ASUS ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wi-Fi Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

TweakTown's Rating: 95%

The Bottom Line

This little ASUS stands alone as the ultimate Mini-ITX board for a powerful, yet compact AM5 system.

Pros

• ROG Hive II
• Solid USB complement
• Capable VRM
• Acceptable price
• Impressive engineering

Cons

• The VRM can get hot

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon for $439.99 USD

Buy at Amazon for $609.99 CAD

Buy at Amazon for £474.25

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

Small form factor PCs have a dedicated following. You can count me among them. Of course, there are some inevitable compromises when building a system with a Mini-ITX motherboard, but with some smart engineering, it is possible to cram most of the features of an ATX motherboard into the 6.7-inch x 6.7-inch (17 cm x 17 cm) Mini-ITX form factor.

The ASUS ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wi-Fi is a perfect example of such engineering. Instead of being stuck with the confines of a Mini-ITX PCB, ASUS has done some fantastic things with daughterboards and an external USB-connected audio device that also functions as the equivalent of a docking station. The only things it misses out on are the ability to install several M.2 drives, and like all Mini-ITX boards, it only has one PCIe x16 expansion slot.

The ROG Strix X870-I is, as the name suggests, an X870 motherboard. It doesn't include the space-hogging extra Promontory 21 chip present on X870E motherboards. Aside from saving space, the expansion potential of such a design is unnecessary for a Mini-ITX board. A single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for a graphics card and two M.2 slots are easily within the capabilities of a single-chip X870 solution.

Aside from an impressive feature set, the Strix X870-I comes with ease-of-use improvements, native support for Ryzen 9000 series CPUs, memory improvements, and ongoing socket support from AMD. With few X870 Mini-ITX motherboards revealed so far, the ROG Strix X870-I currently stands alone as the only premium Mini-ITX motherboard for those looking to build a high-end yet compact Ryzen 9000 system.

The board itself shows impressive attention to detail. Though it's a small board, the metallic highlights look impressive, and the three fan headers above the heatsink even feature caps with the ROG logo on them.

Key highlights include a compact but still capable VRM, a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot, two memory slots supporting 96GB of memory at up to DDR5-8600+, two M.2 slots, up to four SATA ports, 320MHz Wi-Fi 7, 2.5G LAN, and a robust complement of speedy USB ports, including dual USB4. Not bad at all for a Mini-ITX motherboard.

The ASUS ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wi-Fi carries an MSRP of $449.

Best Deals: ASUS ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wi-Fi Mini-ITX Motherboard

	Today	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$439.99 USD	-	$577.77 USD	Buy
	$609.99 CAD	-	$814.18 CAD	Buy
	£474.25	-	£554.36	Buy
	$439.99 USD	-	$577.77 USD	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 3/27/2025 at 5:19 am CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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One look at the box leaves no doubt you're looking at an ASUS ROG motherboard. One may remember ASUS' Mini-DTX experiment in the form of the X570 ROG Crosshair VIII Impact. The Mini-DTX form factor never took off, and in recent years, ASUS has discarded the Impact nomenclature and instead given what amounts to a demotion for its Mini-ITX boards to the Strix brand. That's likely to consolidate its SFF range under the Strix banner, which includes models with budget chipsets. It does not matter in any way but in name. The ROG Strix X870-I could easily earn a place among the ROG Crosshair family of motherboards.

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The rear of the box showcases the board's key features and specifications. It includes a look at the ROG Strix Hive II, which we'll go into shortly. It shows the rear I/O panel, the dual USB4 ports, and it discloses the board's dual VRM and chipset fans. These are necessary given the heatsink surface area, which is much smaller than those you'll find on similarly priced ATX motherboards.

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The Strix X870-I's accessory complement is excellent. You get a set of stickers, a quick start guide, and regulatory notices as a starter.

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ASUS' Wi-Fi 7 antenna is a highlight. It's adjustable and well-built. The Type-C cable is thick in gauge and used to connect to the ROG Strix Hive II. There's a USB 2.0 splitter cable, two SATA cables, and a front panel connector. There are cable ties, a keychain, and some odds and ends for M.2 SSDs.

A USB drive contains drivers and a comprehensive set of ASUS utilities.

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Now we come to one of the board's highlights: the ROG Strix Hive II, an excellent accessory. Its base function is to serve as an external sound card based around a Realtek ALC4080 codec, but it also includes an ESS Sabre 9260Q DAC, headphone jack, and volume control. These components and accompanying circuitry cannot be included on the Strix X870-I PCB without compromising in other areas.

The Hive II does much more than provide audio, though. It features a system power button and a programmable flex button, which can be used to boot into Windows safe mode or toggle the Aura Sync lighting. It also has a set of four diagnostic LEDs. It adds a further 10Gbps Type-C port plus another Type-A port. It's a seriously impressive and notably well-built little device with rubberized feet and magnetic attachment capability.

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The other important accessory is what ASUS refers to as the ROG FPS card. It's a small daughterboard that connects to the motherboard via two Type-C USB ports. It includes a pair of USB 2.0 headers, the case headers, an overvoltage jumper, a PCIe mode switch, and two SATA ports. It's an innovative and clever way to add functionality to the board without taking up too much valuable PCB space.

Motherboard Overview

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The Strix 870-I looks every bit like an ASUS ROG motherboard, though apart from the chrome-like accents atop the heatsinks, there isn't much to speak about. Besides, most of the center of the board will be covered by an air cooler or AIO head anyway.

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The board's rear features a substantial heatsink plate. It adds some rigidity to the board, but its main function is to cool the rear of the VRM. A thermal pad facilitates this.

ASUS could have used this plate to cool a third M.2 drive, but given how the VRM already generates a lot of heat, this is undoubtedly for cooling reasons. The rear of most systems doesn't get much airflow, which can be especially restricted in small form factor systems.

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Many of the board's headers and connectors have been shifted onto the aforementioned FPS card, but several headers remain on the PCB itself.

You get three 4-pin fan headers, all placed along the top of the board. That will be a little restrictive in some systems, but it's nothing a cable splitter or two won't fix.

The USB header complement consists of a single 10Gbps Type-C and two 5Gbps Type-A ports. The FPS card adds an additional three USB 2.0 ports.

Should you wish to add some RGB to your system, there are two addressable RGB headers and a thermistor cable header.

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ASUS ROG boards have long been known for their overclocking prowess. Mini-ITX boards - and dual DIMM boards in general - are known for their excellent memory overclocking performance. The Strix X870-I features two DIMM slots that support speeds of up to DDR5-8600+ with a monolithic Ryzen 8000 series APU. It's slightly lower with a 9000 series chip at 8400 MT/s. Though I have yet to push a Ryzen 9000 series chip to its memory limits, it's hardly a leap to say that few AM5 motherboards will outperform the ROG Strix X870-I when it comes to running high memory speeds and tweaked timings.

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Storage-wise, the Strix X870-I includes two M.2 slots, one of which supports PCIe 5.0 while the second supports PCIe 4.0. These are joined by two SATA ports via the FPS card. That is the bare minimum expected of any AM5 motherboard. Could ASUS have opted to include a rear-mounted third M.2 slot? Perhaps, but four drives are sufficient for most consumer or gaming systems.

The Strix X870-I's stacked M.2 slot assembly is another example of the impressive engineering behind the board. A detachable daughter board sits on the top layer, which includes the PCIe 4.0 slot. The topmost cooling plate cools it. Underneath the PCIe 4.0 slot is the PCIe 5.0 slot, which you can see labeled in the picture above.

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The bottom layer is where you'll find the chipset heatsink. It doesn't need to be huge, as X870 boards include only a single chip. There's another embedded fan adjacent to the rear I/O that helps keep things cool. Nobody likes small fans that are prone to failure, but in our testing, they were not audible after booting the system. The noise from our AIO fans was the dominant noise source under normal operating conditions.

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One of the main drawbacks of the Mini-ITX form factor is the necessity to reduce the VRM design compared to an ATX board. Given the PCB constraints, the Strix X870-I includes about the maximum you could hope for. A 10+2+1 phase VRM design with 110A stages is easily sufficient to power an overclocked Ryzen 9 9950X, while a single 8-pin EPS connector is also sufficient unless you plan to install an LN2 pot and chase Cinebench records.

Mini-ITX boards come with an unavoidable weakness, though. A single bank heatsink-even with an embedded fan-will be challenged more than a larger dual bank heatsink common to ATX boards. Our testing bore this out, which resulted in the highest VRM temperature we've seen on an X870 motherboard to date, and by some margin.

Modern VRM designs are rated to run at 100C or more, so it is not a problem for the Strix X870-I, but it will be wise to incorporate sufficient case airflow into your build. If you're planning a particularly compact build, engaging one of AMD's ECO modes or using a lower TDP or lower core count chip would be a sensible choice.

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The Strix X870-I comes with a very well-equipped rear I/O panel. The USB complement begins with dual USB4 Type-C ports with DP support. These are joined by five 10Gbps ports. One of these is a Type-C port designated for use with the ROG Hive II. There are also three USB 2.0 ports. That's as good a USB complement as you'll find on a Mini-ITX board.

The single 2.5G port uses an Intel controller. Like nearly all X870 boards, the Strix X870-I includes Wi-Fi 7, but it's important to note the board supports 320MHz connections, delivering up to 6.5Gbps of bandwidth. It also includes Bluetooth 5.4 support.

Finally, we have a single HDMI 2.1 port, a CMOS clear button, and a BIOS flashback button. The latter means you'll be able to install a future X3D chip and, more than likely, a Zen 6 CPU without needing a currently available chip to update the BIOS.

Note there are no audio ports, as the ROG Strix Hive II handles that functionality.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

Anyone familiar with an ASUS ROG BIOS from the last several years will be right at home poking around the ROG Strix X870-I BIOS. The advanced pages require a steeper learning curve than other manufacturers, but that's part of what makes ROG BIOSes special. They are packed with options, and RAM tweakers, in particular, will love the Strix X870-I. But if all those menus appear daunting, a less experienced user will find the most basic set-and-forget settings like RAM profiles, fan control, and boot priorities clearly labeled and accessible when using the EZ mode.

ASUS' fan control page is top-notch, and the Q-Dashboard page is a simple way to troubleshoot a problematic component or peripheral.

Since its introduction, ASUS' Armory Crate software has earned a reputation for being resource-heavy and clunky, but in fairness to ASUS, it is a comprehensive suite. It gives you the option to install some notable extras, including AIDA64, HWINFO, AURA Sync ARGB software, and trials for Adobe Creative Cloud, WinRAR, and Norton 360. CPU-Z is a must for any DIY builder.

Test System

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2024 is the latest version of Maxon's reliable and frequently used benchmark that measures single and multi-threaded performance. Note that all our benchmark testing used the latest available Windows updates and a BIOS that includes AGESA 1.2.0.2, which features improved inter-core latency for AMD Ryzen 9000 series processors.

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The X870-I performed as expected, with a result of 2,268 in the nT test and 139 in the 1T test. That's bang on what we expect from a Ryzen 9 9950X.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU like a Ryzen 9 9950X. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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A result of 433 seconds for this test puts the ASUS right in the middle of the boards we've tested so far. Over the course of a seven-minute test, a second here or there means nothing.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher result means the task will take less time to complete.

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The Strix X870-I is towards the back of the pack here, but when less than a 3% gap covers the entire field, it's not a cause for concern.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's susceptible to memory speed and latency changes and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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A result of 225.67 BIPS in this memory-sensitive test is a strong result for the Strix X870-I.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency is an area that currently favors Intel. AMD's chiplet architecture and the Infinity Fabric link inevitably add some latency compared to Intel's monolithic chips. The real-world benefits aren't that important, though.

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This is a strong result for the Strix X870-I.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs purely for leisure, but some of us have to work, too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.

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The little ASUS pulls out a decent little lead here, which is impressive.

3DMark Storage

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game. This test is the same as running the actual game without the inconsistencies inherent in application testing.

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For whatever reason, all the X870 boards we've tested so far are a statistically significant margin behind the older ASRock X670E Taichi here. Perhaps post-release BIOS updates can unlock that last percentage point or two of X870 SSD performance.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme is losing favor as a graphics benchmark in favor of Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.

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The differences between the boards are minor.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when things like ray tracing are removed, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.

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The RTX 4070 Ti Super, as used in our test system, is not the ultimate card for highlighting gaming performance differences, so the results between the tested boards are close.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards when using the' favor performance' preset.

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The differences here are minor, but the little ASUS leads the field again with a solid minimum FPS result. That may well be due to the Strix X870-I's good memory performance.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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All the tested motherboards performed essentially identically.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. In the case of VRM testing, each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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If the ASUS ROG Strix X870-I has a weakness, it is this: Its peak VRM temperatures are much higher than those found on X870/E ATX boards. It's not a design fault; it's just the nature of space-constrained Mini-ITX motherboards. As mentioned earlier in the review, it's important to ensure you have good case airflow if you're planning on running a high core count chip under extended loads for a long period of time.

While reaching the mid-70s can be considered relatively high, it's still well within the limits of a modern VRM design. Let your system breathe, and there will be nothing to worry about.

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Once we saw the VRM result, we expected similarly high temperatures for a PCIe 5.0 SSD. However, this is a good result for the Strix X870-I, given the stacked chipset + PCIe 5.0 + PCIe 4.0 heatsink design. The embedded fan was not required to work hard at all in our test system.

Final Thoughts

ASUS continues its legacy of producing excellent premium-tier Mini-ITX motherboards. Recent examples such as the ROG Strix X670E-I and Strix Z790-I set a high bar, and the Strix X870-I matches it, if not betters it.

We'll start with its weaknesses, both of which are inevitable for Mini-ITX boards. You only get support for four internal drives, and the VRM can get hot when pushing a high-core count chip hard. However, four drives are enough for a typical consumer or gaming system, and the VRM temperatures are still well within tolerances. If you're using a chip such as a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, it won't break a sweat.

But the rest is all seriously impressive. $449 is a good price for this board, especially given the unique engineering challenges and R&D effort involved. It's around $50 under the price of mid-high-end ATX motherboards and a whopping $250 less than the price of ASUS' own ROG Crosshair X870E Hero. Its features are many. The ROG Hive II and Strix FPS card are innovative ways to escape the inherent constraints of a Mini-ITX motherboard. ASUS went 3D if you want to put it that way.

You get the standard X870 features like dual USB4, PCIe 5.0 x16, and x4 SSD slots, but you also get fast 320MHz Wi-Fi 7. The ROG Hive adds a quality external audio solution with an ESS Sabre DAC, extra USB ports, and some useful functionality on top of that. The BIOS is packed with features for tweakers. Whether you're looking to run set-and-forget fast memory or tweak the sub-timings to extract every last drop of performance from an AM5 system, the Strix X870-I has you covered.

The ASUS ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wi-Fi is the best AM5 Mini-ITX motherboard. Fans of small form factor systems need not look further for a motherboard to power an AMD system now or in the future. It's in a class of its own.