The Board - Layout

I was rather awed by the fact that the Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 is nearly completely devoid of color. Almost everything, from top to bottom, is colored black or grey. Even the socket's backplate, seen from the rear of the board, is completely blacked-out; like a stealth fighter.


The area around the socket of the Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 is pretty open, which leaves lots of room for aftermarket cooling and sub-zero insulation - if that floats your boat. The DIMM slots are fairly close to the socket, but not too close. Each of those four DIMMs can accept DIMMs of up to 16 GB in density for a total of 64 GB, which is great if you plan on using your system as a file server or in combination with AMD's RamDrive.


There's a full complement of expansion slots on the Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4 with three PCIe x1slots, three PCie x16 slots, and a single legacy PCI slot for those that still have use for PCI devices. There are five total fan headers on the board; each is a 4-pin PWM-based plug.


The board's bottom edge has all the usual pin headers. All of them are part of a plastic receptacle to make installation easier. The one outlier here is a single SATA 6 Gb/s port on the bottom, right corner.


The Gigabyte F2A85X-UP4's backplate is pretty diverse. Four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, a single eSATA port, a combo keyboard/mouse PS2 port, a six-port audio block, and a single LAN port are all part of the backplate; VGA, DVI, DisplayPort, and HDMI round things out. There are six internal SATA 6 Gb/s ports on the board's right edge. Add in the eSATA and the SATA port on the board's bottom edge, and you will notice that all of the A85X FCH's SATA ports are being used.