Gigabyte A620I AX motherboard evaluation

I really like a great Mini-ITX motherboard. As somebody who exams tech for a dwelling, I am lucky to play with some significantly excessive finish equipment, however I nonetheless adore it when a succesful discount board crosses my desk.  Not everybody wants or desires a motherboard that prices a whole bunch and a whole bunch of {dollars}. Typically an entry stage choice can throw up a shock or two.

The Gigabyte A620I AX may be very a lot an entry stage Mini-ITX choice. Because the title suggests, it’s constructed round AMD’s price range A620 chipset. Even an ATX A620 choice will not include the goodies of the premium chipsets, whereas Mini-ITX A620 boards should sacrifice much more. You will not discover PCIe 5.0 or CPU overclocking assist, and you will have to surrender usable PCIe lanes, SATA ports and quick USB. 

As you might need guessed after studying that, the Gigabyte A620I AX is not what you’d name a characteristic wealthy board, however at $139 / £162 / AU$259, you would not anticipate it to be. A mid-range choice just like the MSI MPG B650I Edge WiFi I reviewed lately prices practically twice as a lot, and an X670 board will set you again much more. The Gigabyte A620I is a no frills board that is constructed to deal with a single graphics card, an SSD or two, and a mainstream reminiscence equipment with an ordinary set of peripherals. 

The A620I AX will not win any magnificence contests. Not that appears matter a lot in a small kind issue system when the board is usually hidden. It is a socket AM5 board that helps AMD Ryzen 7000 and 8000-series processors. The excellent news is, Gigabyte has already launched a Zen 5 supporting BIOS, and provided that AMD has acknowledged it plans to assist AM5 for a while but, there’s each probability you can insert a Zen 6 chip into it a few years from now.

The board helps mainstream reminiscence kits at as much as DDR5-6200 . That is not rather a lot by present requirements, however that is tremendous for a price range gaming PC. The VRM may be very a lot an entry stage design, too, being a 5+2+1 system. No less than it is received an inexpensive heatsink. Gigabyte’s CPU assist web page lists assist for chips together with the Ryzen 9 7950X. It is perhaps able to dealing with it, however I would counsel one thing a bit extra upmarket within the motherboard stakes should you plan to run such a high-end chip. 

The board’s actual weaknesses are in its storage and connectivity capabilities. It helps only a single PCIe Gen 4 M.2 SSD and two SATA drives. That’s the absolute minimal any PC gamer ought to put up with in these fashionable instances of ours. The M.2 slot would not embody a heatsink, and the underside is definitely the chipset heatsink, which is able to solely add warmth to an SSD. I would definitely advocate shopping for an SSD with an built-in heatsink. 

The rear I/O is not stuffed with ports, both, and it lacks an built-in defend, which is a uncommon factor lately. There are six USB ports, made up of a single 10 Gbps port, two 5 Gbps ports—one in all which is Sort-C—plus three USB 2.0 ports. There is a BIOS flashback button, DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 ports, that are important for utilizing built-in graphics and particularly 8000G-series chips. By the way, if used with the latter, you’d have your self an interesting and inexpensive little gaming system.

The networking capabilities are pretty much as good as you possibly can hope for on this worth vary. Realtek 2.5G LAN and WiFi 6E are all you’d fairly anticipate on boards costing twice the value. It is Realtek all-round because the audio codec is ALC897. Once more, not sudden on this worth vary.

Picture 1 of 5

System Efficiency

Gaming Efficiency

For testing, I used a Ryzen 7 7700X moderately than the 7950X I might usually use for AM5 testing. It simply makes extra sense to make use of such a chip with an entry stage board, and even the 7700X has a 105W TDP, and might use as much as 142W at default. A 65W choice makes extra sense with an A620 board just like the A620I AX. The VRM heatsink proved to be satisfactory and did not get sizzling to the contact.

When in comparison with a few B650 motherboards together with the ASRock B650E PG-ITX WiFi, the little Gigabyte did what was anticipated of it. The truth is, within the CPU restricted gaming exams, the Gigabyte squeaked out a constant lead, which bodes nicely should you plan to construct a gaming rig with the A620I AX.

Whether or not it’s best to contemplate shopping for the Gigabyte A620I AX will primarily come right down to how massive or small your price range is. Should you’ve received a 105W CPU, then I would advocate trying upmarket. However should you’re on a good price range, then there are some key traits that make it an fascinating choice.

I imagine will probably be a stable alternative should you plan to construct a small kind issue system with a Ryzen 8000-series APU. You can sport at 1080p, and the financial savings you make from not having to purchase a GPU might be important.

It is also the sort of board that solely actually is smart for a reasonably fundamental system, even should you use a high-end graphics card. Add an M.2 SSD on your OS, a SATA drive for a sport library, and 32GB or 64GB of reminiscence and you have got the core of a succesful SFF system.

There’s not a lot competitors on this worth vary. The ASRock A620I Lightning WiFi is an choice. It could possibly home a second M.2 SSD, however it lacks a rear DP port, which I would contemplate important for gaming with built-in graphics. The selection in the long run can be yours.

The Gigabyte A620I AX is a no frills board that does the lifelike minimal. It is a stable however unspectacular choice, although its vital to maintain expectations in test at this worth level. It will fortunately sit on the coronary heart of a price range gaming system, and with its means to deal with upcoming Zen 5 CPUs, it’s going to even have a great life forward of it.