A great budget FM2 motherboard with plenty of overclocking options
Written By
Published on 11 March 2013
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1 / 3
Our rating
Reviewed price £58 inc VAT
This mid-range FM2 motherboard uses AMD’s A75 chipset and supports the second-generation A-series of processors. Its M suffix denotes it’s the microATX version of its larger cousin, the Pro4, but there’s still plenty of features here to suit all types of users.
With five SATA3 ports located in the front corner, there’s no need to compromise on speed and you can happily get the most out of a fast SSD, while leaving enough ports free for tons of hard disks. USB support is equally as good, with two USB3 and four USB ports on the back panel, and one USB3 and two USB headers for further expansion. There is also one eSATA3 port, five 3.5mm audio jacks for 7.1 analogue sound and a S/PDIF output, as well as a Gigabit Ethernet and a PS/2 port.
There’s the usual VGA, DVI-D and HDMI graphics outputs, so you can use the processor’s on-chip GPU. Asrock also states that all three outputs can be used at the same time, so you can run up to three monitors from the processor’s graphics chip, which means you may not need a discrete graphics card at all.
There’s a decent amount of room for expansion, too, including four DDR3 DIMM memory slots for a maximum of 64GB of RAM that can run up to speeds of 2,600MHz when overclocked. There are also two PCI-E x16 slots that can be used in CrossfireX mode with two graphics cards, Crossfire X and Dual Graphics mode, but only one of these will run at the full bandwidth, with the other running at x4. Elsewhere, there’s one PCI slot and one PCI-E x1 slot, although the latter will get blocked if you install a graphics card.
The FM2A75 Pro4-M’s performance was more or less spot-on in our benchmark tests, as our AMD A10-5800K processor and 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3 scored 63 overall. We’ve seen faster scores for this processor, but this is still roughly what we’d expect to see from an A10-5800K. Overclocking is easy, too, as its UEFI BIOS is very easy to navigate.
Asrock’s FM2A75 Pro4-M is a great micro-ATX motherboard with a wide range of features, but there’s very little to distinguish it from the similarly-priced and budget-buy winning Gigabyte F2A85XM-D3H. We much prefer Asrock’s BIOS interface, but ultimately it’s just not as good a deal as Gigabyte’s A85X-based board. Still, if you can find this motherboard cheaper elsewhere, it’s still a great choice.
Written by
Katharine Byrne
When Katharine's not glued to her Wii U and 3DS, she's usually found darting between tiny smartphones and huge pieces of home cinema equipment.She’s tested everything from laptops and monitors to motherboards and projectors, but she currently specialises in smartphones, games and AV.
