Gigabyte F2A85XM-D3H Motherboard (with AMD A8-5600K) Review

Gigabyte have chosen to use their traditional blue and white colour scheme for this Micro-ATX motherboard which is quite unique.  We question whether users will prefer it to their newer black-themed boards as it makes it quite difficult to colour co-ordinate components.

The first thing that stood out about this motherboard for us was the lack of any heatsinks surrounding the power regulation circuitry.  This makes it quite obvious that this isn't designed for enthusiasts, potentially limiting overclocking potential, especially with increased voltages.

In the top right-hand corner of the board there is an 8-pin connector which supplies the CPU with power.

To the right of the CPU socket there are four DDR3 RAM slots which support frequencies of 1866 / 1600 / 1333 / 1066 MHz in a dual channel configuration.

The 24-pin motherboard power connector is also located on the right hand side of the motherboard, alongside a single USB3.0 internal header.

In the bottom right hand corner of the motherboard we find no fewer than eight SATA-600 ports which mean this motherboard is an ideal candidate for a home server or home theatre PC.  The chipset is also located in this area, hidden underneath a tiny heatsink.

Along the bottom edge of the motherboard there are a number of connections.  From left to right we find the audio header, S-PDIF connector, a COM header, a TPM header, two internal USB2.0 headers and the front panel connectors.

Moving around to the I/O connectors, all the basics are catered for.  From left to right we find two USB2.0 ports, a PS/2 port, VGA, DVI and HDMI jacks, an optical audio connector, two USB3.0 connectors, an RJ-45 Ethernet jack, two further USB2.0 connectors and three 3.5mm audio jacks.

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