Building a computer for £300 – Part 3 – Motherboard

reichelt have sponsored a challenge to build a computer for £300. With a budget of only £300 I have to source the best bits of computer equipment for a main central processor unit (CPU) to build the most competent computer I can. There’s also some sort of rf material for PCB that may be able to help improve the networking capability of the motherboard, so that might be a good addition.

Part three, we look at the Motherboard. A Gigabyte GA-F2A88XM-D3HP costing £54.15 incl. VAT. A fine motherboard with some of the newest tech, specifically a USB 3.1 type-C connector! The AMD features the following:

The GIGABYTE GA-F2A88XM-D3HP is based on the AMD-A88X chipset and supports AMD APUs with integrated graphics. It has four DIMM slots and supports up to 64 GB of DDR3 RAM in dual-channel operation. Depending on the APU, the µATX mainboard GA-F2A88XM-D3HP provides high-performance graphics with DVI, HDMI and VGA connections. Other features of the GA-F2A88XM-D3HP include a Gigabit LAN connection with Realtek chipset, an 8-channel sound chip (Realtek ALC887), eight SATA3 connectors, two USB 3.0 type-A ports plus a USB 3.1 type-C port and a USB-3.1 type-A port.

Details:

- Chipset: AMD A88X
- Memory: 4x DDR3 DIMM, dual PC3-19200U/DDR3-2400 (OC), max. 64 GB (UDIMM)
- Expansion slots: 1x PCIe 3.0 x16, 1x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4), 1x PCIe 2.0 x1, 1x PCI
- External ports: 1x VGA, 1x DVI-D, 1x HDMI, 2x USB 3.1 (type A + type C, ASM1142), 2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 1x Gb LAN (Realtek), 3x jacks, 1x PS/2 combo
- Internal ports: 2x USB 3.0, 4x USB 2.0, 8x SATA 6 Gb/s (A88X), 1x CPU 4-pin fan, 2x 4-pin fan, 1x serial, 1x parallel, TPM header
- Audio: 7.1 (Realtek ALC887)
- RAID level: 0/1/5/10 (A88X)
- Multi-GPU: AMD 2-Way CrossFireX (x16/x4)
- Power connections: 1x 24-pin ATX, 1x 8-pin EPS12V
- CPU phases: 6
- Graphics: IGP (via CPU/APU)
- Special features: µATX, all solid capacitors