Asus A88X-PRO review

The Asus A88X-PRO is an ATX FM2+ motherboard that supports AMD’s latest Kaveri APUs. As its name implies, it uses AMD’s latest A88X chipset, but it’s also backwards compatible with older Trinity and Richland-based processors, so you don’t need to necessarily buy a new processor straight away if you’re thinking about upgrading your motherboard.

As a full-sized board, there’s plenty of room for expansion as the A88X-PRO comes with three PCI-E x16 slots. The first runs at full bandwidth and conforms to the faster PCI Express 3.0 standard, and should be the slot of choice for a single graphics card. The second also runs at full bandwidth, conforming to the PCI Express 2.0 standard, but both slots will decrease to x8 if you decide to use CrossFireX for two graphics cards. The other PCI-E x16 runs at x4. There are also two legacy PCI slots for older cards and two PCI-E x1 slots, but one of the x1 slots will become obscured if you install a graphics card.

It’s unlikely you’ll need to install any USB3 cards, as there’s a full array of ports on the rear panel. With four USB3 ports and two USB2 ports on the backplate and one USB3 and four USB2 headers on the front, there’s potential for a total of 16 USB ports depending on the layout of your PC case. There are also four graphics outputs, including HDMI and DisplayPort outputs which can support a huge resolution of 4,096×2,160, as well as a legacy PS/2 port, two eSATA connections, a Gigabit Ethernet port and an optical S/PDIF output with 5x analogue audio jacks for 7.1 surround sound.

We were also pleased to see the A88X-PRO has six SATA3 ports for your hard disks and SSDs, as well as four DDR3 DIMM memory slots that can support up to a maximum of 64GB of RAM at a maximum speed of 2,400MHz when overclocked.

Even better, the A88X-PRO comes with several useful extras that make it easier to use. Our favourite is the bundled Q-Connector kit. You plug your case’s cables (power button, reset, etc.) into the Q-Connector, and this into your motherboard’s front-panel header. There’s also a DirectKey which gives you immediate access to the BIOS when your PC is in standby and a small LED number display to help with troubleshooting.

The A88X-PRO’s performance didn’t disappoint either, as our AMD A10-7850K processor and 4GB of 1600MHz DDR3 RAM scored 72 overall in our benchmark tests, which is what we’d expect to see. Its UEFI BIOS is very easy to use if you want to overclock, too.

The Asus A88X-PRO is a great FM2+ motherboard with all of the features that you could possibly need. Its problem is that it’s very expensive and in short supply in the UK at the time of writing. The Asus A88XM-PLUS is our award winner for FM2+ at present, or if your budget’s tight, the Gigabyte G1 Sniper A88X is a good choice too.