Thursday, February 4th 2016
ASRock Intros the A88M-ITXac Motherboard
ASRock introduced the A88M-ITXac socket FM2+ motherboard. As its name suggests, the board is built in the mini-ITX form-factor, and is based on AMD A88X chipset, supporting the latest socket FM2+ APUs and CPUs. The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS power connectors, conditioning it with a 5-phase CPU VRM. The socket is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 32 GB of dual-channel DDR3-2400 memory; and the board's lone expansion slot - a PCI-Express 3.0 x16.
Storage connectivity on the A88M-ITXac includes six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and an M.2 PCIe port (on the reverse side of the PCB). Network connectivity includes 802.11ac WLAN (up to 433 Mbps), Bluetooth 4.0, and gigabit Ethernet. Display outputs include one each of HDMI 1.4a, dual-link DVI, and D-Sub. The board supports AMD Dual-Graphics, which lets you run the APU's onboard graphics in tandem with a select Radeon discrete graphics card, for added performance. Four USB 3.0 ports, and 6-channel HD audio make up the board's modern connectivity. The company didn't announce pricing.
Storage connectivity on the A88M-ITXac includes six SATA 6 Gb/s ports, and an M.2 PCIe port (on the reverse side of the PCB). Network connectivity includes 802.11ac WLAN (up to 433 Mbps), Bluetooth 4.0, and gigabit Ethernet. Display outputs include one each of HDMI 1.4a, dual-link DVI, and D-Sub. The board supports AMD Dual-Graphics, which lets you run the APU's onboard graphics in tandem with a select Radeon discrete graphics card, for added performance. Four USB 3.0 ports, and 6-channel HD audio make up the board's modern connectivity. The company didn't announce pricing.
14 Comments on ASRock Intros the A88M-ITXac Motherboard
Sadly no sub 65W processors...
oh and post 1k...
I can deal with the APUs. Underclocking and undervolting can do wonders. Those APUs are ridiculously overvolted even for stock clocks.
I really like this new Asrock board, but I really wish they would do that as its would help when pushing these chips (With some work I was able to get an Asrock board to overclock an A10 7850K to 4.6ghz and the GPU to over 1000mhz on DDR3 2400mhz ram) but it required a bit of working with the airflow to keep temps down compared to a Gigabyte I did a similar build with.
ASRock has another mITX A88X board, but (among other differences) has a mini-PCIe slot that can accommodate a full-sized mSATA drive. FYI, for those that want cheaper storage and can live with SATA speeds.
Bitfenix Prodigy, nice PSU and an R7 370 will make it a decent Steambox on a budget.
ASRock's current FM2A88X-ITX+ sells at $80-90 in most places, so I hope this new board will stay in sub-$100 level to compete with Asus and MSI mini-ITX boards.