ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 mini-ITX motherboard with 7 SATA3.0 ports!!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This looks the ideal motherboard for a server:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6555/e...and-fm2a85xitx

[Pob255]

That's a lovely looking board, really great layout

And that ATX board looks good too, digital 12+2 PWM, eight SATA3, two eSATA3 and four rear USB3 and two USB3 dual headers

[Bonebreaker777]

Wonder what the price would be.

Guess the RAID performance and reliability will be not up to the standards of the dedicated RAID cards.

[DanceswithUnix]

I really liked the look of it until I saw it has "gold coated capacitors".

Would work well in the Coolermaster Elite 120 case I just bought though. The old Gigabyte Llano board I have in that lacks enough fan headers and the USB3 front port connection.

[hb904460]

The price will probably be excessive due to the A85X chipset, when they could have created a similar board with 6 SATA 3.0 ports with the cheaper A75.

[Bonebreaker777]

Obviously with that many ports and extra functions added plus packed into that tiny format they were aiming at the premium market, where you can afford premium chipsets (and thus, prices).

[Ulti]

Oh my..

Supports Dual-link DVI-D with max. resolution up to 2560x1600 @ 75Hz

I am very tempted to ditch my graphics card and go smaller again. Why did you have to show me this CAT?!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Oh my..



I am very tempted to ditch my graphics card and go smaller again. Why did you have to show me this CAT?!

I think you need to update your sig!!

[Ulti]

Yep just updated! I still have my Llano build in my wardrobe as I haven't bothered to sell it.

The two are priced in the US $90-$110 range.

That's pretty affordable and not much more than the A75M-ITX too assuming that it'll be around £70-80 after conversion + VAT! I remember the Asus Llano board I had (ASUS F1A75-I DELUXE) was pretty expensive.

EDIT: Seems the TPU article was talking about FM2A85X Extreme4 and FM2A85X Extreme4-Mm not the ITX version.

[DanceswithUnix]

A75 version seems quite cheap at £65, I can't see people paying much of a premium for the A85.

http://www.ebuyer.com/429726-asrock-...x-fm2a75m-itx#

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I have heard some issues about the ASRock A75 mini-ITX motherboard as the VRMs are not cooled and it uses a 4 phase VRM. The A85 one has VRM cooling and uses a 6 phase VRAM and the MSI A75 mini-ITX motherboard uses a 5 phase VRM.

[MustardCutter]

A75 version seems quite cheap at £65, I can't see people paying much of a premium for the A85.

As an owner of Asrock's A75 ITX board I will say avoid it like the plague, it's been nothing but trouble. I'm lucky the VRMs haven't caught fire like others have reported on overclock.net. In my case I have had to sink the VRM's, disable turbo (with it enabled it clocks higher than the maximum values set in bios and puts an additional 0.2V through the CPU) and overvolt my GSKILL 1600 RAM to get it stable, it didn't like samsung greens either and I had to underclcok them to 1333MHz for stability. This board will cook itself if you leave default settings, even whilst in BIOS. I'm waiting on Gigabyte's FM2 ITX offering to find a new home for my A10-5700. This was my first Asrock board and I will never touch one again.

Look here for how bad it is:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1301979/t...on-gallery/160

[DanceswithUnix]

Thanks for the info. Not had an Asrock board before, last two have been Gigabyte and have been quite underwhelmed tbh. The older FM1 socket A75 ITX board from Gigabyte seems to often just not want to come out of sleep, and there aren't any BIOS updates for it (which I suspect is the problem). Have swapped it for a uATX FM2 board which has been going for nearly a week now without problem.

the ITX board is being built up for my server, as a Linux box it will never be asked to sleep so seems to be OK. With a small boot drive, 2 drive raid array and a DVD drive all the 4 sata ports are already taken though.

[Ulti]

Seems it's going to be around £70-80. Systo have it for £76 + P&P and they're usually not the cheapest but they're not far off.