ASRock has announced its latest ITX graphics card for small form factors, the Radeon RX 5500 XT Challenger ITX. This new mini-ITX card is based on AMD's Navi 14 GPU and offers 8 GB of GDDR6 memory attached to a 128-bit bus, with the same core and memory clock speeds as a reference model.

Finding a graphics card for a small form factor system can be tiresome with very little on the market to choose from. One of the big trade-offs of graphics cards designed for small form factor systems is that beefier models such as AMD's RX 5700 XT, and NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 2080 Ti are too large in design to accommodate such a small PCB, which is where smaller cards designed particularly for the ITX form factor come in.

Focusing on the ASRock RX 5500 XT Challenger ITX 8G, it is very small for its power with dimensions of 190 x 139 x 42 mm, meaning that it is just under 7.5 inches in length. It features a single 10 cm cooling fan on its front, embedded in a white and silver dual-slot cooler, which is designed to direct hot air out of the rear of a chassis. The cooler on the ASRock RX 5500 XT Challenger ITX 8 G is actually longer than a reference model (7.5 vs 7.1 inches) but is still much smaller than most aftermarket designs from other vendors.

Physical size aside, the card is very similar in specifications to other 5500 XT cards on the market. The Challenger ITX ships with a base core clock of 1607 MHz and acn boosts up to 1845 MHz. Meanwhile the effective memory core clock speed of 14 Gbps. Unsurprisingly then, with its reference-like clocks, the card is targeted towards 1080p gaming.

As for display outputs, ASRock has outfitted the card a trio of DisplayPort 1.4 connectors as well as a single HDMI 2.0b port. Feeding the mini monster is a single 8-pin 12 V ATX PCIe power connector, which is more than sufficient to meet its 130 W TDP.

ASRock hasn't announced when the Radeon RX 5500 XT Challenger 8G will be available at retailers, nor has it provided any information about its price.

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Source: ASRock

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  • flyingpants265 - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link

    There are ITX boards with 4 sticks of RAM. They exist. They could be made.
  • Reflex - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link

    Honestly 16GB DIMM's are fairly cheap now, and even 32GB is available although expensive. 2 sockets isn't a huge limitation.
  • TheUnhandledException - Saturday, April 18, 2020 - link

    I wish mini DTX had caught on. Large enough for two slots still smaller than mATX (same width as ITX). It should also have enough room for two front mounted m.2 drives. Alas it really never went anywhere. I guess the market isn't big enough for another form factor.
  • amnesia0287 - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link

    I like Flex-ATX
  • flyingpants265 - Monday, April 20, 2020 - link

    mini-ITX is too small, pointlessly small. I can't really think of any reason to buy full ATX anymore.

    Micro-ATX should probably take over as the new standard.

    Thank God we have all 3, but I think we should have even more options.
  • zamroni - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link

    because most users only utilize 1 pcie slot nowadays, i.e. for gpu, and the most desktop processors only have 2 ram channels that can be utilized by itx's 2 dimm slots
  • TheinsanegamerN - Sunday, April 19, 2020 - link

    You can run 2 sticks per channel. That's how multiple sticks of RAM have worked going back to the intel 8086.
  • Flunk - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link

    The reason is that itx allows for a discrete GPU... and discrete GPUs are the only expansion card most people care about these days. Space for a few more slots isn't on most people's want list.

    You can get fairly ITX cases that have space for full-length GPUs so your premise is faulty. These "ITX" branded GPUs are mostly a marketing exercise. The ITX spec doesn't specify a maximum GPU length, it's just based on the case you buy.
  • romrunning - Friday, April 17, 2020 - link

    Yeah, I don't know why the author keeps referring to the graphics card as a "new mini-ITX card" when it's just a graphics card designed for mini-ITX systems.

    Mini-ITX refers to a specific type of motherboard size, not the graphics card itself.
  • johnthacker - Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - link

    "You can get fairly ITX cases that have space for full-length GPUs so your premise is faulty."

    Or you can get a mini-ITX motherboard (since, as you point out, most people only need one slot, for the GPU) and put it in a mATX case if you're worried about GPU fit.

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