Thursday, February 7th 2013

ASUS Intros F2A85-V Socket FM2 Motherboard

ASUS augmented its socket FM2 motherboard lineup with the F2A85-V, a lite variant of the F2A85-V Pro the company kicked off its Trinity APU-compatible motherboard lineup with. The new F2A85-V trims down on a few things over the -Pro variant, such as simpler independent VRM and FCH heatsinks with no heat-pipe connecting them, fewer APU power phases, and a lighter expansion slot layout that isn't ideal for multi-GPU setups.

To begin with, the F2A85-V features a 6-phase APU VRM that draws power from a 4-pin ATX connector, compared to the 8-phase one drawing from an 8-pin EPS, on the F2A85-V Pro. The FM2 socket is connected to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting a maximum of 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz memory; and a single PCI-Express 2.0 x16. Other expansion slots include a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x4, wired to the A85X FCH), two PCI-Express 2.0 x1, and three legacy PCI slots.

Display connectivity on the F2A85-V includes one each of dual-link DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI. Storage includes seven SATA 6 Gb/s, and an eSATA 6 Gb/s. The rest of the connectivity includes four USB 3.0 ports (two on the rear panel, two by header), 8-channel HD audio with optical TOSLINK output, gigabit Ethernet, PS/2 mouse/keyboard, and a number of USB 2.0/1.1 ports. The board is driven by AMI UEFI BIOS. It is expected to hold a sub-$100 price-point.
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