BIOSTAR A880GZ Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

Like title states, this board is pretty nifty for its price tag. It supports all AM3 and AM3+ processors all the way up to the current Vishera chips. I have a Athlon II x3 450 running in it right now smooth. It does have BioUnlocking in the bios, but unfortunately my chip was a no-go. Tho I do have it running at stock clocks at 1.25v, which is quite impressive (3 very strong cores). The board does allow for overclocking via the multiplier, but heap this warning. This board does not support FSB overclocking. I bought a A960G+ before this board and wasn't pleased with it. So I sent it back and grabbed this when it was on sale for the same price. The most attractive feature about the board is its SATA3 support. You can drop in a Samsung 830 and this thing will fly. I also noticed it had built in 3D support on the onboard chipset. Which is available through the HDMI port I believe. Which is pretty cool for HTPC users, if your TV supports 3D. All in all if your looking to escape with a good board, at a low cost. This board packs quite a few features not found on other boards in this price range. The only flaws with it is a few bios spelling errors, and the 3 pin case fan header isn't controlled by Cool N' Quite. So you have to buy an adapter (Fan Mate 2) if you want your case fan to be silent through that header. It's a solid buy, I wouldn't hesitate to buy another.

I purchase this board for friend of mine, I suggested him to take a cheap low end board to replace his existing Biostar TA790GXBE( send for RMA), use same cpu and get cheap DDR3 ram because he couldn't wait for board to get back from RMA services.


Anyway, i prefer Biostar board mostly because they have capable power circuitry with solid state caps and 125w CPU support at 60$ range price. Most of the time Asus or MSI alternative support 95w only at that range.

Feature wise it has everything you needed, Sata6, hdmi, dvi onboard graphics which make perfect sense for home usage. No USB3 support IIRC, no PCIx1 but x16 slot is there. UEFI support surprised me, i didn't expected it anyway.

The only issue i face was setting up CoolerMaster Hyper212 evo with corsair Vengeance memory module which is used for this setup. The cooler fan cannot set towards ram side because of extra height of vengeance memory module. so i had to either remove fan from push position to set it as pull position on other side of heatsink or reset/displace fan away from board end which cause issue with closing side of the casing.

I'd recommend this board for casual home usage, perfect for existing user with dead board. You get few more year for your old setup to continue and upgrade later on. I've this habit for keeping on out of 2 component(board+CPU+RAM) while changing other so make purfect sense if you want to upgrade your ram to say 8GB.