CES 2018 - ASRock's commitment to the small form factor PC is unwavering, and at CECS 2018 they showed off two new Micro-ATX motherboards. The X299 chipset mainly serves Intel's X-Series of processors while the X399 chipset serves AMD's Thread Ripper CPUs. As such, they are high-end desktop chipsets loaded with features and more importantly, traces. Putting either on a micro-ATX motherboard is no easy feat, but ASRock is up to the task.
The X299M Extreme 4 offers four DIMMs for quad channel memory and support for up to 4200MHz+ DIMMs. It uses an XXL Aluminum Alloy heat sink that cools down its insane VRM. You do get SLI and CrossFireX support along with six SATA6G/s ports, two Ultra M.2 slots, two USB 3.1 ports, six USB 3.0 ports, Intel Gbit LAN, and 7.1 HD audio. ASRock also includes RGB LED capabilities.
Thread Ripper's CPU is huge, so it is quite shocking to see a micro-ATX X399 motherboard. The new motherboard supports quad channel memory support, three Ultra M.2 slots, eight SATA6Gb/s slots, a U.2 port, three x16 PCI-E 3.0 slots, 10 USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.1 ports, dual Gbit LAN, WIFI, and 7.1 HD audio. It also uses a giant aluminum heat sink to cool down a powerful VRM, so you can overclock your stealth compact ThreadRipper rig.