The ASRock B360M-ITX/ac Motherboard Review: Tiny Take on B360, Sub $100

Conclusion

Any user looking to buy Mini-ITX motherboards are quite obviously looking for a small footprint and still would like to have at least some of the latest features included on the board. When users are looking at a mid-range chipset, they should expect that perhaps not all the features will make it on the board or in the quantity wanted, but such as it goes in the market.

The ASRock B360M-ITX/ac includes a lot of what users are looking for in this platform including USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) Type-A ports on the back, as well as a single M.2 port for SATA or PCIe based modules. The integrated Intel dual-band Wi-Fi adapter is capable of 433 Mbps speeds. This is a bit slower than what we see in many other boards (including two B360 Mini-ITX boards competing with it), however that speed should be plenty for most users. On the audio side of things, the Realtek ALC887 codec is used and supports 7.1ch surround. 

As far as what may be improved on the board. It's a tough call. All users want all the features and at a low price, the latter what these boards are intended for. That said, I would like to have seen faster Wi-Fi module used, perhaps another M.2 slot, and dare I say, RGB LEDs or at least a header. That is hardware wise, but the elephant in the room was the multi-threaded performance and voltage regulator temperature throttling we are seeing. Boards should be able to handle any processor it says it has support for and this board simply couldn't do it, albeit in the most stressful of situations. Though understandably difficult with the limited space to work with, more USB ports of any type couldn't hurt. If a user has a USB mouse and keyboard, that leaves two on the back panel (in my case one as the G.Skill keyboard I use has two USB plugs). 

On the aesthetics front, the board doesn't really set itself apart from the other similar offerings. It uses ASRock's Sapphire black colored motherboard but forgoes the use oF RGB LEDs and even RGB LED headers. Because of this, users will have to lean on their case, case fans, and other accessories to brighten things up a bit if they choose. Outside of that, it looks like every other B360 Mini-ITX board, function over form - not that the form is bad on any of these, it is what it is for reasons all board partners are limited by real-estate and cost considerations. 

We've mentioned above there are concerns with heavily multi-threaded performance, which may be adjusted in future BIOS revisions, so we will focus on the positives. Single threaded performance and multi-threaded results without the ultra-stressful AVX instruction sets performed well compared to the other boards landing in the middle of the bell curve in most situations. So long as owners do not plan on rendering in Blender or POV-Ray, the motherboard handles things with aplomb.The ASRock B360M-ITX/ac really shined in boot times where it is currently the fastest board to get through POST I have tested so far. 

In the end, the ASRock B360M-ITX/ac brings users a board with many features users expect to see in a SFF mid-range chipset based motherboard. Performance wise it works fine with an i7-8700K so long as it isn't being pushed terribly hard on all cores and threads with AVX instructions. All motherboards should be able to run any stock CPU it is compatible with and not throttle performance. We haven't had a chance to test the other boards, but if your use model includes rendering and such or using AVX instructions, you may want to look for a different solution or a processor with a lower TDP. We imagine few to purchase the 95W unlocked i7-8700K used in testing. So for those who are looking at the 65W locked CPUs, the B360M-ITX/ac can be a solid foundation for a small form factor build. 

AnandTech Intel 300-Series Motherboard and CPU Coverage

• The Intel Core i7-8086K Review: Testing Intel's Anniversary 5.0 GHz Turbo CPU
• The Anandtech Coffee Lake Review: Initial Numbers on the Core i7-8700K and Core i5-8400
• Analyzing Z370 for Intel's 8th Generation Coffee Lake: A Quick Look at 50+ Motherboards
   
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