The Board - Layout

With the board out of the box, the stylized theme of the Biostar TA75A+ really impresses, with the red, black, and white color theme broken here and there with a bit of hardcore metal. The rear of the board is simple and clean, thanks to the impressive connectivity of the AMD A75 chipset, allowing for simplistic board design.


The socket area of the board is quite clean and simple like the rest of the board, with the CPU_FAN1 power header in a non-standard location, at least for us, found below the CPU VRM. The rear of the socket, in contrast to many other boards we've looked at, is almost completely clear of protruding pins that might interfere with aftermarket backplates, with many solder "cooling strips" beneath the CPU VRM to help dissipate heat. The backside of the socket proper is completely filled with components, with not a single empty spot noticed.


With six expansion slots, the Biostar TA75A+ comes with two of everything, PCIe x16, PCIe x1, and PCI all inclusive. The white PCIe x16 slot is connected to the APU with a x16 link, while the red x16 slot is connected to the APU via a x4 link, the perfect pair for an add-on RAID card and a discrete GPU. The four DIMM slots can each be fitted with high density 8 GB DIMMs, while claiming support for up to a 2000 MHz speed.


We find all of the pin headers for internal expansion along the bottom edge of the board, with the addition of power and reset switches right next to the front panel pin header, making first set-ups a breeze. All of the pin headers, minus the front panel and COM header, are fitted with red plastic bases, really adding to the colored theme of the board, something that we really did not expect from such an inexpensive product. The TA75A+ features three separate fan headers, but only the 4-pin PWM CPU_FAN header can be controlled from within the BIOS and via included software.


On the board's right edge we find six SATA ports, each supporting 6 Gb/s drives. The backplate I/O starts off with a PS/2 port for keyboards and four USB 2.0 ports, quickly followed by a set of HDMI, VGA, and DVI ports driven by the APU's onboard Radeon cores. We also find a set of dual USB 3.0 ports, a six port audio header, and rounding it all out is a single RJ-45 LAN connector.


The board's chipset has a relatively small cooler on it, with a low profile so as to not interfere with expansion cards. Removing the stylized heatsink we find the AMD A75 chipset below, set at a 45-degree angle like AMD's current line of high-performance GPUs.