ASUS A88X-PRO (FM2+) Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The ASUS A88X-PRO is retailing for $128.99 USD on Newegg currently and $125.41 at NCIX Canada. In the UK we do not yet have pricing but my best estimate would be around the £100 mark. We should also see a price of around €115 in Europe.

Overview

The ASUS A88X-PRO is really quite an expensive motherboard as far as FM2+ motherboards go. This certainly isn’t an option for someone wanting to build an APU system as a budget build. Yet I will use sentiments that I very often deployed with Noctua products when I did cooling reviews which are that you get what you pay for. The ASUS A88X-PRO delivered exceptional performance and while it may only be 2-5% higher than rival solutions it is great to know you’re getting every last drop of performance – that’s something ASUS motherboards always seem to offer. The A88X-PRO is a great motherboard – in terms of its excellent performance, in terms of its abundant connectivity and in terms of its advanced UEFI BIOS. It also boasts exceptional audio for an FM2+ motherboard, being one of the first FM2(+) motherboards I’ve seen to deploy the Realtek ALC1150 codec and they’ve managed to extract a lot of performance out of it – the audio is great. They’ve also kept a lot of high end features normally reserved for more expensive motherboards like the debug LED, DirectKey button, TPU and EPU switches.

Of course the motherboard isn’t going to appeal to everyone. As I’ve already alluded to it is a pricey solution. At £100 its as much as £20-40 (30%) more than other A88X motherboards. In return for the extra cost you get a beefier VRM, more PCI(e) connectivity, a more fleshed out rear I/O and more advanced audio – but not everyone needs that, so bare this in mind. Secondly, a minor detail, is that the CPU fan header is in an obscure location. It is located near the rear I/O and first PCIe lane meaning cable management ends up being strange. The CPU fan header is also located next to a Chassis Fan header and it gives the impression you’ve got two CPU fan headers but you haven’t. This is only a minor detail but when you’re using a dual fan CPU cooler (in our instance a Corsair H100i) you can tell the difference. Even with identical “Silent” fan profiles set from within the BIOS both fans spin at very different speeds. However, I’m being really picky there, you can buy a splitter cable for a few pounds/dollars and run both fans off the single CPU fan header quite easily. A last point I found strange was that ASUS decided to route two SATA III 6Gbps ports to the rear as eSATA. Maybe my opinion doesn’t reflect that of everyone else but I find eSATA redundant. If I want an external hard drive I use a USB 3.0 one (they are cheap and prolific), I’d much rather ASUS left those two SATA III ports inside so you end up with 8 total SATA III 6Gbps ports. 8 may seem like a lot but for a board of this market segmentation it is quite possible someone would have a couple of SSDs in RAID, an optical drive, maybe an eSATA on their case and four to six mechanical storage drives. I understand why ASUS would put eSATA on the rear I/O but I prefer “shared bandwidth” implementations where you don’t lose any internal SATA ports from having eSATA but if you use the eSATA it disables the internal SATA port it shares bandwidth with – I think that would of been a better decision for this motherboard.

Pros

• Solid construction
• Class leading performance
• Refined UEFI BIOS
• 3 Year Warranty
• Abundant connectivity
• Great audio

Cons

• Pricey relative to the competition and for an APU motherboard (but you get what you pay for – it’s premium!)
• Strange CPU fan header placement
• Impractical eSATA configuration

“When AMD’s Kaveri APUs hit the shelves next year the ASUS A88X-PRO will deservedly catch the eye of consumers who want premium and high-end products. It offers top-notch build quality, abundant connectivity, class-leading performance and a rich ASUS software feature set. Of course you’re paying a pretty penny over the competition but in this instance I think it is justified.”

Thanks to ASUS for providing this review sample.