14 DAY TRIAL // COM (serial) and LPT (parallel) ports may be reasonably common on the embedded market, but it has been some time since they became obsolete on the consumer front, due to PS/2 and USB.
Gigabyte it taking a trip down memory lane today, choosing its good old blue PCB design and both the aforementioned types of interfaces.
Its product is still a highly capable one though. Dubbed F2A85XM-D3H, it is a micro-ATX motherboard powered by the AMD A85X chipset.
The size is very deceiving here. Even in the form factor most fitting for multimedia or general purpose/business PCs, the motherboard could show others some things.
A 5-phase VRM, fueled by an 8-pin energy connector, powered the FM2 APU socket (A-Series Trinity compatible).
Dual-UEFI firmware, another unusual asset, makes it clear that this newcomer can withstand a lot of tinkering. The Ultra Durable 4 Classic components only drive the point home.
Moving on, there are four DDR3 memory slots in total, for a top capacity of 64 GB DDR3 dual-channel RAM (1,866 MHz performance).
The expansion capabilities are considerable as well, with one PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot, a PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot and a PCI Express 2.0 x4 slot.
Even Legacy PCI is among the specifications, good for older sound or network cards and the like.
That just leaves the I/O panel, storage and whatever other interfaces Gigabyte figured would be useful. Quite the list.
COM (serial) and LPT (parallel) we've already specified (though there are no ports per se, only pin headers) so what's left are the SATA 6.0 Gbps ports (eight, internal), USB 3.0 (two ports, two via headers), eight USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, 6-channel HD audio (8-channel digital TOSLINK output) and TPM (trusted platform module).
Whenever shipments start (not too long from now, we suspect), the price will be of $129.99, or 100-129.99 Euro.
