discussion AMD Strix Halo PC DIY Finally!

[Shadowarez]

It's happening guys finally I can replace the Nvidia Shield with something capable.

AMD's Strix Halo "Ryzen AI MAX" APUs Come To DIY PC Builders With New MoDT "Mini-ITX" Motherboards, Equipped With Up To 128 GB of LPDDR5X Memory

AMD's Strix Halo "Ryzen AI MAX" APUs are the fastest SoCs on the market, and now available to DIY PC Builders with MoDT motherboards.

wccftech.com

 

[Bond007]

I am sure there would be a market for this. Having a single powerful cpu/gpu soc with quite a bit of fast ram is an exciting way forward.

My only concern would be how well the motherboard is designed and supported. Not saying it won’t be good, but I would definitely wait for a review or 2.

 

[Shadowarez]

Oh definitely the size will also be a concern if it follows proper ITX/M-ATX/ATX Standards as that would determine if we are shoe horned into proprietary cases.

 

[SugarJ]

If you read the linked article, the board size is 170x170 mm. NUC size.

 

[CMetaphor]

If you read the linked article, the board size is 170x170 mm. NUC size.

Uh, what? I saw Thin ITX mentioned a few times, and the soldered chip doesn't seem to be in the right spot for NUCs required heatsink position. NUC is 100x100 or something? Smaller.

Was really looking forward to getting an 395+ tiny gamer built someday, but Thin ITX has its own problems...

Correct me if im wrong, but aren't all Thin ITX boards built without IO panels? There is no IO panel as such, because I *Thought* Thin ITX boards are built to match Thin ITX cases (or maybe nowadays they do have regular, removable IO panels?). So if theres no generic Thix ITX back panel nowadays, these rear IO ports would need to exactly match the openings on existing Thin ITX cases (might explain the baffling use of a VGA port in 2025 hah).

But it gets a bit worse: Thin ITX (again correct me if I'm wrong, because I've been stuck in reg ITX land for years) uses a DC power jack to provide power from an external power brick. That's fine, but this Ryzen AI one also needs a 4-pin CPU power cable? Where's that going to come from when most Thin ITX cases dont even have an internal Pico-PSU? So do you need to plug in an external power brick atraight to board, and then a second power supply to a custom case, with its own (presumably custom) power supply that provides that 4pin CPU power? So weird.

And then there's an HDMI port facing the "top" edge... dont remember seeing that in any Thin ITX cases either.

Ugh. And Square Intel heatsink mounting holes, eevviiilll Intel haha

Dunno... other than ITX mounting holes, I have a feeling this is going to be a case of "buy our board, now you have to buy our case to use it too" (minor case+case pun intended).

Will NOT be splurging on this board I dont think... will wait for a regular ITX board, with a ref IO panel, Reg 24pin + 4pin CPU power, etc. Me likes standards.

 

[Marzipan]

I don't see how this is any different than the options Framework currently offers and what I expect Minisforum will eventually offer, being they did release mobo only solutions for their Ryzen 7000 and 8000 products. everything is still fully integrated, so aside from it being mITX, doesn't seem to have anything better than the others. I don't recall what Framework does for cooler mounts, but Minisforum used the LGA1700 mounting bracket for theirs, which pretty much means you can choose anything to cool the CPU.

 

[Bond007]

99% sure that 170x170 is MITX, and that thin MITX is the same size, but restricts the height of components off the board...could be wrong.

 

[moocow]

This has slightly worst specs than the Framework ITX board.

• 1GB NIC instead of 5GB on Framework
• No PCI-E slot unlike Framework which has a PCI-E 4x, unless you convert one of the M2 slot into PCI-E via adapter
• No USB 4.0

So how much are they charging? Framework AI Max+ 395 with 128GB is $2429 CAD from their web store

 

[Marzipan]

This has slightly worst specs than the Framework ITX board.

• 1GB NIC instead of 5GB on Framework
• No PCI-E slot unlike Framework which has a PCI-E 4x, unless you convert one of the M2 slot into PCI-E via adapter
• No USB 4.0

So how much are they charging? Framework AI Max+ 395 with 128GB is $2429 CAD from their web store

that's the full PC though, isn't it? the board itself is a bit better.

 

[JD]

Yeah I would trust Framework from a support perspective way more than these Chinese boards. Minisforum surely doesn't have the best reviews, I can't imagine "Sixunited" is going to be drastically better.