The Biostar X370GTN Mini-ITX Motherboard Review: AM4 Goes Tiny
by Gavin Bonshor on October 23, 2017 9:00 AM ESTBiostar X370GTN Conclusion
The target market for the Biostar X370GTN is a relatively clear niche: AMD gamers on a budget that want small form factor systems. Due to there being only a few mini-ITX motherboards on the market, the 'budget' element is perhaps inconsequential - if you want a small form factor Ryzen motherboard, there are only a few options. Biostar can’t command the same premium as boards like ASUS would, but being the first to release such a board onto the X370 chipset has set a pricing precedent for other manufacturers to follow.
Limitations on mini-ITX motherboards are somewhat expected in relation to ports and expansion slots, but this offering from Biostar produces a reasonable showing. Aside from the X370 specific features such as USB 3.1 (10 Gbps), Biostar has opted to use the Realtek RTL8118AS Gigabit controller under the guise of 'gaming', due to the size and the FLY.NET bundled software that allows for networking prioritization. When the board was announced over six months ago now, I was expecting certain sacrifices to be made in the choice of core components, so the aforementioned Gigabit networking controller and the inclusion of the more basic Realtek ALC892 audio codec was to be expected. There are a few interesting design choices, such as 5k caps. The benchmark results do not look too out of the ordinary - except perhaps that power consumption at load which we are retesting.
With something this small, Biostar had to include support of current Bristol Ridge APUs, hence the HDMI 1.4 port and a DVI-D port. The Biostar X370GTN has the foundation for a small potent gaming system, although it perhaps lacks a little finesse we have become accustomed to with so many of the motherboards from the big four having a good baseline in BIOS support and software.
With a quick note to the overclocking capabilities, I was impressed with what such a small and compact board for under $110 could do; it certainly performed no worse than any of the other ATX form factor motherboards that we tested it against (and are writing up for review). The main caveat is voltage control within the BIOS and a distinct lack of being able to set specific voltages. Instead, users need to rely on adjusting the core voltage in incremental stages with the offset, or for this particular motherboard, we recommend using AMD's Ryzen Master software.
The Biostar X370GTN is an interesting option at $110. The choice of 5k capacitors isn’t up to my personal standards, but there is a bit of give and take with smaller boards that aren't from the big four motherboard manufacturers.
We have five other AM4 motherboards already tested that we're writing up for reviews, after which we will look at some of the others available. Requests in the comments.
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Brother Ali - Thursday, October 26, 2017 - link
I have the asrock itx B350 and a 1600. I have my voltage set to 1.375 in the bios. In HWMonitor its .384V-1.392V; stays at 1.392V consistently.austinsguitar - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
this sort of thing is why itx is bad for high wattage components. you cant expect much from this gigabyte board. the cooling on the vrm is awful. horindusly bad. these motherboards should not be overclocked too high for the long run. if you look up guides on the design of them they all miss the mark in components and cooling. so all in all. mini itx, dont do it on ryzen. atleast for overclocking long term. your problem is not new.xrror - Wednesday, October 25, 2017 - link
This is a Biostar board, not Gigabyte.Dr. Swag - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
It would be great to see a better look into the vrms (efficiency, mosfet temps, etc.). AM4 VRMs seem to have been a hot topic (pun intended) since Ryzen launched due to boards with pretty budget vrms being able to run with 8 core CPUs. I would like a more in depth look into the vrms of each board to see how worthy all of them are.u.of.ipod - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
Always happy to see small form factor reviews!!!Lurpak - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
I have had this motherboard for since June and to be honest, I can not recommend it. If you are running an old version of the BIOS the motherboard is so unstable that it crashes all the time. My first unit died on me during a BIOS update (there's no backup BIOS), but luckily I was able to update the BIOS on the second one.Currently my problems are with memory where the motherboard sometimes fail to boot at XMP settings, which then requires me to set them again and hope that it works. My memory problems could be down to AGESA and seems to have been more stable since I got a BIOS update with AGESA 1.0.0.6b, but it still fails once in a while.
twnznz - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
Does yours power cycle 5x when it fails a boot as well? I'm rolling AGESA 1.0.0.6b as well, Trident Z F4-3200C14D-16GTZR 14-14-14-34, with XMP settings. I've wound the mem voltage up to meet 1.35vLurpak - Tuesday, October 24, 2017 - link
Yeah, that is exactly what it does. The 5 times power cycle is a fail-safe designed to catch errors in BIOS settings. From what I have read the problem with the board seems to be, that it cannot get the correct voltage for the RAM and therefore fails boot. I am running G.Skill Ripjaws V, which runs at higher latencies.Paull29724 - Sunday, November 19, 2017 - link
I just got this motherboard, whats your system config?jrs77 - Monday, October 23, 2017 - link
mITX-boards are allways nice, but without an APU a mITX-board is pretty much useless for the majority of people, who would want to build a silent and powerefficient HTPC or SFF-office station with these.