Far from the big towers of more than 50 centimeters high, ASRock has a wide range of very small, very cute PCs.
In ASRock's catalog, you can already find references like the BeBox, the Mars, the Jupiter and the DeskMini. They all have in common to concern small format machines. The idea is obviously to reduce the space occupied by the PC on / in the desk without affecting too much the daily potential of the machine. Thus, the mini PCs designed by ASRock are perfectly capable of performing even advanced office tasks, web browsing, photo editing and content creation. However, in order to offer more latitude to its users, the Taiwanese brand has developed a barebone (case + motherboard) that is a little more bulky, a little more versatile and open too.
The DeskMeet was announced during the CES 2022 in Las Vegas. It is a compact solution measuring 168 x 219.3 x 218.3 millimeters for a maximum volume of 8 liters. Better still, ASRock has decided not to choose between AMD and Intel, the enemy brothers of the processor. In fact, two DeskMeets have been designed. The DeskMeet B660 is designed around a motherboard equipped with an Intel B660 chipset, it is logically planned to host any processor of the brand new Alder Lake range thanks to its LGA1700 socket. The DeskMeet X300 is based on an AMD X300 chipset, and this time it will accept all Ryzen processors from the 2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 series, whether they are CPUs or APUs.
The Intel version is a little more modern and has a PCI Express Gen 4 slot to accept relatively powerful graphics cards: the case is also capable of holding a card that occupies two slots, but it must not be longer than 20 centimeters. The DeskMeet B660 is also equipped with an Intel i219V network controller. The AMD version is a little less up to date with its PCI Express Gen 3 port and the use of a controller that remains Gigabit Ethernet, but which is provided by Realtek, an RTL 8111H. As for the rest of the features, the two DeskMeets are very similar.
Thus, they have the advantage of integrating four DDR4 DIMM slots for a maximum of 128 GB, but above all a greater flexibility on the RAM side. Let's also note the presence of a wide range of connectivity that allows you to have no less than 5 USB ports on the front! Two are 2.0 Type-A, two others are 3.2 Type-A and the last one is 3.2 Type-C: it's hard to be caught off guard with such a configuration. The video above illustrates the great versatility of a product that can be arranged according to your needs by integrating for example two 3.5" hard drives or focusing on a better cooling system.
On the other hand, a little disappointment, ASRock did not see fit to communicate on the availability date of its new baby or on the envisaged pricing for the two versions.
