Asus has unveiled two brand new additions to its Intel 200-series family of motherboards. These are the ROG Strix H270I Gaming and ROG Strix B250I Gaming mini-ITX motherboards. Being “ROG branded” means that both of Asus’ newest motherboards come with features that are aimed primarily at PC gamers.
It’s worth noting that both the ROG Strix H270I Gaming and ROG Strix B250I Gaming motherboards come with almost identical specifications. Their only major difference is, of course, their respective chipsets. Speaking of which, Asus’ newest motherboards will only be compatible with Intel’s 6th and 7th generation CPUs (LGA1151 socket).
That aside, both motherboards are equipped with two M.2 slots and four SATA 6GBps ports. Besides that the higher end ROG Strix H270I Gaming comes with support for eight USB 3.0 ports, while the ROG Strix B250I has support for just four. Design-wise, both new mini-ITX motherboards by Asus look identical to one another. Asus has gone with the ‘safe’ black and metallic silver colour scheme. Of course, LED-elements (Aura Sync) are also present on the rear right side of both motherboards.
There are, however, several limitations that come with both the ROG Strix B250I and ROG Strix H270I Gaming. For instance, both motherboards do not come with dual-GPU support, because they’re only equipped with one PCIe x16 slot. In addition, overclocking is also not supported. Only Intel’s “Z” and “X” motherboards support this feature – if you didn’t already know that.
Unfortunately, local pricing and date of availability was not mentioned by Asus. That said, we do expect both brand new mini-ITX motherboards by Asus to come with a relatively “affordable” price tag. Regardless, head on over to Asus’ official website to know more about the ROG Strix B250I and ROG Strix H270I Gaming.
(Source: AnandTech)
