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Asrock 880GXH/USB3 review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £71
inc VAT

This relatively cheap AM3 motherboard doesn’t have SATA3 and isn’t as fast as some of its rivals, but it has all the other key features we want and is great value.

Specifications

AM3, ATX, AMD 880G chipset, supports: Athlon II, Phenom II, Phenom II X6, Sempron

http://www.aria.co.uk

Asrock’s 880GXH-USB3 is slimmer than most ATX boards, measuring 305x224mm. It’s also somewhat short of ports and uses the budget AMD 880GX chipset. The price is right, though, at around £70.

All the more expensive AMD 890 and 790 boards we’ve tested to date with our AMD Phenom II 975 processor produced an Overall score of 120 in our benchmark tests, while the 880GXH-USB3 got just 111. The difference isn’t massive, though, and it’s easy to overclock your processor and memory to improve your PC’s performance with a convenient range of settings and profiles in the BIOS.

Asrock 880GXH/USB3 top

There’s only one PCI-E x16 slot, but there’s little benefit to be gained by using two PCI-E graphics cards. Most other expansion cards will fit into either the two PCI-E x1 slots or three PCI slots elsewhere on the board. Installing a double-height graphics card won’t block any of the other ports, so none are wasted. Other key features include five SATAII connectors and four memory slots capable of taking up to 16GB of RAM at 1,800MHz.

Asrock 880GXH/USB3 ports

At the back, you’ll find an eSATA port and six USB ports, including one USB3 port. Confusingly, both the USB3 port and one of its USB2 neighbours are coloured blue. There are five 3.5mm analogue audio ports and an optical S/PDIF port. You can also output audio along with video from the board’s HDMI port, which the integrated ATI Radeon HD 4250 can use to output full-quality Blu-ray audio and video. It’s not up to modern 3D gaming, though, and managed just 3.8fps in our CoD4 benchmark.

The 880GXH-USB3 isn’t the fastest motherboard around and only has a one-year warranty, but it’s cheap, with lots of features for a surprisingly low price. If you don’t need SATA3, it’s a great way to save a bit of money.

Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor socket AM3
Form factor ATX
Size 305x224mm
Processor support Athlon II, Phenom II, Phenom II X6, Sempron
Processor external bus 260MHz (2.6GHz HyperTransport)
Chipset north bridge AMD 880G
Chipset south bridge AMD SB710
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics Yes
Supported memory type DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600(OC)/1800(OC)
Maximum memory speed PC3-14400
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 16GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £71
Supplier http://www.aria.co.uk
Details www.asrock.com

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 1
Dual graphics architecture N/A
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 1
PCI slots 3
Fan headers 4
Floppy ports 1
IDE ports 1
Serial ATA ports 5
RAID chipset (max disks) AMD SB710 (RAID 0, 1, 10, JBOD)

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC892 (5x analogue out, optical S/PDIF)
USB2 ports / headers 6/3
Firewire ports / headers 0/0
Legacy ports PS/2, serial header
Other ports 1x eSATA, 1x USB3, VGA, DVI, HDMI
Cables included 2x SATA, 1x IDE
Brackets included none
Software included drivers

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment 500MHz

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