GIGABYTE X570SI AORUS PRO AX (rev. 1.1) AMD Ryzen 3000 PCIe 4.0 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.2 AMD X570S Mini-ITX Motherboard

Pros: - Efficient VRM design with large heatsinks connected by a thick heatpipe - no chipset fan - USB Type-C internal header, unlike Gigabyte's other X570 and B550 ITX motherboards - Intel 2.5 GbE LAN - rev. 1.1 has WiFi 6E (AMD RZ608 (MT7921K))

Cons: - Has too many video ports (2 HDMI 2.1, 1 DisplayPort 1.4) and not enough USB ports - 2 of the 3 fan headers are tiny and require short adapters that need to pass under the graphics card to be used - I would prefer the WiFi 6E to be an Intel device (AX211) - no optical out for audio - The front M.2 slot has a thick solid block of metal as a heat spreader. This is connected along its sides and covered, but with a small airgap, to the second half of the VRM/Chipset heatsink I may replace the metal block heat spreader with a finned heatsink and compare the M.2 temperatures

Overall Review: Mini-ITX is almost always a compromise, but this motherboard has most of the main features people people are looking for. I am surprised that there are so few articles and reviews about this model. It has been difficult to find until recently, which is too bad since this is nearly the end of the AM4 socket era. This motherboard is be a perfect foundation to upgrade my son's 5 (6?) year-old gaming computer. I'm still assembling parts, but so far it's successfully run Memtest86 twice through 4 passes (several hours to complete) on my G.Skill 2x16GB Samsung B-die at 3800 MTs with FCLK 1900 MHz.

Pros: - The best AM4 mini-ITX motherboard you can buy. - The best AM4 mini-ITX VRM configuration available, by far. - No tiny little whiney VRM fan that inevitably would (a) fail or (b) scream like a baby. - The MediaTek WiFi-6E module is surprisingly good (I usually prefer Intel AX210). - Simple, clean aesthetic. - Metal backplate includes thermal pads for key chip locations AND rear m.2 socket. - EK-240 Basic AIO fits the AM4 socket with the tubes facing the VRM heatsink (see cons). - Pointless cosmetic metal block on top-mounted M.2 socket is at least removable. - UEFI/BIOS is easy to navigate and options are clearly identified. - After tweaking the PBO settings, I managed to shave off 50W under full load and 30W under gaming loads, with no loss of clock speeds while improving performance. -My 5800X is not a good sample, the best Curve Optimizer setting I coudl achieve is a Neg Offset of 15 for all-core. I am not interested in tweaking the individual cores CO.

Cons: - Pointless cosmetic metal block on top-mounted M.2 socket (just no, no need for this). - That same cosmetic metal block impeded AIO tubing in my IQUNIX ZX-1-WC case. - Fortunately, said cosmetic metal block is removable and doing so does not impact m.2 temps. - Proprietary fan headers requiring fan-dongle-adapter cables to use with standard cables (again, no, just no, there is NO need for this). - High power usage at Default and PBO-Auto settings (I get it, you want good benches, but enthusiasts know how to tweak these things themselves, make the Default and Auto stock settings properly energy efficieint please). - would have liked to see a coupld more USB Type-A ports, or even another Type-C, but this is minor nit-picking. - Seriously Gigabyte, still NO SSD/NVMe Secure Erase built-in to the UEFI/BIOS? ASUS and ASRock have had this capability for several generations now, it is easy, please add it. Yes, most people will never need it, but for those who build and rebuild and eventually resell their systems this functionality proves invaluable for quickly, securely erasing data.

Overall Review: - Highly recommended for enthusiasts who like to optimize their builds. - Be aware that you can cut down the power usage of your CPU significantly without impacting (or maybe even improving) your performance by manually tuning PBO with a Curve Optimizer Negative Offset (start at Neg 30 all-core, bench, and reduce by 5 to 25 and re-benching, then continue reducing and re-benching until your system stops crashing and remains stable during multiple benches, to find your sweet-spot). Re-Bench single-core at that point, to ensure no single-threaded instability issues. - If anyone from Gigabyte is listening, please stop with the cosmetic metal blocks that serve no purpose and increase your costs and ours, and also please stop with proprietary fan connectors requiring dongles (you CAN fit proper, standardized 4pin connectors if you do just a little bit of CAD design work before sending it to manufacturing).

Overall Review: I use this board with a vertical case and all fit well inside and all wire can be connected without any problem. One water cooling tube for the CPU was squeezed by the heat dissipation block over the M.2 SSD, but this block can be easily removed. The only thing that you should know is about the WIFI driver. This board was listed as V1.0 with an Intel WiFi chip, but no driver was able to make it working. But after few days of research, I finally try the Wifi driver for the V1.1 who have a AMD chip and it finally worked. If you are in the same situation, don't panic and try the drivers for the V1.1 on the Gigabyte website.

Pros: No chipset fan Wifi 6e Everything else is the same as previous versions of this board and is overall a good product

Cons: Chassis fan headers are under m.2 heatsink.... the only way to use them is to either remove the heatsink from use or to do some funky cable routing around components and you won't have any fan cables long enough for this to work. I ended up having to run 3 fans out of the cpu fan header.... whoever engineered this part of the mobo is a moron.

Overall Review: Good mobo just plan to have fan splitters or some other way to power them besides the case fan headers...