ASRock Barb DeskMeet X300/B/BB/BOX

Product Information

On the reverse side of the board is a second M.2 Key-M slot and two ports that work as both power and data lines for SATA drives. The case is also able to house two 2.5-inch drives, so between these two drive mounting points and the two M.2 solid-state drive mounts, you can outfit this little box with a really substantial amount of storage. Both of the M.2 SSD slots support PCI Express drives only, up to 80mm long. You'll get four PCIe Gen 3 lanes on each drive, unless you install an Athlon 200GE series CPU, which will limit one of the slots to two lanes.

I'm probably one of the first group of buyers for this, and I see there are some missed in the review, and not just here but elsewhere too. And I start getting question on reddit about this. So I figure I posted here also. Firstly, the product itself. The idea of extending the M-ITX form factor to add in support for more memory, and a fixed front panel, has merit. With most SFF cases having limited, or altogether eschewing front panel I/O, the DeskMeet breaks the rules with 5, count em, 5 USB ports on the front panel. A creative user’s dream – all the easily accessible USB without needing a USB hub. The addition of two extra DIMM slots versus the usual two on M-ITX is a great feature, as many of us now have 1, 2 or more pairs of DDR4 DIMMs from SFF builds. Combining a couple sets to get 32, 64 or even 128GB of memory really does extend one’s system. Squeezed into the rear IO is the super small M.2 slot for WiFi adapters. The chip marked 2.02 is the CMOS/BIOS chip, with v2.02 on board, the latest at time of review. The small chip nearest the screw standoff is a G9661M (PDF Link), a voltage regulator. The traces disappear into the multiple layer PCB, so I can’t be sure as to what it powers. On the other hand, w/o the care of damaging the case, user could cut or drill some holes on the front of the case and mount the 120mm fan, and that maybe the best way to cool the unit. But I would put extreme caution on doing this. Make sure you have the M/B out of the case first. And clean the case w/ extra caution after cutting or drilling hole on the metal plate. Files and sand the holes well after. Any small piece of loose metal shard flowing inside the cause could turn your PC into door stop or even even your house into ash. To the front of the board, the front IO exposed! Nothing special hiding here, just a few VRMs to the right hand side in front of the 24 Pin ATX connector, and a few headers to mention.Records the default button state of the corresponding category & the status of CCPA. It works only in coordination with the primary cookie. We have a 30-day return policy, which means you have 30 days after receiving your item to request a return. By contrast, mounting 2.5-inch SSDs and then trying to get the SATA and power connectors hooked up neatly takes much more fiddling. Supports Dual Channel DDR4 Memory Technology, 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots (Max. 128GB) Supports ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory

Another look at the dimpled front panel – many drive mounting options here. Around the integrated front panel ports is a cutout “flap”– likely designed to bend out of the way to aid board installation. At the bottom of the chassis (when sitting on the case feet) is a large SECC steel section holding it all together. The included ATX power supply rests against the small folded section. Power! VRMs! Yeah, this is a pretty basic setup, a given considering the board is rated for 65w TDP chips and no K spec processors. Four more Vishay SIC654 integrated power stages make up the remainder of the VRM section, with a pair of ON Semiconductor FDPC5030SG chipsets playing support. We’ve already seen one of these helping power the chipset! x SATA3 6.0Gb/s ports (RAID 0/1), 1 x Hyper M.2 (2280) PCIe Gen4 x4 & SATA3 6.0Gb/s slot 1 x Hyper M.2 (2280) PCIe Gen4 x4 slot And 20.7mm more CPU cooler headroom. Again, the designed airflow in this chassis is for the power supply to be used as an intake fan – so this configuration may cause issues.That CPU cooler headroom is quoted as 54mm, but I measured 60mm. Likely the differential in measurements here is to avoid fan on fan violence. (Oh, and airflow turbulence leading to noise). This cookie is used to detect and defend when a client attempt to replay a cookie.This cookie manages the interaction with online bots and takes the appropriate actions. Righto – drive configuration. At the front of the chassis, you can mount a pair of 2.5″ drives (spinning rust in place of SSDs – all my 2.5″ SSDs are in use)…

The board contains 3 SATA ports. The case allows for mounting of 2.5" and 3.5" drives in two areas. The first one is inside the inner frame, adjacent to the front I/O panel. While two 2.5" drives can always be installed in that area, a 3.5" drive can only be installed if the PCIe card is not full-length. The other area is the side of the frame near the motherboard's PCIe x16 slot. In this area, installing a 3.5" drive precludes the possibility of a PCIe add-in card. In the case of two 2.5" drives, dual-slot add-in cards can't be installed, but single-slot cards can still be used. Using such SATA drives also precludes the possibility of mounting a fan or a water-cooling radiator in the system.

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Cable management did remain an issue though, even after stripping it down and starting it again with a different build. It’s a little tight after the power supply is installed, I’d suggest installing the EPS 8 pin connector prior – Although I did manage to squeeze it in when setting up for this photo. The ATX 24 pin connector is also a tight squeeze, but more accessible.

I’ve removed the singular retention screw, grabbed the integrated SECC steel handle and out slides the internal chassis. Pink foam! Whatever could this hold? Up to four DDR4 DIMMs can be installed in the system. A M.2 2230 slot is available for a Wi-Fi / Bluetooth combo PCIe / USB card. The case has appropriate holes for the antennae. There are two M.2 2280 slots (one next to the PCIe slot, and another on the underside) for installation of NVMe SSDs. The slot next on the underside is PCIe-only, while the other can accommodate both NVMe and SATA SSDs. Unfortunately, the documentation is not clear on which of these slots is directly attached to the CPU. In other boards, the slot that multiplexes the SATA and PCIe lanes usually comes from the chipset (PCH), while the pure PCIe one is from the CPU. Based on this assumption, we reviewed the system with the SSD installed on the underside. The memory kit I have used is comprised of 2 pairs of G-Skill F4-3600C18-8GVK, making up 32gb total. A not inexpensive configuration, but definitely affordable. As the score shows, this is a good configuration for this system. However, it does seem like users may not be using the correct speed for this model of memory, with a few benchmark results for this kit running at 2133mHz. The results? An increase over ambient of 61.2 degrees Celsius, and drawing 109 watts from the wall (~230V, 50Hz, 100% wind/hydroelectric for those wondering). First up, Prime95 in Blend mode. Whilst a lot of people are a fan of small FFTs mode for thermal testing, I find Blend mode to be more realistic of a heavy real world workload – as it stresses not only the CPU, but the RAM and chipset too.It wasn't quite able to catch the OptiPlex, but it was several minutes faster than the other systems. Graphics Testing PCIe 3.0-riding Ryzen 7 5700G is powerful enough for everyday tasks. We look for at least 1,000 marks in the single-core Cinebench test and 10,000 for multi-core. The eight-core, 16-thread chip makes easy work of those baseline standards, and more than decent performance is underscored by solid results in PCMark 10 and Geekbench 5. A single wavy heatsink on the basic VRM setup. There’s a reason this board is rated only for processors up to 65W. I’ll dig deeper into the board later in this article. For testing purposes, I put the DeskMini X300 up against several similarly sized mini PCs with a fairly wide range of hardware. The toughest competition for the system as configured is likely to come from the Dell OptiPlex 7080 Micro, which has a more powerful graphics chip (a Radeon RX640, the only discrete GPU in this bunch) in addition to an Intel Core i3 processor and 16GB of RAM. Comparisons with the Intel NUC "Bean Canyon" system should also prove interesting as it employs Intel's Iris Plus graphics in addition to having a relatively fast mobile processor. Productivity and Media Tests The space inside the chassis allows for multiple configurations - with or without a discrete GPU, ability to mount multiple 3.5" drives etc. The DeskMeet aims to provide as many features and flexibilities as possible within the constraints dictated by the chipsets.