Asus F2A55-M LK (A55) Motherboard Review

With the release of FM2, we also saw a slight refresh with their chipset lineup as well as some additions. A85X was added but an old favourite was kept on with their A55 chipset, which we all remember from the FM1 Llano days.

A55 in a nutshell is your typical no frills option that gives you all the features you need, and none of the features that you don’t need. I guess you could say that it’s aimed at a particular market, such as HTPC, business, education, government and so forth as it doesn’t have the likes of SATA III and Bluetooth and AMD CrossFireX technology, but for users wanting it for the purposes listed, are you really going to want all of that? If your answer is no, then why should you pay for it?

That’s exactly what Asus believe too and that’s why they’ve released their F2A55-M LK board to market. We actually reviewed its bigger brother, the F2A55-M not long ago and was impressed with its performance overall, especially for a budget focussed product. The LK edition follows the same trend but cuts out even more, bringing the price down to an even more attractive level, though the F2A55-M was only retailing at less than £70 anyway, but what would you say if you found out the LK is less than £55?

The only way to explain what we have on offer is a simple approach that gives you want you want, without breaking the bank which makes it perfect for the market areas we spoke about and that makes this an interesting board for us. Normally you see us taking a look at the higher-end scale of products with enthusiast, gaming and overclocking based products, but we do have a passion when it comes to value for money, and that’s what Asus pledge to give you with the F2A55-M LK, so lets see if its any good.

Without jumping straight in to the benchmarks and performance side of things, we want to see if any corners have been cut in terms of the packaging and added accessories, and then we can focus more on the board, its features and of course; the BIOS. After this is out the way, we can get into the main segment of testing this board to its limits at both stock and overclocked levels.