ASRock DeskMeet B660 Review: An Affordable NUC Extreme?

ASRock was one of the earliest vendors to cater to the small-form factor (SFF) PC market with a host of custom-sized motherboards based on notebook platforms. Despite missing the NUC bus for the most part, they have been quite committed to the 5x5 mini-STX form-factor introduced in 2015. ASRock's DeskMini lineup is based on mSTX boards and has both Intel and AMD options for the end-user. While allowing for installation of socketed processors, the form-factor could not support a discrete GPU slot. Around 2018, Intel started making a push towards equipping some of their NUC models with user-replaceable discrete GPUs. In order to gain some market share in that segment, ASRock introduced their DeskMeet product line early last year with support for socketed processors and a PCIe x16 slot for installing add-in cards. Read on for a detailed analysis of the features, performance, and value proposition of the DeskMeet B660 - a 8L SFF PC based on the Intel B660 chipset, capable of accommodating Alder Lake or Raptor Lake CPUs.