ASRock B760I Lightning WiFi review

Even though the sun is setting on the LGA 1700 era, there is life in the platform yet. You'll be able to buy 14th Gen processors for a couple of years to come, and many of them will find their way into Mini-ITX systems. A board like the ASRock B760I Lightning WiFi is built to meet the requirements for a powerful, yet compact 14th Gen system. Namely, it has to have a strong VRM and support for high speed DDR5 memory. Out-of-the-box support for 14th Gen processors is a feather in the cap.

A board like the ASRock B760I Lightning WiFi is built to meet the requirements for a powerful, yet compact 14th Gen system

The B760I Lightning WiFi can be considered a second generation B760 board. It's been given some tweaks and an upgraded power delivery subsystem that's better able to handle the demands of 14th Generation Intel CPUs.

Recently, I reviewed the ASRock Z790I Lightning WiFi. While that board is a very good one, at around $279 I felt it didn't offer enough over the $185 B760I version. That's because apart from PCIe bifurcation and overclocking support, both board's specs are mostly identical, leaving few reasons to opt for the Z790I version over the B760I one. That's a good omen for the latter.

Though support for ultra-fast memory is not essential for a gaming system, it'll only become more useful as DDR5 speeds march ever-higher. The B760I Lightning supports blazing fast DDR5-8600 (OC) memory. Along with the Z790I version, it is the only board I've tested to date that allowed me to run a Teamgroup DDR5-8200 kit out of the box with just XMP enabled. That's really impressive.  It supports up to 96 GB of memory, though I wouldn't be surprised to see a BIOS update that adds support for 128 GB in the future.

Socket: Intel LGA 1700
CPU compatibility: Intel 12th, 13th and 14th Gen processors
Form factor: Mini-ITX
Memory support: DDR5-8600+(OC), up to 96GB
Storage: 2x M.2, 3x SATA
USB: Up to 2x USB 10 Gbps, 7x USB 5 Gbps, 2x USB 2.0
Display: 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x DP 1.4
Networking: Realtek