ITX boards with 4 RAM slots?

[Yuriman]

I recall reading a review of an ASRock ITX board with 4 RAM slots, accomplished by using SO-DIMMs:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X299E-ITXac/

For me, the only major limitation of the ITX form factor is that it's (almost) universally limited to 2 sticks of RAM. I haven't felt the need for a decade to put anything in a PCIe slot other than a single GPU, but I often want to add more RAM before I'm done with a platform.

Any thoughts on why we don't see more boards doing this?

 

[XavierMace]

Because the So-DIMM selection is far more limited, especially "enthusiast" kits.

 

[Lordhumungus]

In my opinion, it’s only useful to have the number of slots that matches the number of channels the CPU supports.

With modern CPU’s that’s 32GB in 2 channels with current densities which I can’t see being a limiting factor for basically anything anyone would do with an ITX system.

 

[Yuriman]

Just to use an example, I have 8GB of DDR3 in my current system. Most of the system still has life in it, but I'd love to throw in another 8GB. To do so, I would need to sell the sticks I have and buy more dense sticks to replace them, rather than just add two more.

 

[Lordhumungus]

I suppose that’s mildly incovenient, but doesn’t actually limit you beyond your willingness to change out parts.

The bottom line is they need the realestate for other things and this is an easy compromise for the form factor.

For the record the ASRock X299 ITX board is running in quad channel, which is why it has 4 slots, but even then they had to compromise with SODIMMs to get everything to fit.

 

[wdb1966]

I have not seen any bare ITX boards for DIY builds with four RAM slots, however some of the bare bone suppliers like Shuttle commonly offer models with four, though only on the Intel platform at this time.

I have a couple of them myself.