ASRock M8

Lore & Background

The ASRock M8 was created as a collaboration between ASRock and BMW Designworks, resulting in a custom BMW-designed chassis. The first edition, released in October 2013, included a slim line optical drive, an ASRock Z87-M8 motherboard, and a 450W Silverstone SFX power supply. Tom's Hardware reviewed this edition and reported thermal throttling issues, which were resolved by reversing the bottom fans to intake and top fans to exhaust, and cutting wire sleeves, leading to a 20 °C decrease in CPU temperature.

The 2015 refresh, known as the M8 Series (Z97), updated the motherboard to an AsRock Z97-M8 that supports Intel's Broadwell architecture and upgraded the power supply to 600W SFX. Both editions share the same dimensions and I/O ports, including 8 USB 3.0 ports, 4 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs, WiFi 802.11 AC, an Intel Gigabit LAN port, and standard audio jacks.

The M8 received several awards: the 2013 Chicago Good Design Award, a 2014 iF Product Design Award, a Computex d&i Award, and in 2015 the Taiwan Excellence Award from the Taiwan External Trade Development Council.

Reader's Guide

The ASRock M8 is significant as a rare example of a PC hardware collaboration with an automotive design firm, BMW Designworks, which influenced its chassis design. Its awards—including the Chicago Good Design Award, iF Product Design Award, Computex d&i Award, and Taiwan Excellence Award—highlight its recognition in industrial design. The system's thermal throttling issue, identified by Tom's Hardware, and the subsequent fan reconfiguration and wire sleeve removal that reduced CPU temperature by 20 °C, illustrate a practical challenge and solution in compact PC builds. The 2015 update to support Broadwell CPUs and a higher-wattage power supply shows iterative improvement. The M8's legacy lies in its design partnership and its role as a compact, award-winning barebones kit that required user modification to achieve optimal thermal performance.

Did You Know?

• The ASRock M8 was created in collaboration with BMW Designworks.
• Tom's Hardware reported thermal throttling issues with the 2013 edition, resolved by reversing fan airflow and cutting wire sleeves, reducing CPU temperature by 20 °C.
• The 2015 refresh upgraded the motherboard to support Intel Broadwell architecture and increased the power supply to 600W.

Design Philosophy & the BMW Partnership

The ASRock M8 stands as a distinctive entry in the Mini-ITX barebones computer market, born from an unusual cross-industry partnership between motherboard manufacturer ASRock and BMW Designworks, the automotive giant's design studio. Rather than simply slapping a logo on a standard case, BMW Designworks crafted a custom chassis that gave the M8 a sleek, automotive-inspired aesthetic far removed from typical PC enclosures. The kit also incorporated a slim-line optical drive, reinforcing the compact, refined design language. Launched in October 2013 as the M8 Series, the product was later refreshed in 2015 under the name M8 Series (Z97), signaling an evolutionary update rather than a ground-up redesign. This two-generation approach allowed ASRock to retain the celebrated BMW-designed exterior while modernizing the internal platform, giving enthusiasts a visually striking barebones platform that bridged the worlds of automotive design sensibility and personal computing.

A Trail of Design Honors

The M8's visual identity earned it a remarkable string of design accolades spanning multiple years and continents. Its first major recognition came in 2013 with the Chicago Good Design Award, validating the BMW Designworks chassis right at launch. The following year brought double recognition: the M8 was honored with an iF Product Design Award and subsequently evaluated for a Computex d&i Award, cementing its standing in both European and Asian design circles. Then in 2015, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council bestowed the Taiwan Excellence Award, a prestigious national designation that underscores the product's significance to Taiwan's hardware industry. Collectively, these honors span three different awarding bodies across North America, Europe, and Asia, covering a two-year window from 2013 to 2015. For a barebones PC kit, this density of design recognition is exceptional and speaks to how the BMW collaboration elevated the M8 beyond a mere motherboard-and-case bundle into a genuinely award-worthy industrial design object.

Connectivity & Physical Footprint

Despite its compact Mini-ITX classification, the M8 delivers a surprisingly generous I/O complement. Both the 2013 and 2015 editions share identical external dimensions of 372 millimeters in width, 123 millimeters in height, and 400 millimeters in length, making them a fixed-size desktop unit. On the connectivity front, users get eight USB 3.0 ports alongside four USB 2.0 ports, providing ample bandwidth for peripherals and storage. Video output is handled through both an HDMI connector and a DisplayPort, catering to different monitor ecosystems. Wireless connectivity is covered by 802.11 AC WiFi, while wired networking is handled by an Intel Gigabit LAN port. Audio is addressed with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a separate microphone input. The internal power delivery also evolved between generations: the original 2013 model shipped with a 450-watt Silverstone SFX power supply, while the 2015 refresh bumped that to a 600-watt SFX unit, reflecting the higher power demands of the newer Broadwell-era platform.

Thermal Challenges & the Road to Maturity

The 2013 M8, built around an ASRock Z87-M8 motherboard and a 450-watt Silverstone SFX power supply, was not without its engineering growing pains. Tom's Hardware, which reviewed the original edition, documented persistent thermal throttling that limited the system's sustained performance. The reviewers identified the root cause in the airflow configuration: the bottom-mounted fans were not functioning as proper intakes, and the top fans were not exhausting effectively. Their solution involved reorienting the bottom fans to pull cool air in and flipping the top fans to push hot air out. They also trimmed away restrictive wire sleeves that were impeding airflow within the chassis. The result was dramatic—a measured reduction in CPU temperature of twenty degrees Celsius. By the 2015 refresh, ASRock had moved to a Z97-M8 motherboard supporting Intel's Broadwell architecture and upgraded to a 600-watt SFX supply, suggesting that the thermal and power lessons learned from the first generation were baked into the second.