Sticking to the basics for brilliant Mini-ITX gaming
Mini-ITX PCs have always seemed to be on the verge of having their moment, but with today’s scarce, costly graphics cards and single-GPU desktop builds becoming the default, that moment may have arrived. Though built to fit into the compact Mini-ITX form factor, Asrock’s Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 motherboard is loaded with gaming features and a capable power-regulation system. Built for Intel’s 12th Generation «Alder Lake» CPUs, it can even handle running the power-hungry Core i9-12900KS. Plus, it ships with an ultra-fast, USB4-compliant Thunderbolt 4 port and a reasonable $349.99 price tag. Mini-ITX usually carries a premium, but with this board, the downsizing tax is worth paying. The TB4 earns an Editors’ Choice award for Mini-ITX Intel-based boards. The Design: Just the ITX Fundamentals
With its petite design and lack of LED glitz, the Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 isn’t much to look at. Real estate is at a premium in Mini-ITX motherboards, so Asrock’s designers allocated their space to more useful components like ports instead of flashy LED stripes or onboard lighting modules. Depending on your appetite for bling, this may or may not be a deal-breaker. But if you, like me, value functionality over aesthetics, you’ll be thoroughly satisfied with the Asrock. And if your Mini-ITX desktop case is a sealed box without a window, it’s a moot point. Although you won’t find any lights on the board itself, you can still add some to it if you’d like—Asrock didn’t snub LED buffs altogether, as it provided two RGB LED headers for attaching light strips to the board. There are scads of components you can buy to dress up and light up your system if you choose. With no garish lights or boldly decorated heatsinks, the Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 is simply adorned with solid black heatsinks over the VRMs and the M.2 slot. There’s a little red and silver to highlight the PG (Phantom Gaming) logo of Asrock’s gaming gear line, along with the motherboard’s name, but it’s still one of the plainer-looking gaming platforms we’ve seen lately. The board has a total of 11 Dr. MOS power phases to regulate power transfer to the CPU. The power circuitry is split into two groups, covered by separate black heatsinks that are joined by a fluid-filled metal heatpipe. One thing you should note about the CPU socket is that it’ll work only with LGA 1700-compliant CPU coolers. Some 12th Gen Intel motherboards support LGA 1200 coolers, but this is not one. A Brief Look at the Networking and Audio
The Z690 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB4 comes with built-in wireless in the form of a Killer Wi-Fi 6E AX1675x controller supporting up to 2.4Gbps of bandwidth. There’s also a Killer Ethernet E3100 wired LAN chip with bandwidth up to 2.5Gbps. These two chips support the Killer DoubleShot Pro feature, which lets you use both connections simultaneously and manage the traffic between them for the best experience. Though this hardware is competitive, we can’t ignore that some competing motherboards offer 5Gbps and 10Gbps wired networking adapters. These faster NICs are far from universal, but you can find them on several high-end boards, including a few priced similarly to the Asrock.
