Motherboard with wifi and front SSD (m.2 or msata) slot?

[chx]

The GA-B85N-WIFI had an mSATA and a wifi module slot both. Is there anything like that in newer generations? I have a 512GB mSATA disk which I would love to reuse.

I know many ITX boards have an m.2 on the back but I am afraid of overheating. mSATA has always been a hot one.

 

[RosaJ]

Boards now use m.2 not mSATA, two different slots. You would need a mSATA to m.2 adaptor to use your old hard drive.

 

[darksable]

the first option I can think of is the ROG Strix Z270i - it has both wifi and a top-mounted m.2 slot, though its positioning is less than ideal and I'd just leave the "heatsink" off it.

However, there are probably some cheaper options. If you go to pcpartpicker, you should be able to fiddle with filters and find something that suits you. To get you started, here's a list of every motherboard with both wifi and an m.2 slot:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/motherboard/#E=1,3&e=31

 

[whatevs]

And not all m.2 ports are connected to SATA ports. The above mentioned ROG Strix supports SATA and NVME drives on the top m.2 slot but only NVME on the bottom slot.

If you just want it for extra storage, you might also look for a USB mSata adapter and an internal USB cable and just tape it somewhere. That would give you option of using it as external drive in future. Look for UASP support.

Likely you'd want a mSata to Sata adapter.

 

[chx]

Nah, I wanted to boot from it, it would be the only one in the system, and I am aware of m.2 to mSATA converters of course. I would rather not have a SATA-to-mSATA because then you need to convert voltages which is wasted heat again. I was doing that for a while...

It seems the Supermicro X11SSV-Q is the solution which might look expensive at ~$190-200 at first but when you consider that it comes with a 30A (!) built in DC ATX board suddenly it is not so much. You could feed it from a Mean Well GST280A12-C6P and this 6-pin PCI-Express male to 4+4-pin female cable to get a sweet 252W out of it -- that's enough for a 65W CPU and an 1070 But even if you are just feeding it from 4 pin you get 15A support which basically means you can substract the $46.50 PicoPSU 160 XT at least...

The X11SSV-Q motherboard alternatively supports an 8-pin 12V DC input power supply at JPW2 for embedded applications. The 12V DC input is limited to 30A (15A if only installed with 4-pin power cable) by design. It provides up to 360W (180W if only 4-pin connected) power input to the motherboard. Please keep the on board power usage within the power limits specified above. Over current power usage may cause damage to the motherboard.

1 PCI-E 3.0 x16, Mini-PCI-E (mSATA support), M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 (SATA support), M Key 2242/80

It doesn't quite have wifi but converting M key to A key is easy and most M.2 wifi cards are both A and E keyed. The only disadvantage is it uses SO-DIMM but frankly, that's not a problem as they cost the same.

 

[whatevs]

Uhm, getting more mSATA like gear? That's your lesson learned