BIOSTAR’s Mini-ITX Z590I VALKYRIE
A Wee Home For Your LGA1200 CPU
Mini-ITX Z590 motherboards are rather rare, much to the disappointment of SFF fans everywhere. BIOSTAR are hoping you might consider Z590I VALKYRIE if you are still looking to build a small form factor PC. The board has a single PCIe 4.0 slot, dual channel memory of up to DDR4-5000, and handful of both USB 3.x Gen 1 and 2 ports. Networking is provided by both 2.5GbE LAN and WiFi 6. There is a single PCIe 4.0, M.2 port and the four SATA ports are located at the bottom of the board, right beside the ATX power connector.
The power delivery is in an 8+2 mode configuration with 90A power stages, which was enough to allow The FPS Review to easily push their i9-11900K to 5.1GHz. With a bit more work they are confident they could hit 5.2GHz and still remain at or below 80C, in part thanks to the active PWM cooling. Overall the board was stable enough and sported enough features to win a Silver Award, the price prevented it from getting the Gold, though that could change if tariffs are lifted and supply increases.
This is quite unique because it is based on Intel’s enthusiast Z590 chipset but in a small form factor motherboard. It’s literally a ton of features, options and support packed into a small motherboard with an MSRP of around $359 in the US. The official press release can be found here.
Why is there a PCI-E x1 under the shroud for the VRM heatsink? Doesn’t look like there is enough room to plug anything into that port.
I see what you are talking about, but can’t find a big enough picture to see the labelling on it. Specs say there is only the one PCIe 16x, so whatever it is, it ain’t a working PCIe slot.