ASRock Announces A Pair of New Socket FM2 Motherboards

[btarunr]

ASRock made two additions to its socket FM2 motherboard lineup, based on the AMD A85X chipset. These include the FM2A85X Extreme4 (ATX form-factor), and FM2A85X Extreme4-M (micro-ATX). The FM2A85X Extreme4 is a notch below the feature-rich FM2A85X Extreme6. Built in the slim ATX form-factor, the board uses a simple 6-phase VRM to power the APU socket, which is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots supporting up to 64 GB of dual-channel DDR3-1866 MHz memory, and a PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slot. While it has two long PCIe slots, one of them is electrical x4, wired to the FCH. Other expansion slots include two PCI-Express 2.0 x1, and three legacy PCI. Seven out of eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports are assigned as internal ports, with one eSATA. The board features four USB 3.0 ports in total. HDMI, DVI, and D-Sub make up display inputs, gigabit Ethernet, and 8-channel audio make for the rest of the connectivity.

Moving on, the FM2A85X Extreme4-M is a compressed variant of the FM2A85X Extreme4, which features an expansion slot layout of one PCI-Express 2.0 x16 wired to the APU, a PCI-Express 2.0 x4 (physical x16) wired to the FCH, and one each of PCI-Express 2.0 x1 and legacy PCI. Much like the FM2A85X Extreme4, its display connectivity features DVI, D-Sub, and HDMI; seven out of eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports are internal, with an eSATA port; gigabit Ethernet and 8-channel HD audio make for the rest of the connectivity. The two are priced in the US $90-$110 range.



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[Nihilus]

ITX or GTFO

Seriously, who the heck wants to put more than one graphics card with these cpus? If that is your plan, go for a piledriver or cheap IVY bridge.

THis CPU was mad for mini ITX!

 

[btarunr]

ITX or GTFO

Seriously, who the heck wants to put more than one graphics card with these cpus? If that is your plan, go for a piledriver or cheap IVY bridge.

THis CPU was mad for mini ITX!

ASRock already has a mini-ITX socket FM2 board:

 

[Nihilus]

Nice Btrunr, that took all of 60 seconds. DDR3 2600+ should make the 5800k scream too! This, a cheap case, a 5800k are on my short list for next months paycheck.

 

[LAN_deRf_HA]

Yeah a handful of mini itx boards have been shown to have been designed but you can't buy them anywhere. I don't get this whole positioning of FM2 like it's big old performance desktop part. needing huge boards and big cases. 5700 + mini itx is clearly the sweet spot. Maybe it's hard for them to support the 100w parts in cheap mini itx boards? I can't see any other reason to blatantly ignore the demand.

 

[Nihilus]

Yeah a handful of mini itx boards have been shown to have been designed but you can't buy them anywhere. I don't get this whole positioning of FM2 like it's big old performance desktop part. needing huge boards and big cases. 5700 + mini itx is clearly the sweet spot. Maybe it's hard for them to support the 100w parts in cheap mini itx boards? I can't see any other reason to blatantly ignore the demand.

Agreed! Lots of great boards shown but nothing available. Worthless.

 

[Syborfical]

Nice 4 port SATA 3 and a PCI-e slot.
Would make for a nice nas with a decent PCI-E raid card