I need a Mini-ITX AM4 board into which I can insert my AMD Ryzen 7 5700G and complete an upgrade of my fanless Debian system.
When I looked into things before, the Gigabyte B550I Aorus Pro AX seemed the right choice.
Except it's out of stock, everywhere, for several weeks. :(
Looking again at the options, I'm wondering if the ASUS ROG STRIX B550-I Gaming is worth the extra cost and not having to wait.
The main downside of the Asus seems to be only a single HDMI port. The Gigabyte has 2xHDMI and 1xDP which means I can connect to 2xDVI monitors via HDMI-DVI cables, whilst the Asus has 1xHDMI and 1xDP which means I need to get a DP-DVI cable. (Scan have a passive cable for £5+delivery.)
Before I thought it was also worse USB-wise, but I think I got mixed up previously...
The rear panels have the following USB ports:
* Gigabyte has 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 4x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1
* Asus has 3x USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2, 1x USB-A 2.0, 1x USB-C audio
And on the board itself are headers for:
* Gigabyte has 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen1, 1x USB-A 2.0
* Asus has 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen1, 2x USB-A 2.0, 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 2
I don't know enough to know if there's any meaningful differences between Gigabyte's:
* Realtek 2.5GbE LAN chip (2.5 Gbit/1 Gbit/100 Mbit)
* Intel Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax Module, Supports IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac and Bluetooth v5
* Realtek ALC1220-VB Audio Codec 7.1 CH HD Audio
and Asus's:
* Intel I225-V 2.5Gb Ethernet ASUS LANGuard
* Intel 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) support 1024QAM/OFDMA/MU-MIMO and Bluetooth v5.1
* SupremeFX7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC S1220A
They both have sufficient probes on linux-hardware.org for me to not worry about compatibility...
https://linux-hardware.org/?id=board:gigabyte-b550i-aorus-pro-ax
https://linux-hardware.org/?id=board:asustek-rog-strix-b550-i-gaming-rev-x-0x
...except just to further confuse matters there's a 1.1 revision of the Gigabyte which swaps the wifi module for "AMD WiFi 6E 802.11ax & BT 5.2" - though I guess if that doesn't work I can use a USB WiFi receiver until drivers are available.
Do I need to know/care what the differences between Bluetooth 5.0, 5.1 or 5.2 are?
Are there any other reasons to pick one or the other?
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