ASRock DESKMINI X300W Barebone

This is a great little ultra SFF system. I have it pared with a Ryzen 5 5600G(I also tested it with a 5700G, just cuz but that core is a bit much for this little guy and is more at home in my other sff build in the inwin b1 that I use as a "it wount turn my office it a suana in the summer" Linux dev workstation lol it works great in this deskmini tho if anybody was wondering) I also paired it with 16gb of gskill rippjaws 3200mhz sodimm ddr4 and a 256gb nvme ssd and also tossed in 2 2tb 5mm sata hdds in the back and am planning on tossing in another maybe 512gb nvme ssd for dualbooting windows but for now I will use Linux probebly Manjaro xfce, just cuz, I don't personally like gnome and debain based distros don't integrate the bleeding edge software I need for my dev environments and Manjaro xfce is a good middle ground not literly falling off the edge like arch base but not so far back thay the edge is out of reach either. Anyway back to my review lol, it's fast and stable and cool, I am using a AMD Ryzen stock stealth cooler with the shroud removed as I tested both versions of the noctua nhl9 the AMD version that is slightly larger and the Intel version with AMD bracket adapted and also iv tested the thermalwright low profile coolers (pritty shur these are both 43mm) I tested both the all cooper one and the black anodized Cooper one and yes all 4 coolers perform great they have a large mass in a tiny footprint enabling some great cooling performance especially is size constrained chassis such as this but there are 2 problems one with each brand the noctua brand coolers are designed in a way we're they limit exhaust to only 2 sides in this deskmini those sides end up being out the top(if the case is stood verticle as it's designed) and out the bottom towards the sodimm slots this isnt terrible but the air coming out the bottom end up rising due to convenction and getting pulled back into the fan and there is no we're else that the cooler pushes air so it recycles its own thermaly saturated supply and the same the with thermalwright brand but the exact opposite we're it blows out the sides towards the vent on the back and towards the invented front this would be perfect in a difrent scenerio if there was other cooling options for the vrm but there is not and since it is blowing towards the front of the case that is not vented it ends up dumping alot of the thermal energy into the case and that heats everything up(in my other build in the b1 with the normal mitx motherboard this thermalwright option is the best because it actually vents up towards the fan at the top and is optimal unlike the noctua that gets it's airflow chocked off my the memory moduals and the vrm heatsink) but in the deskmini I found the best performance from the short stealth cooler from amd as it blows air in all 4 directions effectively cooling both the vrms and the memory and also blowing air out the vents in the back and since this cooler minus the plastic shroud with the AMD logo on it is literly so snug against the vent of the outer shell it(the fan it'sself dosnt make contact AT ALL just the secondary shroud around it) this enables thay cooler to pull in air from directly outside the unit this way it's not just recycling thermaly saturated are from inside like both noctua and thermalwrights offering do, I know it sounds crazy but in this very specific and maybe only in this case with the deskmini x300w I ONLY recommend the stealth cooler from amd aslong as they continue to manufature it in this way with these dimensions as all other aftermarket coolers Iv tryed perform noticably worse and as a side note the AMD cooler on full speed and moving a metric ton of air wile staying less than anoyingly loud(o and I should add just for fairness that between the fans themselves of both brands the noctuas thin 92mm fans are the best, not saying the thermwright ones don't perform well, they do they are just loud as balls at there higher rpms so for all my testing I used the noctua rubber insulated thin 92mm fans and that is what I have installed on the heaftly Cooper thermalwright cooler on the b1 lol...I spent alot of money specing out that b1 build with the best available options and grabed alternatives to parse out what would be the best performance lol I was serious about not using my big water cooled gaming rig for Linux development when is hot out lol...I do haf to disclose that there was a issues with my unit, it arrived with no m.2 screws in all the bags of individualy sorted parts, that's was it that was the only things missing in my case so I think we did pritty good, as I build many systems and I have a inventory of screws and standoffs and we'll name it but keep this in mind if your looking at picking one of these up just grab a kit a a few short wide head m.2 screws just Incase the odds are this was a one time error in packaging but hay I cannot aduqatly convey with my intermitted English wrighting skill how valuable it is to have a known supply of these little stupidly easy to lose often none magnetic m.2 screws even if not for this system but for anything that needs m.2 screws take it from me, I maintain my inventory of them for this exact reason🙃...ok well I can't think of anything more to say about this system, it's small, it's amazingly fast, and it will more than likely be deployed as another heavily used dev workstation because well why not lol , o ya 12watts idle power!!! 🤑🤑...Update ...ok so after doing alot of testing, thermal and performance via stress-ng and phoronix test suite iv decided that this is to powerfull for me lol...I know it sounds counter intuitive but I built this system because I had a spair 5600G that I got simply because it was temporarily listed new at less than half its MSRP lol it emedietly went back up to around $200 after I made my perchese so idk what happend but anyway this little atx PSU size workstation is fast, super fast and the thermals under the ryzen stealth cooler are acceptable not amazing as they would be under a full tower cooler or a clc but acceptable but as I have previously stated this is being used as a moderate speced Linux dev workstation and for that I really don't need 6cores clocking up to 4+ ghz and also I don't need this 3.9ghz base clock lol so since this ASRock deskmini has a full blown overclockable bios(p1.70 fyi that's what it shipped with so it was out of the box compatible with both cores) I am able to do some overclocking but in my case I actually want to go the other way I want to see how low I can get the Vcore voltages on this and also the idle frequency if I can get that down to maybe 1ghz I think this would idle at closer to 5-8 watts and maybe peak at about 35-40 i know that is about were the 5600GE operates at so this in theory should be achievable as those GE chips are just ones that couldnt quite validate at the higher clocks so since I have one that is effectively binned to be able to hit the higher clocks it should be a fairly stable piece of silicon and I should be able to get it down to about 1.15 maybe 1.2 Vcore(it sits anywhere from 1.3 to 1.4 now on stock) I will keep the memory at it's 3200mhz at 1.2v cuz that's fine if it hitting closer to 1.3 or 1.4 it would be something I looking into undervolting, li think my ideal target is everything stable at 1.2v, I'll likly keep the igpu at stocks because it really wasn't that overkill to begin with not compared to the monster 6 compute cores lol...I think I can turn this little guy into a well optimised little HTPC/dev workstation that ideally operates at well under 65watts full system tdp wich would be ideal, if I suprise myself with my results and I end up closer to the 5watt idles and 25-35watt loaded tdps I'm gonna deploy this as a full blown server lol cuz I can😎😎...If I'm truly impressed and taken off guard by my results I will be shur to appraise potential others who are considering this same setup with my results and breef rundown of my exact settings

Set up with a 5600g and 32gb of sodimm ram this beast is the best sub itx setup for the am4 platform. Can be ran with the stock amd stealth cooler modified for better temps. Dual m.2 ssd slots with 2.5" slots make it super capable for future upgrades.

Update 9/14/21: ASRock answered the phone when I finally had a chance to call (never did respond to my email). RMA process was painless and they responded to e-mailed questions once I had an RMA# assigned. Return shipping on the RMA was quick (I had my new motherboard in hand a week after they received my old one, although I did have to pay for shipping to them, but whatever). Thus far, that seems to have fixed things. -1 star for not responding to my initial email, but glad I no longer have a paperweight!Works great. Until I'm in a zoom call and it randomly reboots. Tried Windows, tried Linux. Run memory testing, CPU testing, all the troubleshooting I can do.I'm past 30 days on my return window, and ASRock hasn't responded to the ticket I entered on their website. $160 paperweight at this point.

Love this little machine. Please be aware, it is a barebones system, you will need ram, storage, and a compatible Ryzen am4 APU. It will natively support any of the 5000G series processors with integrated graphics. The 5700G may or may not need a BIOS revision. Mine came preinstslled with the correct bios. I decided to put the Ryzen 5700G, maxed out ram, and storage. You will need a beefy cooler. I recommend the Noctua NH-L9a-AM4. Low profile cooler. If you go this high spec on this 1.8 liter chassis, thermal management is everything. If you notice from the photos, the back I/O shield has some brown rubber grommets. That was to facilitate a 40mm additional cooler. AsRock also makes a tiny custom LED/ARGB light strip for the unit. It makes it look nice. This unit is very much built like a layered sandwitch and millimeters count. If you go above a 6 core chip you will also need the bigger power supply. Dell makes a laptop supply with 180 watts instead of the stock 120. To get the required clearances, I also decided to forgo ssd heatsinks for copper graphene heat spreaders, same for the SODIMM laptop ram, and stripped the 2.5 SSD's out of the housing and applied thermal epoxy to those chips with hestsinks for a raspberry PI. Wonderful form factor. Kicks butt for the use case. Try this little guy out. I think you will enjoy the build.

I wanted to build a very tiny SFF PC to replace my old big PC I used as a home server for my Plex and Minecraft servers. Wanted something with atlease 8 cores/16 threads and this barebones from Asrock allowed me to use AMD's 5700g APU witch has 8 cores 16 threads with no issues!Building it was a breeze and very simple!It's able to hold 2 nvme ssd and 2, 2.5" ssd with makes this SFF very useful in storage!I used 2 1tb nvme and 1, 1tb 2.5" ssd!I also used 2 16gb 3200mhz ddr4 sodims!It also came with the bios update to be compatible with the new 5000s Ryzens so this was a plus!Included fan is subpar and noisy, so using the noctua NH-L9a-AM4 worked great and completely quiet even under load!

I have no complaints with this. It's a little tight, especially when installing a stock cpu fan (see comments or online reviews for how to get it in there), but you can buy another fan with a lower profile. Otherwise, I love the small form factor.