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BIOSTAR RACING X370GTN AM4 Motherboard Review

Motherboards/AMD AM4 by stefan @ 2017-08-19

With the X370GTN, BIOSTAR has succeeded to offer plenty of goodies, in a compact ITX format; due to a smaller VRM, the manufacturer does recommend CPUs with a maximum TDP of 95W, but if we do use it with a 65W SKU, we do also have some overclocking headroom. In our tests with the Ryzen 3 1300X, we have succeeded to achieve the same results as with the high-end Crosshair Hero VI from ASUS, by just setting up the multiplier and the voltage inside the UEFI interface, which is really easy to use.

A Closer Look Part II

The CPU VRM area is covered by a thin aluminum heatsink, which is also RGB-enabled:

The RGB header for the VRM is placed nearby:

In order to conserve space, the CMOS battery is capsulated and placed between the I/O connectors:

The ELAN eKTF5832 microprocessor is in charge of the VRM LED lighting but also of the dual RGB headers, also located on the board:

Nearby, we do have the ASMedia ASM1543 switch that does provide the USB Type-C interface:

A Realtek RTL811AS (Realtek Dragon Ethernet) controller is also available on the board:

The audio PCB area is shielded from the rest of the components, in order to eliminate noise; in this area we will be able to spot the F_AUDIO header along with the ALC892 CODEC from Realtek. This CODEC model is quite old, and we were really expecting to see a more recent ALC1150 version here:

A full-sized PCI-E 3.0 x16 slot is available in the lower PCB area, in order to accommodate a video card; above it there are two SATA 3.0 ports:

Between the PCI-E 3.0 slot and the PCH heatsink, we did spot am USB 2.0 header:

Speaking of the PCH, this is covered by a tiny aluminum heatsink, that does sport the RACING color scheme:

Moving further, we will get to see one USB 3.0 header, but also two additional SATA 3.0 ports:

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