ASRock is a brand that’s gained much momentum over the years here in Malaysia’s tech market, providing solid and affordable solutions to the enthusiasts and the H97M-ITX/ac is one of those products.
The ASRock H97M-ITX/ac is exactly as what the model says – it’s an M-ITX form factor board with H97 chipset and it comes with 802.11ac WiFi connectivity module.
Connectivity module? Yes, the board comes with a WiFi-802.11ac Module and 2 x ASRock WiFi 2.4/5 GHz Antennas.
Unlike the higher-end boards, this board is quite simple with no large heatsinks around. The power design is only 4-Phase and it uses only 4 pins for the CPU12V connection, what this means is that the power delivery is unlike those on the ASRock Z97 boards like say the ASRock Z97 Extreme4.
Nothing out of the ordinary here – 2 1600Mhz DIMM slots, power connectors, pins and SATA ports. What I don’t like about this design is the SATA port placement, of which the SATA cable has to find its way through the PCI-E and the DIMM slot. One a plus point, it looks like the DIMM clip has room to unlatch should there be a PCI-E card in place.
From this angle you’ll see there’s a small slot in parallel with the SATA port, that’s where the Wi-Fi module is to be installed at.
The I/O ports are
– 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port
– 1 x D-Sub Port
– 1 x DVI-D Port
– 1 x HDMI Port
– 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port
– 2 x USB 2.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection (ASRock Full Spike Protection))
– 4 x USB 3.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection (ASRock Full Spike Protection))
– 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED)
– HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone
More details at the official product page.
