TECH

This mini ITX motherboard sports up to 96 GB DDR5 RAM and 12-core AMD Zen 5 chip

Axiomtek has introduced a new Zen 5-powered mini-ITX motherboard aimed particularly at gaming. The product is powered by up to a 12-core Ryzen AI Embedded P100 APU and can be equipped with 96 GB of DDR5 RAM.

Mini-ITX boards with soldered embedded processors from AMD and Intel are quite common, aimed primarily at industrial applications. However, the new GMB150 Mini-ITX board from Axiomtek takes a different approach, targeting gaming applications instead of typical industrial workloads.

This is possible thanks to the AMD Ryzen P100 series APUs powering the GMB150 motherboard. The P100 family features anywhere between 4 to 12 Zen 5 cores, along with iGPUs ranging from 2 to 16 CUs based on RDNA 3.5.

The performance of the upper-end Ryzen P100 chips should be almost the same as their "Gorgon Point" consumer counterparts. To be more specific, the GMB150 will be equipped with up to the AMD Ryzen AI P185 APU featuring a total of 12 cores and 24 threads. The APU is nearly identical to the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470, with the biggest difference being a 100 MHz lower boost clock and a more modest power envelope.

Therefore, it can be said that the highest-end GMB150 motherboard will be quite a performant part, and should be able to keep up with modern high-end Intel Panther Lake and AMD Gorgon Point-powered systems. 

Lower-end variants with the 4-core Ryzen AI P121, 6-core P132, 8-core P164, and 10-core P174-powered configurations will also be available. 

The motherboard sports dual DDR5-5600 SODIMM slots, which can be equipped with up to 96 GB of RAM. Storage requirements, on the other hand, are taken care of by a single M.2 2280 slot and dual SATA 3 ports. The I/O on offer has been detailed below:

Triple USB 2.0 Type-A, single USB 3.2 Gen 1

Two RS-232 COM ports, four RS-232 box headers

Dual USB 2.0 box headers, single USB 3.2 Gen 1 x1 Type-A (internal)

Dual 1G Ethernet

8-bit GPIO header

Multiple expansion pathways are also possible courtesy of a single PCIe x8 slot (physical x16), a single M.2 2230 slot, and dual PCIe-based proprietary "Golden Finger" expansion connectors for I/O modules from Axiomtek.

The GMB150 will be available soon according to Axiomtek, although its pricing details are yet to be revealed. Interested customers can contact Axiomtek directly in order to get a quote, which is likely to depend on order volume.

Typical consumers looking for a similarly powerful gaming mini PC can check out something like the Minisforum Ai X1 mini PC, powered by the Ryzen AI 9 HX 470 Gorgon Point APU.

mundophone