Ever wanted to build a mini-ITX computer powered by a power-hungry 11th Gen Tiger Lake mobile processor? Now’s your chance to do it. MSI has released a new PRO series mini-ITX motherboard featuring the Core i5-11260H Tiger Lake CPU. Pro HM570TI-B I526. (opens in new tab)
As the name suggests, this board is designed for professionals who want a compact desktop workstation that is as power efficient as a laptop. The Core i5 processor inside he features 6 cores and 12 threads with a maximum turbo frequency of 4.4 GHz and a maximum configurable TDP of 45 watts.
The board has a decent feature set overall, supporting up to 64GB of dual-channel DDR4 3200MHz memory and two SATA ports for storage devices. Unfortunately, there is only one M.2 slot dedicated to wireless cards. Rear I/O comes in the form of four USB ports, one serial port and an HDMI port for display output. It also has an Ethernet port and two dedicated 3.5mm jacks for microphone support and audio.
But the weird thing about this motherboard is that it has zero information about CPU cooler mounting support. MSI doesn’t have any information on installing CPU coolers or CPU coolers that work with mobile chips. So if you’re planning on buying this board, you should do this research yourself. However, the board seems he is designed for LGA115x or LGA1200/1700 coolers as the hole spacing is quite large.
Fortunately or unfortunately, power comes in the form of DC power bricks. When building this system into a standard mini-ITX desktop chassis, standard ATX or SFX power supplies will not work with this motherboard. As a result, you should look for a case designed around the DC power brick to avoid wasted space and keep your system looking great.
Also, MSI’s boards do not support dedicated PCIe add-in board cards, such as graphics cards, as there are no physical PCIe slots installed on the motherboard. This is somewhat disappointing because Intel’s Tiger Lake processors aren’t slow chips and they already make great gaming chips in mid-range gaming laptops with dedicated mobile GPUs or Thunderbolt graphics card docks. .
If the board supported a dedicated GPU, it would be a really cool little gaming machine that draws power and produces very little heat. However, this board wasn’t meant for gaming, so I can understand why MSI didn’t put a PCIe slot on it.
However, if you’re brave enough, you can technically use a dedicated graphics card. All you need is an open x8 or x4 slot where you can insert an M.2 PCIe x4 to PCIe x16 or x16 card. Combine this with a mini-ITX case that supports vertical GPU mounting and you have the perfect slot. Blow away any discrete graphics card that works with this motherboard.
The obvious drawback, however, is the lack of a dedicated WiFi/Bluetooth card. Slots are occupied by GPUs and 4 PCIe lanes are not fast enough for many desktop GPUs. As a result, you should use a low-end GPU so that PCIe lane bottlenecks don’t sacrifice most of your GPU performance.
I don’t know when this motherboard will be released. MSI does not publish pricing or expected release dates on its website.
