ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 AMD A85X (Hudson D4) HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Mini ITX AMD Motherboard with UEFI BIOS

Pros: Lot's of connections on board
Nice BIOS with lots of overclocking options
Can drive 3 monitors (1 analog, 2 digital)

Cons: Motherboard does not accept CPU Cooler back plates, which limits your CPU Cooler selections. And therefor overclocking.

Pros: Great BIOS, easy to use
Lots of SATA Ports
Small Form factor
Supports 3 monitors

Cons: Design prevents the use of cooler back plates, which makes finding an after market cooler difficult. If you look at the pictures closely you can see some chips in the "No Fly Zone" under the CPU socket.

Pros: Great specs for building a nas or home server, but I do not know if they are true.

Cons: After purchasing this board on 5/7/2013, on 6/14/2013 I finally started the build of my 2nd Home Sever. Upon putting this board in to the fractal design node 304 case, I noticed that there were pins broke off of the usb3 header on the mother board. I figured I would continue with the build and just use the usb2 header. no biggie. but after the machine was mut together the board would boot to the asrock logo, and hang it would nott go in to bios or any where else for that mater. I removed all drives, and reseeded the processor, to no avail, it is still locked. I will be contacting new egg support which will probable send me to asrock support since it is over 30 day from date of purchase and because it had broken pins which wasn't my fault.

Other Thoughts: I will probably buy another board and see what happens, I like the specs with the 7 sata III slots it would make a great server/nas if I could make it work.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. ASRock mainboards are fully tested and inspected to assure that they're working fine before shipped.
Sorry to hear USB 3.0 header pins have broken off (should be missing 1 pin by default).
Please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: I LOVE their new UEFI! I had bought one of their first UEFI Intel boards a few years back and they have shot for the moon on this release. What absolutely blew me away was the in-BIOS internet update. Yup, that's right, all you have to do is go to the update section and select their online update. It ran flawlessly and brought the BIOS version up to the latest 1.50. It came with 1.20.

My Kingston KHX16C9P1K2/16 DDR31600 was recognized at the correct speed but I did have to update the timings. Not an issue though...

It's a beautiful board!
7 SATA 3.0!
As much functionality and ports as some ATX boards!

Cons: None at this time. Contrary to some recent reviews my board shipped in operational order and the BIOS updated through their Instant Flash utility within the UEFI without a hitch.

Other Thoughts: I built this system for my FreeNAS box. According to my CyberPower UPS I'm drawing a constant 48W with (3) 1TB WD HDs.

Processor--AMD A6-5400K
Memory--Kingston HyperX 16GB KHX16C9P1K2/16
Power Supply--SeaSonic SSR-450RM 450W 80 Plus Gold
Case--Fractal Design Node 304 FD-CA-NODE-304-BL Black

Pros: - Newest Chipset Available in ITX-Mini Format
- UEFI Bios
- Able to update Bios from within Bios over Internet
- Everything worked and properly configured automatically

Cons: - No Backplate Design: I knew this going in based on pictures and reviews and since I used a stock cooler, there are no issues. That being said, I tried to be a little more gentle when installing heatsink/fan
- CPU seems to run full throttle while in BIOS but runs normal and cool otherwise.

Other Thoughts: Used new AMD A10-6700 (no desire to overclock) and the system runs cool and quiet. CPU idles around 28c. GSKILL Sinper Ram automatically detected.

Pros: At this point i don't have any.

Cons: This is my second time buying this motherboard. The first time i upgrade the BIOS (1.50) from the Network using Asrock instant flash. Updated BIOS successfully and the computer prompted me to hit enter for a reboot. After a reboot. System never came back up. It stayed on a black screen with no video even though the PC was on. I tried cleared the BIOS, removed memory CPU and all SATA connections. Nothing worked, no video. My PC turns on without issue but no video on VGA, DVI, or HDMI ports. RMA'd the board and blamed it on the network.

Second time around i didn't want to leave anything to chance so i downloaded the BIOS to my flash drive and updated the BIOS via USB. The same results. No video after BIOS update even though the PC is on.

I'm beyond upset at this point. Asrock when you read this comment don't suggest nonsense for me to do. BIOS update 1.50 is broken for the A10 6800K

Other Thoughts: Customer support was friendly when i called the first but doesn't change the fact the BIOS update is awful

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. Sorry to hear that BIOS update failure on both mainboards.
Please turn the power off, unplug the power.
Clear the CMOS to check if its solved.
However, we do not recommend updating the BIOS if the system is working fine.
If you have any technical issues or warranty questions please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: Overall a fantastic board. It's hard for an ITX board to make me giddy but this one does. (7) SATA6 ports, USB3 and a PCIe slot is perfect for my mini-virtualization/NAS. Together with a Fractal Node 304 case and (6) 1.5TB disks, I have a nice virtualized NAS (ESXi 5.1 - booting off USB stick) using FreeNAS 8.3.1. Throw in a LSI 3081E-R HBA card and I have PCI passthrough support (direct access to disks). I run a few SSDs off of the motherboard SATA ports for VM storage. Everything works. No fuss.

For those with HTPCs, it's got HDMI/DVI and VGA (not like you'd use the latter two). eSATA. (4) USB 2.0 ports and (2) USB 3.0 ports. No WiFi but that can be taken care of with a cheap USB module so it's no big deal.

Cons: None yet. I don't over clock so I can't comment on that. I'm using the stock cooler so I can't say whether the board can handle non-stock coolers. If there are really any cons with this board, it's the fact that it's mini-ITX and there's just not enough room.

Other Thoughts: Some of the complaints about this board may indeed be valid. DOA is never a good thing so I can understand that frustration. No backplate is a little much considering one could've easily looked at the pictures before hand and seen there's no backplate. As for support of a backplate, there's always a manual. Keep in mind too that (so far) I haven't seen any other FM2 A85X boards in a mini-ITX format, but I digress.

I think for all the complaints people are losing a little sight of the fact that this board probably can't accommodate everyone's' needs, however, they tried to pack in what they could, given the space they have available. It's mini-ITX folks; it's not going to be able to support everything you want. Given that it's this small, do your research and you'll see that it's pretty unique motherboard on the market at this point in time. Seriously.. 7 SATA6 ports? Most come with 4 if you're lucky. All-in-all, I can't say enough about this board. Depending on your use case/scenario that you want to use this board *odds are* it's capable of doing the job.

Pros: None

Cons: DOA

Other Thoughts: Probably should have tested it before I spent hours hooking it up in the case. My first DOA motherboard in 10+ years of building. I guess it was bound to happen sometime. Not sure where to go from here either because, as I said, my first DOA. Really bummed too. I was so excited to play with my 6800k.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please trouble shooting the mainboard for below steps with known good components;
Turn the power off.
Remove the mainboard from inside computer to outside, place the mainboard on top of the empty mainboard’s box
Clear the CMOS
Reseat the CPU and heatsink fan as well
Test with single memory module (non-ECC, un-buffered), try with another known good memory if its same issue.
Using onboard Video (CPU with iGPU supported or test with VGA card)
Power supply with connecting 24 pins + 4 pins ATX power to the mainboard
Plug the computer case’s power switch to mainboard's front panel power header and try again
If you have any technical questions please contact us at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.


Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: Runs...

Cons: I sent the first board back because it would not read or write to a hard drive – even though the Bios showed the hard drive was there. Same thing when I received the replacement board. It’s almost impossible to contact ASRock by phone and it takes forever to go through their email procedure. So, in digging around on the ASRock site I found that to install XP on some ASRock boards you need to go into the bios and under Storage Configuration and set the Sata to “IDE”. Then you’re set to go. I wish they had put that in the manual!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Other Thoughts: I went through a lot of hassle time swapping components out that I needed for other work just because ASRock isn't carefull!! I like ASRock boards but this episode really P'd me off with all the wasted time!!!!!!!!!!! They get 1 egg for the poor system notification.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize that you having difficulty with mainboard. Due to Windows XP limitation, the driver for RAID or AHCI requires floppy controller and floppy drive. However, it can be done by changing SATA mode to IDE which not requires driver during installing Windows XP. Please set the SATA mode to IDE at BIOS, Advanced, Storage COnfiguration, SATA mode [IDE] to install Windows XP. If you have any technical issues or warranty questions please contact our Tech Support at 909-590-8308 or http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: Looks nice - that's all.

Cons: This motherboard will not access a hard drive, although it sees that a hard drive is connected. For verification, I substituted Memory sticks, hard drive, and power supply; all from a working system. When trying to start up and load Windows, the board reads from the DVD drive OK, loads the startup data into memory then goes to a blue screen.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please set the UEFI BIOS default.
Check the mainboard has detected the hard drive at BIOS, Advanced, Storage Configuration.
Test with another known good hard drive and SATA cable to eliminate the issue.
Test with another known good Windows installation disc and optical drive.
If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact our Tech Support at http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com