BIOSTAR Hi-Fi A85W FM2 AMD A85X (Hudson D4) SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard

Pros: HIGH QUALITY, LOW PRICE, ON BOARD POWER AND RESET SWITCHES, BIOS POST CODE/CPU TEMPERATURE INDICATOR, FOUR DIMM SLOTS, TWO PCIe x16 SLOTS AND ONE USB3.0 HEADER

Cons: NONE

Overall Review: INSTALLED FOUR 8G STICKS OF 1866 MEMORY, AN OCZ 240G REVODRIVE3 IN THE PCIe x4 SLOT, WITH AN A10 5800K AND LOADED THE OPERATING SYSTEM. THIS BOARD PERFORMS AS ADVERTISED AND I AM VERY HAPPY WITH IT. THE BIOSTAR ENGINEERS SELECTED THE FEATURES THAT I WANTED AND PACKAGED THEM AT A VERY AFFORDABLE PRICE. IF YOU WANT A BUDGET TRINITY BUILD, I THINK THAT THIS BOARD IS A GOOD CHOICE.

Pros: The A85X chipset differs from the A75 chipset by allowing 8x/8x crossfire, and 2 more SATA3 ports. This motherboard has a 6 phase VRM design which is much more than Trinity, and likely the lifetime of this socket will ever need for power delivery. All the overclock settings are there, I currently have my 5800K at 4.6Ghz and I am going to try for 5 after I get everything set up.

Cons: English translations in the manual can be a bit strange.

Overall Review: I have used Biostar almost exclusively for client builds for the past 6 years. They have proven to be more reliable than any comparatively priced ASUS. Trinity is running 2133Mhz ram just fine!

Pros: Has good amount of I/O ports. Cost (I see that it's $25 cheaper 3 weeks after I bought it.) Didn't have it overheat at all.

Cons: Worked fine for a couple days, then failed to boot/post/get to bios screen. Error code was C5 (which was not in the manual). Fans and lights were on. Exhausted all troubleshooting steps, (I'm a system administrator - I've built/repaired literally 100's of PC's). Tried everything...flashing bios, re-seating and different cpu/ram, running with minimal components/no peripherals. Found that it would only boot/post if I reset the CMOS jumper. Once it booted up into Windows I could use it normally. I even restarted it a couple times and it came right back up. Shut it down and it would not post again on next start up, required CMOS reset again w/ jumper (battery removal did not work). It consistently fails to boot and will not until I move the CMOS jumper to 2-3 then back to 1-2. Sending out for RMA. Biostar support never responded to my email.

Overall Review: Bought this as a combo with an A10-5800k, Ripjaws 8GB 1600 and a head set for $200. Not a bad deal, but sucks that I have to RMA it.

Pros: The board worked right out of the box. The BIOS that was loaded on the board was the latest offering from Biostar as of this posting. This board replaced an older Gigabyte IDE driven board that died after 8 years of daily use.

Cons: None, this configuration works for me.

Overall Review: I selected this Biostar board after comparing all of the other AMD FM2 designed boards being offered at Newegg at the time of this posting. They're all very close in design, but this one won out as my choice. So I hope time will prove I made the correct decision. I'm not a gamer, so I married this board to the AMD A6 Trinity processor along with 8gigs of G.skill Sniper 1866 sdram and a 120 gig Kingston HyperX 3K SSD. Running Windows 7 at 64 bits. Booting from a cold start is unbelievable.

Pros: Can use the USB ports for charging devices while the computer is off. Still has a serial port onboard if needed for a legacy device. Bios was easy to set up. Felt like this board was a good value for the money.

Cons: Would have been nice if the memory slots were a little further away from the CPU. An aftermarket CPU heatsink overhangs the first slot. The CPU power connector is near the top of the board which is great if your power supply is at the top of the case, but not so great if the power supply is at the bottom. Had to get an extension plug to reach. Would have liked to have an eSATA port on the back. Very minor cons - just things you need to work through to get it set up.

Overall Review: I like this board so far. Everything went together fairly easily. I had to install the two memory cards in the B bank instead of the A bank due to overhang from the CPU heatsink fan. Wasn't sure if it would like that, but it recognized the memory fine and even had the memory set to the right speed in the Bios. Haven't tried to overclock it yet. The manual was pretty good I thought. The board was well labeled to avoid confusion. Everything worked the first time I turned it on! I would recommend this board to anyone.

Pros: Great sound. No problem running on promo Crucial Ballistix Sport memory. Excellent Bios.

Cons: None.

Overall Review: AMD A8 5600 Processor Biostar Hi-Fi 85W Motherboard 16 GB Crucial Ballistix Sport Low Profile Memory Thermaltake TR-2 430 W Power Supply Samsung 840 120GB SSD Hard Drive Fractal Design Core 3000 USB 3 Case

Pros: Nice board for when it worked.

Cons: Had this board for a little over 3 months and it died on me, can't reach Biostar no matter how much I call. I will not be buying any more Biostar products, waste of $100 do not buy this board.

Pros: The MoBo was so well and clearly marked that the manual wasn't even needed. Worked perfectly on first boot up. I have always used ASUS MoBo's and Intel CPU's for all of my previous builds but I picked this one because I wasn't shooting for cutting edge technology and performance and this MoBo/AMD combo hit the price point. This build performs much better than I had expected or needed so I am very pleased.

Cons: None