MSI FM-2 A85XA-G65 motherboard review

Final words and conclusion

Honestly, when you have had the new Trinity APUs in your hands and at the test benches, the only thing you can conclude is that PCs based upon these APUs are low-end / entry level products. Okay CPU performance versus really good integrated GPU performance.

Being entry-level product based I am a little surprised to see motherboard manufacturers jump onto A85X as much as they do. Honestly I expected simple motherboards. But take today's tested example. The G65 that MSI offers is just chucked and loaded with features, so much that's you'd think this gear is intended for the mainstream market.

The truth lies in the fact that if you understand the product positioning a little better (entry level) and then look into all the features ... then it's a pretty amazing offering. You pick up the motherboard, APU, some memory, PSU, a HDD/SSD and literally you already have formed a perfectly fine PC that offers decent performance but most of all, and here we go again, features ... I mean you can drive three monitors with a motherboard like this, included is HDMI, DisplayPort, DVI and DSUB VGA. Audio wise you got your 8-channel Realtek based sound, Ethernet wise a nice Gigabit RJ-45 is present and then you'll spot USB 3.0 and a near silly eight SATA3 ports, which we tested and they manage 500 MB/sec easily. 

That last fact makes this setup btw rediculously interesting for your own home made NAS setup as these 8 devices can be setup in a varyity of RAID options as well.  And then the added MSI lovin, power/reset buttons, a cool black design with appropriate heatsinks, the two x16 PCIe Express slots, three x1 slots and then two more PCI slots. Voltage monitoring points adn so on .. incl. their Military class component selection.

So yeah, what I am trying to say here is that these setups offer true value for money. We see huge potential for it as NET PC, Entry lavel PC, NAS functionality and obviously excellent HTPCs.  So if you are in the market for a simple PC to internet on, do a little work, play a simple game, listen to music on... then it won't get much better then this. Recommended, if this is what your requirements and needs for a PC are of course.

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