ASRock Intros the A88M-ITXac Motherboard

btarunr · Feb 4, 2016

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.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

zedn · Feb 4, 2016

Seems great for a small factor APU build.

TheLostSwede · Feb 4, 2016

Looks like a nice potential for a home made NAS, as it has more than four SATA ports.
Sadly no sub 65W processors...

oh and post 1k...

TheGuruStud · Feb 4, 2016

TheLostSwede said:
Looks like a nice potential for a home made NAS, as it has more than four SATA ports.
Sadly no sub 65W processors...

oh and post 1k...

They should have made this a long time ago (so I could use it for NAS).

I can deal with the APUs. Underclocking and undervolting can do wonders. Those APUs are ridiculously overvolted even for stock clocks.

cdawall · Feb 4, 2016

TheGuruStud said:
They should have made this a long time ago (so I could use it for NAS).

I can deal with the APUs. Underclocking and undervolting can do wonders. Those APUs are ridiculously overvolted even for stock clocks.

Yea there is no reason my CPU should have gone almost 1ghz above stock on stock volts. That is a massive OEM overvolt.

GhostRyder · Feb 4, 2016

I really like the Asrock FM2+ ITX boards but they always have one major flaw with me and that's on the lack of a heat spreader on the VRM's. I mean of the options we have 3 that I am aware of (I don't see an Asus so if there is one let me know but I am judging based on newegg) and they each have a flaw. The Asrock has the best systems and features overall allowing full overclocking of all unlocked chips, but no heat spreader on the VRM. The MSI board has a good feature set, good heat spreader, but has no overclocking support on any chip above 65watt and even then its only using the OC genie. Then the Gigabyte board seems to be the best of them all as its got the feature set, VRM heat spreader, and full overclocking but it has a lower audio chip.

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.

cdawall · Feb 4, 2016

GhostRyder said:
I really like the Asrock FM2+ ITX boards but they always have one major flaw with me and that's on the lack of a heat spreader on the VRM's. I mean of the options we have 3 that I am aware of (I don't see an Asus so if there is one let me know but I am judging based on newegg) and they each have a flaw. The Asrock has the best systems and features overall allowing full overclocking of all unlocked chips, but no heat spreader on the VRM. The MSI board has a good feature set, good heat spreader, but has no overclocking support on any chip above 65watt and even then its only using the OC genie. Then the Gigabyte board seems to be the best of them all as its got the feature set, VRM heat spreader, and full overclocking but it has a lower audio chip.

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.

They look like low rds mosfets in theory they shouldn't get as hot.

micropage7 · Feb 4, 2016

suddenly i think about custom lego case

Disparia · Feb 4, 2016

Very nice.

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.

silentbogo · Feb 4, 2016

I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the low-cost PC gaming hardware?
'No!' says the man in Washington, 'You shall only use high-end Intel'
'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'You shall use the older high-end Intel'

I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... the AMD mini-ITX gaming rig!

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.

GhostRyder · Feb 4, 2016

cdawall said:
They look like low rds mosfets in theory they shouldn't get as hot.

I hope, I would not count it out or anything just would prefer something for that little bit of extra oomph.

Casecutter · Feb 4, 2016

I want to build a M-ITX APU Home system, and this cool... but I would rather be starting from AM4, DDR4. Hopefully they will bring a Carrizo (Excavator cores) APU for Desktop on AM4/DDR4 as a pipe-cleaner before Zen based parts. A full 4 MB of L2 cache, and 512 SP GCN GPU or Polaris?

nem · Feb 5, 2016

it mobo could be a perfect combo with the new apu carrizo-excavator Athlon X4 845... adding an r7-250 for hybrid crossfire all a low cost should be a very nice PC...

john_ · Feb 5, 2016

How much certain is that there is an M.2 in the back side of this motherboard? Because I think - correct me if I am wrong - that wireless module is the place where you also connect the M.2 storage. So you can't have both at the same time.

Grings · Feb 7, 2016

nem said:
it mobo could be a perfect combo with the new apu carrizo-excavator Athlon X4 845... adding an r7-250 for hybrid crossfire all a low cost should be a very nice PC...

Them athlons dont have a gpu built in so no crossfire, they also only have 8 pci-e 3.0 lanes, though this really wouldnt be a bottleneck on any mid-high end card

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ASRock Intros the A88M-ITXac Motherboard

btarunr

Editor & Senior Moderator

zedn

TheLostSwede

News Editor

TheGuruStud

cdawall

where the hell are my stars

GhostRyder

cdawall

where the hell are my stars

micropage7

Disparia

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Moderator

GhostRyder

Casecutter

nem

john_

Grings

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