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Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H review

Our Rating :
Price when reviewed : £53
inc VAT

A bargain FM2+ board, but it has few USB3 ports and expansion slots.

Specifications

FM2+, microATX, A88X chipset, supports: Trinity, Richland, Kaveri APUs

http://www.ebuyer.com

If you’re desperate for AMD’s brand-new A10-7850K “Kaveri” processor you’ll need a motherboard to go with it, and the Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H, with its budget price, could be just the motherboard you need.

The F2A88XM-D3H is a microATX FM2+ board compatible with not just the latest Kaveri processors but older FM2 processors too. This means you can upgrade to the F2A88XM-D3H now if you already have an FM2-compatible processor and then upgrade the processor to a Kaveri chip at a later date.

Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H

Although the F2A88XM-D3H is a microATX motherboard, it has all the features that most users will need. There are four memory slots into which you can press a maximum RAM capacity of 64GB. Even better, the F2A88XM-D3H supports memory speeds up to 2,400MHz, which is comforting given the better on-chip graphics performance afforded by faster memory.

The F2A88XM-D3H also has a whopping eight SATA3 ports, which is more than enough for even the most dedicated disk hoarder, and you can be sure that all your drives will be working at the highest potential.

Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H

The F2A88XM-D3H is a compact motherboard, measuring just 244x244mm, so there’s predictably little room for expansion. However, the board does have two PCI Express x16 slots that support CrossFire. Bear in mind, though, that only the first PCI-E x16 slot conforms to the PCI Express 3.0 standard. The second x16 slot conforms to the PCI Express 2.0 standard and runs at x4.

The board also has a single x1 slot, which is ideal for adding USB3 and LAN cards, for example, and a single legacy PCI slot for installing older expansion cards such as TV tuners. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to access the x1 slot if you use a dual-slot graphics card.

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Basic Specifications

Rating ****
Processor socket FM2+
Form factor microATX
Size 244x244mm
Processor support Trinity, Richland, Kaveri APUs
Processor external bus 100MHz
Chipset north bridge A88X
Chipset south bridge A88X
Passively-cooled north bridge yes
Integrated graphics No
Supported memory type DDR3
Maximum memory speed PC3-19200
Memory slots 4
Maximum memory 64GB
Dual-channel support yes

Buying Information

Price £53
Supplier http://www.ebuyer.com
Details www.gigabyte.com

Internal Ports

Power connectors 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin ATX
PCI-E x16 slots 2
Dual graphics architecture CrossFire, AMD Dual Graphics
PCI-E x4 slots 0
PCI-E x1 slots 1
PCI slots 1
Fan headers 2
Floppy ports 0
IDE ports 0
Serial ATA ports 0
RAID chipset (max disks) AMD A88X (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD)

Features

Wired network ports 1x 10/100/1000
Sound (ports) Realtek ALC887 (optical S/PDIF, 3x analogue)
USB2 ports / headers 6/3
Firewire ports / headers 0
Legacy ports parallel header, serial header
Other ports VGA, DVI, DisplayPort, HDMI
Cables included 2x SATA
Brackets included none
Software included none

Setup and Overclocking

Voltage adjustment CPU/RAM/Chipset
CPU clock max adjustment 40MHz

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