ASUS ROG Strix X870-I Gaming WIFI Motherboard Review

It’s no secret that the bulk of the reviews we have today are from ASUS, with dozens of new motherboards hitting the market today, and we have boards from Gigabyte and MSI, and more on the way, seven of the reviews we’re publishing today are ASUS. However, only one of them is mini-ITX, which is a shame, as it’s a motherboard format that gets very little attention these days, and micro-ATX feels like it’s on life support too, with significantly fewer small boards on the market than seemingly ever before. Still, that makes the ROG Strix X870-I Gaming WIFI a very exciting product right now, as it promises incredible high-end features that rival some of the full-size ATX motherboards, but in a tiny form factor for all the compact gaming PC builders out there.

ROG Strix X870-I Gaming WIFI

Despite the compact size, the ROG Strix X870-I Gaming WIFI is packing some serious hardware, with a 16+1 80A power stage VRM design, dual 8-pin ProCool power connectors and chunky VRM heatsinks, so it should still be able to deliver some killer performance from the latest and greatest Ryzen CPUs. Actually, with this being AM5, it supports all AMD Ryzen 7000, 8000 and 9000 processors, so you’re certainly spoilt for choice there. You get PCIe Gen 5 x16 for the latest graphics cards, and Gen5 M.2 for ultra-fast storage solution. Its connectivity is incredible too, with both 2.5Gb LAN and the latest WiFi 7, 10 USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, and even a USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C, but of course, we’ll dive in for a closer look at that shortly.

Key Features

• Supports AMD Ryzen 7000 Series processors
• AI Overclocking, AI Cooling II, and AI Networking II
• 16 (80A) + 1 (80A) power stages with dual 8-pin ProCool connectors and enlarged VRM heatsink
• PCIe 5.0 x16 slots
• DDR5 memory support
• WiFi 7
• 2.5 Gb Ethernet
• 10 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
• 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C

For more information, please visit the official product page here.

Memory Support

Memory support is impressive, offering up incredible speeds for these new CPUs, however, which generation of CPU you use will have some impact on the memory capabilities as you might expect, but typically they’re all over 8000 MHz.

AMD 800 Series Chipset

While this review cycle we’ll be focusing on the X870E series of motherboards, of course, there’s going to be more to this series, with the X870E being the flagship models, the X870 below that, and then the B850 and the B840 being the more affordable models below those, but with some obvious compromises on the features, giving us a range of options for normal PC users, gamers, overclockers and enthusiasts.

Ryzen 9 9950X

For these reviews, we’ll be using the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 series CPU, and while we haven’t actually reviewed this CPU on its own, of course, we’ll be exploring the Ryzen 9 9950X performance through these motherboard reviews. We did a feature testing Windows 32H2 Vs 24H2 on YouTube recently, which you can check out here.

• 16 cores and 32 threads
• Up to 5.7 GHz max boost clock
• 64 MB of L3 cache
• Supports DDR5 memory up to 2x1R DDR5-5600 or 4x1R DDR5-3600
• Requires AM5 socket motherboard
• Includes Precision Boost Overdrive and Curve Optimizer Voltage Offsets technology
• Unlocked for overclocking
• Supports PCIe 5.0