Biostar Releases Second Hi-Fi Socket FM2 Motherboard

Like Sapphire, whose Pure Platinum A85XT motherboard we've just covered, Biostar is revealing the product lineup meant to be paired with the newest accelerated processing units from Advanced Micro Devices.

We should probably start off by saying that the mainboard we are going to look at today is not the Hi-Fi A85X exposed last month.

The product is, however, similar to it. It even bears the same name, save for one letter: Hi-Fi A85W.

The Hi-Fi name does not come from some sort of wireless capability, even though some may think of Wi-Fi as soon as they hear it.

Instead, the Hi-Fi component set is the source: Hi-Fi Cap, Hi-Fi Resistor, Hi-Fi AMP (integrated amplifier that can drive high-end headphones with over 100dB loads), Hi-Fi 192/24 sampling rate, Hi-Fi Power (reduces electronic noise in audio output) and Hi-Fi Ground (noise-blocking multi-layer PCB).

All of them, along with the other special perks of the Biostar motherboard, are described in more detail here, on the product page.

And now we may as well get around to listing the main specifications, starting with the 6-phase VRM of the CPU socket (FM2) and the four DDR3 memory slots wired to it (64 GB RAM tops).

There are two expansion slots for video cards (PCI Express 2.0 x16), but only one is wired to the APU socket (for hybrid crossfire, where the integrated GPU and an add-in card form a link and act as one). The other one is wired to the A85X FCH and operates in electrical x4 mode.

The other relevant details are four USB 3.0 ports, multiple video outputs (DVI, D-Sub, HDMI), 10 USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 connectors, legacy PCI (one slot), eight SATA 6.0 Gbps ports (SATA III) and the UEFI BIOS.

Shipments of the Hi-Fi A85W aren't underway yet, but they should start soon. The price will hover around $119 / 92-119 Euro which, coincidentally, is what both Amazon's and B&N's e-readers sell for these days.