As i said if you are looking to push a 8 core Ryzen to it's limits with an ITX board i would certainly go for something along Strix B350/X370/X470 -i .here you will find a VRM analysis on Asrock AB350 itx wich has basicaly the same VRM solution as the X370 and the new X470 itx.here you can see a review about strix x370itx where he talks about VRM temps (starts around 3:50 ) .What you can learn from this is that ASUS is using a true 6 phase while Asrock uses a 3phase for VCore . The temps on the ASUS board when heavely OC and no airflow are well within the limits so the temps on the Asrock board should be a bit worst but within the limits non the less . It also depends on what your friend plans to do with it. If it's content creation then he would probably need some kind of airflow for the VRMs but nothing to extreme.