While much of the attention is focused on the top end X370 chipset and full ATX AM4 motherboards, there is a burgeoning market for smaller budget boards. Given the AMD focus on offering better value, it is no surprise that we are now seeing more budget A320 chipset based motherboards arrive on market. One of the latest to make their way out is MSI’s A320 Grenade mATX motherboard.
As you are sure to have noticed, the board is aimed squarely at the entry-level gamer type. Sporting the A320 chipset which sits below the X370 and B350, there isn’t much lost for a budget mATX board like the Grenade. Features are relatively basic with a simple 5 phase VRM, DDR4 DIMM slots, a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, and two PCIe 2.0 x1 slots to round it all off. The board still manages to sport 4 SATA, 1 M.2, 4 USB 3.0, Realtek Gigabit Ethernet and the 6-channel HD audio Realtek ALC887 codec.
Overall, the board despite being budget still offers quite a lot for the $75 MSRP. In the past couple of generations, budget boards have generally gotten better and offered more bang per buck, just like the CPUs they support. Hopefully, this trend will continue into the mITX market where nice budget boards can be still quite hard to find.
