Asus A68HM-PLUS review

The Asus A68HM-PLUS is a compact and basic micoATX FM2+ motherboard for PC builders on a budget. Its price is certainly attractive, but whether you’re willing to put up with some of its limitations will be down to your future ambitions.

The small size means that you don’t get a lot of room for expansion. For starters, you get just two RAM slots. This means, realistically, you’ll only ever be able to have 16GB of RAM because 16GB DDR3 sticks are all but non-existent at the moment.

Elsewhere, there are four SATA3 ports with two facing to the right at the bottom-right edge of the board and another two close by sitting atop the PCB. This should be enough for most smaller PC builds, but if you think you might be adding disks or optical drives in the future it would be sensible to buy a board with more connectors.

There’s a single PCI-E x16 slot for those who want to install a graphics card, and a PCI-E x1 slot just below it for other expansion hardware such as sound cards or wireless adapters. If you install a large graphics card, this slot will be obstructed and unusable. Below the x1 slot is a legacy PCI slot.

At the rear, there’s a total of just four USB ports, with two of them the faster USB3 variety. There are a further two USB3 headers available mid-board if your case is compatible, and there’s four USB headers, too. Alongside the Gigabit Ethernet port you’ll also find three 3.5mm analogue audio jacks and three video outputs: DVI, HDMI and VGA are all represented. The DVI port is the most versatile output on the board, able to support resolutions of up to 2,560×1,600 at 60Hz. The HDMI port can output at Ultra HD resolutions, although only at 24Hz.

Performance was also commendable, with our benchmark chip managing an overall score of 57, which is par for the course. There’s no easy one-click overclocking options on this board, but if you have a bit of knowledge and enough cooling, the UEFI BIOS does let you tweak CPU and RAM clock speed and voltages. It isn’t a headline feature of the motherboard, though, so if you’re serious about overclocking you should buy a more expensive board.

The Asus A68HM-PLUS is a perfectly competent microATX FM2+. However, a lack of ports and connectivity rather limits the potential for future expansion. Unless your budget is tight, we’d recommend you spend a little more on the MSI A88XM GAMING, a microATX motherboard with a lot more room for future expansion. If you don’t need a small motherboard, the full-size, ATX Asrock FM2A88X Pro3+ is our top choice.