ASUS A88X-Gamer Motherboard Review
The Asus A88X-Gamer is an ATX type motherboard that has a dimension of 12″ x 9″. and has 6 motherboard screw holes, that also comes with a 4-pin cpu fan and two 4-pin chassis fan.
Powered by 24-pin + 8-pin 12v power connector.
All the connectors are at the bottom part which are the three USB 2.0 header that can add additional Six(6) 2.0 USB ports, One(1) usb 3.0Â , TPM header, COM connector, front panel audio, and system panels connector.
The A88X-Gamer has a Red and Black color scheme similar with the ASUS ROG motherboards. But its actually the gamer version of the ASUS A88X-Plus motherboard.
Starting off it has an ROG like heatsink that looks like a blade and beside it is the DIGI_VRM Digital power phase and on the top left of it is the 8-pin ATX 12v power connector.
While the AMD A88X chipset also has a well design build that has the ASUS Logo at the bottom of the memory modules.
The board also supports upto four(4) sticks of DDR3 Dual Channel upto 2400mhz and a 64GB max capacity. But it doesn’t come with any nifty debugging LED light it just a plain simple socket. It also has a DRAM overcurrent protection for short-circuit damage which can extend motherboards life.
Has an eight(8) SATA 6GB’s ports that can support RAID 0,1,5 and 10. which is for me a big plus since the A88X-Plus only have 6 SATA ports.
The motherboard comes with a Two(2) PCI-Express x16 slots, which the first slot is 3.0 ready but also compatible with 2.0 and the other one is just a x16 2.0 PCI-Express. which also supports AMD Quad-GPU CrossFireX Technology.
Additional Two(2) PCI-Express 2.0 x1 plus a Three(3) PCI slots for an additional peripherals.
Great thing it has enough room space for large multi GPU setup which is a great thing about this board.
Well in terms of processors its compatible with AMD socket FM2+ and Athlon a series processors with 28nm cpu.
Even though this is just an entry-level gaming motherboard ASUS still provided an integrated Supreme FX chipset for the sound which is an exclusive ASUS technology. if you intent to use high-end gaming headset it will surely have a decent surround sound and can accommodate upto 300 ohms load impedance.
Now moving to the back I/O ports which is a premium stainless steel. It also comes with a PS2 connector for some old school PS2 keyboard and mouse. then four(4) USB 2.0 and Two(2) USB 3.0.
It also comes with an optical SPDIF socket. Then Three(3) sockets for integrated display which are HDMI port that can support 4k display but unfortunately I don’t have the monitor hardware to test it.
Then DSUB/ VGA and DVI port. It’s also integrated with a Intel Gigabit LAN ethernet connection. and last but not the least is the Six(6) Audio jacks with 8-channel audio.
ASUS A88X-Gamer comes with its own dedicated bios interface. very easy to use and has tons of features from EZ mode to Advance mode.
while in the software side they also included the AU Suite 3 that users can configure the GPU clock to optimize things and even tweak the CPU and fan speed for overclocking.
For the benchmark and gaming test here is my system setup.
CPUAMD FM2+ A10–7850MOTHERBOARDASUS A88X-GamerCPU COOLERAMD Stock CoolerMEMORY1,333MHz 8GBGRAPHICS CARDOn-Board KV SpectreINT. STORAGE1TB WD Western DigitalPSUAcbel 560DISPLAYAOC E2250SwdnOSMicrosoft Windows 8 Enterprise
Gaming Benchmark
I tested out the games without using a dedicated GPU but just using the built-in GPU and the results are pretty fair for an onboard GPU. Games are playable, so if you still don’t have the budget to buy a high-end graphics cards the onboard GPU will works fine. but I still recommend having a dedicated GPU for a better gaming experience.
Benchmarks
AUDIO
Testing device2Wave mapperSampling mode24-bit, 192 kHzTesting chainExternal loopback (line-out — line-in)RMAA Version6.2.520 Hz — 20 kHz filterONNormalize amplitudeONLevel change-2.6 dB / -2.5 dBMono modeOFFCalibration singal, Hz1000Polaritycorrect/correct
Frequency response (from 40 Hz to 15 kHz), dB
+0.66, +0.10
Good
Noise level, dB (A)
-86.9
Good
Dynamic range, dB (A)
86.9
Good
THD, %
0.0029
Excellent
THD + Noise, dB (A)
-80.3
Good
IMD + Noise, %
0.013
Very good
Stereo crosstalk, dB
-81.9
Very good
IMD at 10 kHz, %
0.013
Very good
General performance
Good
Performance
File BenchTransfer Rate: 46.561 MB/s | Time: 23589 ms3DPM v1.03Single : Total Score : 75.7158 | Total Score : Multi : 182.0462CineBench15Single CPU : Total Score : 96 | Total Score : CPU : 280
For the price of Php5,560 or $126 it’s one of the entry-level gaming motherboards I can recommend. build and design is superb since it implemented the ROG design which I really love. For its price range its a future proof and has a jampacked built-in features.
