform i threw 32 gigs of my asrock loki in here no solid state at this point i just want to see if i got hosed or not and i want to talk about something i mentioned earlier that was incorrect and that was the uh this being a usb um 2.0 this one is but this is actually your motherboard uh header area here so this is the power here these two pins whenever i know if i'm powered up or not there we go let's find out if it posts i don't know if the 3000 g is even compatible so we're about to find that out too as you can see here some really nice light going on all along the back here which is really cool if you want to light that back end up so let's hope this board works or i'm going to cry we got post there we go i had in the wrong port so as you can see here we do have post uh by of course it's being reset reconfiguration is needed and that to me is awesome let me just get a mouse to plug in here right let's click ok and take a look at what we got so 3.5 that is correct the ram is running at the wrong speed right now but that's xmp disabled not a big deal we could just do that and it's at 3200 um but as we see here two 16 gig dimms of ram 3000 g with vega so that means that it may not work with the 3200 g and the 3400 g but it does work with the athlon 3000 series so that must determine that it's a third gen at that point because it works now it's only vega 3 graphics but hey it is what it is guys i really really really hope that you enjoyed the unboxing and i'm glad that i could fire it up and show you guys the light going on here because that is really really cool and it's nice and it's actually hidden underneath here too so it kind of goes down and out which is really cool uh the fact that it's working with this chip is really nice yes don't knock the cooler that is a factory 3000g cooler i did fix the brackets and put them on properly and it's nice to know that the board is actually working so my worries are a little put to bed and we can move on now so anyway guys thank you for watching at least you got to see it running so you know what kind of lighting you're going to deal with and how it looks till next time game over youwelcome back everybody and thank you for tuning in to another episode and if you're here and you're watching thank you for that today we're looking at the auroras b550i pro ax motherboard this is a itx motherboard that i'm going to use in a build because i'm reviewing a case coming up and i wanted to take a look at what i'm putting in it before i get to that so guys sit back relax let's take a look at this itx board if you're looking to get this itx board i will put a link in the amazon or in the links below for amazon as an affiliate so if you're looking to buy this board you can help the channel so let's get it opened up and see what you get now also i want to point out before i go any further this was actually an amazon return it was inspected by amazon's inspection team so let's see how that works it was a way i could get the board a little cheaper now look at this you see this box and then you see this little tiny board right here so i'm going to put that aside and see what we get so this is a pull out and we're going to have some sata cables of course your wi-fi of course i like i like this wi-fi it's magnetic and it just looks kind of like a shark vendor no no no just kind of cool of course you're going to get your cd backup screws or screws for your uh nvme m.2 slots an argb cable oh that's a really cool roast badge normally you get in the roast patch it looks like this look at this one that is pretty cool that's really cool actually i ripped open sort of uh it is a uh the new fan header they're using here i'll just take this out of the bag because it's already opened uh this is where to use this smaller connector and give you a full-size fan header to give an extra fan uh ability on an itx board gigabyte came up with that and i thought that was great and correct me of course if gigabyte didn't come up with it but i'm pretty sure they did i don't know why there's zip ties and grommets in here disturbing and of course you get your manual and manuals can be kind of important when it comes normally i say toilet paper but when it comes to a motherboard it's not a bad thing to have around for sure so we know it's not sealed by any means so let's take a look at what we got here it's actually quite a bit of weight to this board and i'm gonna say that's because this board actually has a full aluminum panel on the back here and of course an nvme m.2 slot on the back so what's unique about this board over other itx boards that i've tested is you get two nvme slots because under this heatsink there's another one so that is actually really really cool i like the reinforced and metal uh ddr4 slots here that's kind of nice it just gives it that you just bought something expensive look and that's something i really really like hey check this out guys remember i said this is an amazon return this is on backwards you see that these are put on backwards now this was inspected by an amazon inspection team well they would have known or how did they test it good point huh so i need to worry and i've had it for quite a while so if anything's wrong with it now i'm gonna have to go through gigabyte and not do an amazon return because they're going to be saying i'm past that window i've had it now sitting here for a few months so i'm a crap out of luck there if something goes wrong with this so that is very unfortunate so you are greeted of course with a cpu fan header right here or water pump whatever you want to be eight phase power connector which would be pretty standard on anything newer today and then of course your vrm here an aluminum heatsink pipe down to the heatsink here for your nvme be kind of nice if i open that now and there's an nvme still in there that would be a bonus maybe we'll do that in the video just in case because this is done wrong uh your 24 pin connector four sata ports you have another usb port right here and i'm going to say that is probably an rgb header another rgb header usb 2.0 fan header right here so now we have at least two fan headers if we count the cpu header now itx boards aren't really famous for having a lot of fan headers so there's one two at this point another usb port here and your pcie 16x right here and look at that all metal shroud i mean this is actually a beautiful board like right down to the the weight and finish seeing this that really made me happy and to get the board for what i got it for it was it was pretty much a steal if it works um so in here you have another usb you'll have your uh audio or sorry that's your odd hd audio not 100 what that is it could be a tpm and then there's a weird connector right there now the connector for that mini fan oh your argb is right here so there is one it's just kind of hidden and what's surprising now is i'm trying to find that little mini connector because i don't see it so now i'm starting to wonder if that mini connector is even supposed to be in this box but it'd be kind of odd that they didn't have it to go along with giving you an extra fan so it doesn't matter we're going to take this here off in a minute because i want to see what is underneath there and of course here we have wi-fi of course your audio unfortunately this guy does not have fiber but i mean at this point he had dual hdmi you have your display port three usb well actually we'll say four five usb uh not one yeah three point twos uh so there's lots of usb 3.2s on here no usb 2.0 anymore i guess that's possible with your uh connectors on the board actually have a 2.5 gigabit lan here which is phenomenal your usbc out the back i did not see a usbc header on the board anywhere so you're not going to be hooking up a case with usbc on this whatsoever so anyway that is your basic layout it's a beautiful looking board it's got real decent weight to it and it's what i expect from auroras moving forward with you know some quality higher end parts and just the fit and finish and things that they've done on the ram and so on just tells me that these guys are definitely serious so now this is bothering me so we're going to take a look at this and i want to see if it has that extra connector for that cable that's actually in the box so was it supposed to be in the box well let's find out okay no they're not ifixit i think they're no fix-it not big enough channel have i fix the tools okay these are long screws all right i've never had one of these boards or taken any of this apart before so i'm not sure what is needed to do so looks like a little bit more on this one and a little bit more on this one wow those are seriously long okay so once you get that off that's just a big huge heatsink that i'm not even 100 was touching this so it's either for show or it actually does something which i don't see how and now we're going to take this here off unfortunately and it was used because the stickiness is right here um unfortunately there is no free solid state they screwed this up but they didn't give me something for a gift which kind of sucks but there's your other m.2 right here or nvme slot i don't know if this will actually run m.2 maybe the secondary might but usually the first ones now on the newer series of boards are nvme only and that must be that connector but i thought it was smaller this would plug in here give you your extra fan header this is a neat little thing they did on these itx boards because there's no room even though it does look like you could have possibly put a normal full-size one here they didn't so this would plug in here give you your full-size four pin and now you would have two to support any other fans you want to put on your system now with an itx build there's a chance that you're gonna have to use a fan hub you have one for your cpu and two headers for other fans so what this does this piece here actually connects to the heatsink that's surrounding everything going out to this pipe so this is actually a heatsink it's not just for show so it's one big solid piece of aluminum which is kind of neat to see at first i was kind of questioning it i'm like what the heck does it do i mean it's not connected to the nvme and the nvme has its own heatsink underneath that so guys um what do you think comment below i think it's going to be a really really nice cool board i just hope it works and yeah okay guys so what i'm going to do here now is i'm going to power this up i just happen to have a 3000 g athlon sitting around which is the am4 platform i threw 32 gigs of my asrock loki in here no solid state at this point i just want to see if i got hosed or not and i want to talk about something i mentioned earlier that was incorrect and that was the uh this being a usb um 2.0 this one is but this is actually your motherboard uh header area here so this is the power here these two pins whenever i know if i'm powered up or not there we go let's find out if it posts i don't know if the 3000 g is even compatible so we're about to find that out too as you can see here some really nice light going on all along the back here which is really cool if you want to light that back end up so let's hope this board works or i'm going to cry we got post there we go i had in the wrong port so as you can see here we do have post uh by of course it's being reset reconfiguration is needed and that to me is awesome let me just get a mouse to plug in here right let's click ok and take a look at what we got so 3.5 that is correct the ram is running at the wrong speed right now but that's xmp disabled not a big deal we could just do that and it's at 3200 um but as we see here two 16 gig dimms of ram 3000 g with vega so that means that it may not work with the 3200 g and the 3400 g but it does work with the athlon 3000 series so that must determine that it's a third gen at that point because it works now it's only vega 3 graphics but hey it is what it is guys i really really really hope that you enjoyed the unboxing and i'm glad that i could fire it up and show you guys the light going on here because that is really really cool and it's nice and it's actually hidden underneath here too so it kind of goes down and out which is really cool uh the fact that it's working with this chip is really nice yes don't knock the cooler that is a factory 3000g cooler i did fix the brackets and put them on properly and it's nice to know that the board is actually working so my worries are a little put to bed and we can move on now so anyway guys thank you for watching at least you got to see it running so you know what kind of lighting you're going to deal with and how it looks till next time game over you