Reviews - ASRock FM2A75 Pro4-M

[HEXUS]

£50 for a well-featured, Trinity-supporting motherboard. What's not to like?

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[cjs150]

A very nice board, I prefer the SATA sockets to be at right angles (and ATX socket but that haardly ever happens these days) as better for cable management.

Is there any MSata connection? If MB makers would bring this up to SATA3 standards then I would happily use that (less cabling) as main boot drive

[Zanny]

I got this board in a new hybrid HTPC build. I spent the last few days fine tuning the overclock on it, and it holds up really nicely. The memory modules are kind of close to the cpu block, so if you have a vertical heatsink and fan it will probably be a tight fit without low profile memory modules.

The bios is pretty solid. The manual is completely useless though, and some of the features, like the check ready bit ACPI option is completely glyphic (its a mechanical hard drive rev up check that can prevent resuming from suspend on an SSD so don't have it on with an SSD). The board temps barely go over 30c and I have the northbridge at 1.35 volts with a 15x multipler (the standard is 1.15 and 9x). I had to rev up some Corsair 2133mhz ram to 1.51 volts to get stock ratings without crashing on large gpu transfers, but that could be caused by a wide variety of things, from the northbridge to the PSU slightly undercutting the voltage to the modules being slightly off standard.

I did an in-depth guide to what all the features of this board (and most of the Asrock Piledriver UEFI features) that I posted in the forum here.

Is there any MSata connection? If MB makers would bring this up to SATA3 standards then I would happily use that (less cabling) as main boot drive

Yes, there is an MSATA that replaces 1 of the 6 mainboard sata connectors on the back panel. Though I feel like mentioning that you don't put the hard drives in cases just for the hell of it, good cases have anti-vibration support and have active fans to keep the drives cool. Even though you would have a really hard time overheating a mechanical drive (and definitely not an SSD) magnetic disks stay more stable if you keep the temps low.

[cjs150]

Zanny: thanks for the reply. I assume the Msata is sata 2 not sata 3?

Have to admit to being tempted by this board. I have the ASRock z77 mini itx board and am very pleased with it although being a mini-itx board overclocking is a bit minimal. Previously I have tended to stick to ASUS boards but ASRock would definitely be considered.

I tend to work with low airflow cases (low noise) so cable tidying is an obsession, and it looks nicer!

[scaryjim]

as far as I can tell there's no msata on this board (not surprising, there's very little spare room on an matx board to fit the slot) - there is esata which will almost certainly be sata 3, but no msata. Given that AMD don't have anything like Intel Smart Response there's little incentive for mobo manufacturers to include msata on AMD boards...

[Apex]

Still the insist on putting the 12v aux connector there - why can they not move it to where the main atx connector is ?

Lack of clearance round the cpu is going to be a issue for some.

Why in 2012 are they still putting d-sub and dvi on ? why not move over to hdmi and save a load of space [room for more usb ports]

In fact these are the same issue i have with my asus FM1 mobo

[Zanny]

Still the insist on putting the 12v aux connector there - why can they not move it to where the main atx connector is ?

Why in 2012 are they still putting d-sub and dvi on ? why not move over to hdmi and save a load of space [room for more usb ports]

This board already has room for more usb ports, the next tier up model has 2 usb ports over the hdmi port. DVI is still the standard connector for displays without audio. The vga connector could go fly a kite, though, tbh.

I guess you could use an hdmi to dvi converter, since they are interoptable. More hdmi ports is more expensive though, since they require an audio channel in addition to the video one.

I wouldn't mind hdmi / dvi / displayport. But there are very few displays using displayport (I just recently got an IPS Asus monitor that still uses hdmi/dvi/vga).

[scaryjim]

Monitors can last more than a decade. Most motherboards use a DVI-D, rather than DVI-I, so you can't use a normal dongle to convert to VGA. I've got a 20" 1600x1200 CRT monitor that I reckon has several years in it yet, and I reckon a Trinity A10 will happily run most games at that res, so I'd personally quite like to not have to buy an expensive active adapter

VGA isn't dead yet. Eventually I'm sure it will go by the wayside, but not yet...

[Apex]

Well it should be - it's a waste of space on such a small mobo - the space could be better used.

Also - ps/2 i thought we had done away with the legacy stuff ?

And granted there are CRT's out there and yes they might work but quite frankly i've gone from the 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' way of thinking round to the one of replace it after a while even if it stills work - it stops you falling behing so to speak.

My main gripe is the 12v aux connector and the placement of bits round the cpu socket but they arn't alone in getting this wrong imho.

[Noli]

Also - ps/2 i thought we had done away with the legacy stuff ?

ps/2 still supports N-key rollover (NKRO) from keyboards where USB doesn't so I hope that they continue to provide this on motherboards for years to come.

Just because you can't see the point in something, doesn't mean it's useless.

[rnaodm]

I have this motherboard with an A6-5400k. The rig runs fine, but theres an 8 pin connector on the motherboard and only 4 pics are connected. Yet it runs normally and even overclocks and seems to be stable, should I plug in the other 4 pin cable?

Is this for when you decide to use a GPU instead of relying on the onboard stuff?

[shaithis]

I have this motherboard with an A6-5400k. The rig runs fine, but theres an 8 pin connector on the motherboard and only 4 pics are connected. Yet it runs normally and even overclocks and seems to be stable, should I plug in the other 4 pin cable?

Is this for when you decide to use a GPU instead of relying on the onboard stuff?

Not all PSUs have all 8 pins for the CPU power connector, although if both your mobo and PSU do, I would connect all 8, rather then just the first 4....especially if overclocking.

[rnaodm]

yea my psu has all 8 and the mobo has 8 pins, Im currently at 4.2ghz with no problems on 4pins im hesitant to raise the clock at im on the stock cooler.

I really want a quadcore though, I just dont see the dual core trinity holding its own when I end up with an r9 280