This is a fascinating idea … it’s one of the first ITX motherboards that I’ve seen that uses the M.2 slot to host the AMD 600-series chipset. Could we see future motherboards with upgradeable chipsets?
AMD’s top-end X670E motherboard chipset uses two Promontory 21 chips working together to deliver a single solution. With normal-sized ATX motherboards, having two chips to form a chipset is fine, as there is much room on the PCB. But with Mini-ITX motherboards, fitting two Promontory 21 chips is hard as the PCB area is limited. To overcome this, ASUS came up with an interesting solution to solve the problem and allowed the company to ship the high-end X670E chipset inside a Mini-ITX form factor. Thanks to UNIKO’s Hardware’s findings, we look at the amazing solution ASUS used to solve this problem.
Instead of two Promontory 21 chips side by side, one is placed on the motherboard directly, while the other stands vertically attached by M.2 PCIe slot. Below, the chipset’s pictures and the highlight show how it looks disassembled.
