Atx Motherboard Socket
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 MSI H61MU E35 B3 Motherboard Micro ATX LGA1155 Socket H61  US $107.21
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Foxconn A6VMX Review
I recently purchased a relitivly cheap Socket AM2 motherboard produced by Foxconn. It is the Foxconn A6VMX. This review is based upon using the motherboard for about 3 months getting to know it's features.
Firstly I would like to start of with the price. It is a fairly cheap motherboard priced around £31 ($47). At this price I was expecting a flimsy low feature motherboard with relitivly low quality capacitors and barely any external ports but I was wrong.
The motherboard has the following rear I/O connectors;
1 set 5.1 channel Audio jacks (3 jacks)
1x Parallel port
1x PS/2 keyboard port
1x PS/2 mouse port
1x VGA port
4x USB 2.0 ports
1x RJ45 LAN port
1x Serial port
This is enough for many people although lacking DVI and HDMI this is to be expected with a motherboard that costs this ammount. I am glad to see that this board comes with both PS/2 Keyboard and PS/2 Mouse which many motherboards are now leaving out to save space on the I/O plate. It also includes 5.1 audio which I have been very pleased with when playing music through my X-540 speakers. The sound quality is very good.
On the inside this motherboard offers plenty of connections for the PC builder to work with. The motherboard has the following ports for internal uses;
1x CD-in connector
1x Front Audio header
1x S/PDIF Out header
1x IRDA
1x TV Out header
1x Floppy connector
1x Front Panel connector
2x USB 2.0 connectors support additional 4 ports
1x Speaker
4x SATA II connectors
2x USB Power header
1x IDE connector
I was amazed to see so many SATA ports on a motherboard of this price but it is very nice they have included so many. It also features a floppy connector and an IDE connector. These are great if you have either an old hard drive or old floppy disk that you would like to save the data from. IDE performance seems ok with it being able to run both of the disk drives at the same time. I am also sure that many people would be glad to see that they have included S/PDIF and TV out headers for use in a media computer setup.
The board has the following expansion slots;
1 x PCIe x16
1 x PCIe x1
2 x PCI
The small ammount of expansion slots is mainly down to the fact that this is a Micro ATX board. I have installed an Nvidia 9400GT 1GB edition with a double slot cooler which unfortunatly renders on of the PCI slots unusable and with only 2 on the board this could be a problem for some people. Another problem is that when you install a long graphics card such as a Radeon HD5770 you will loose 2 of the SATA ports behind the graphics card as they are not mounted horizonatly. Another small issue with the layout of this board is where the 24 Pin power plug is mounted. It is half way down the board on the right hand side which means you have the giant 24 wire cable running across the top of the RAM slots and CPU fan plug. This isn't too much of a problem but it does create a bad look and could impede cooling.
This board is relitivly cool running when paired with a Athlon 64 x2 and 2GB of RAM. The northbridge heatsink is slightly warm to the touch the same as the southbridge. When I turned the PC off after long use I found that the Capacitors and the VRM (Voltage Regulating modules) where also very cool. The board also seems to be build quite solid with the cpu heatsink mount being firmly attached and the heatsinks for the northbridge and southbridge being aligned and perfectly secure. On the other hand this board doesn't feature many solid capacitors which many people would want these days but I haven't had any issue with this as all the capacitors are good japanese brands on this motherboard.
With the Athlon 5600 installed I managed to overclock it from 2.9Ghz to a stable 3.15Ghz which is a fair improvement.
I do however have some very small issues with the software that was supplied. Included with the motherboard is;
Motherboard Drivers
Fox one overclocking utility
Fox Logo
Fox Live Update
I found that the programs were all a little glitchy apart from the overclocking utility. They do not seem to be fully matured just yet and may need to be updated to improve stability and features. The Overclocking utulity is great and I did managed to get a stable overclock. It also monitors temperatures and voltages which seem to be more reliable than other hardware monitoring tools. The fox logo on the other hand didn't seem to work and to me it is a little risky using it as it messes with the BIOS to change the boot photo. After an atempt to change mine it didn't do anything at all so I didn't touch it again. The Fox Update tool is OK but does have a few minor glitches. It does make updating the BIOS and Drivers easier but I wouldn't recomend updating the BIOS with it as it doesn't seem all that stable and messing with the bios is risky enough as it is.
Overall I have found this board to be stable, reliable, and fairly fast with a lot of features. I do however find that the software supplied isn't great. Maybe Foxconn will release a few updates to improve them but until now I have decided not to mess with them. (apart from a little bit of overclocking using Fox One)
Jack-O-Bytes
About the Author
www.customdesktops.moonfruit.com
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=170511403758&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT
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