GIGABYTE F2A85X-UP4 First Looks with AMD Trinity A10-5800K

With the release date of the new Piledriver-based APUs from AMD looming around the corner, motherboard companies are busy prepping their first dive into this new processor. GIGABYTE is one of the first to have a product and here’s our tour-around and unboxing of the motherboard from GIGABYTE: the F2A85X-UP4.

Since we’re on lockdown with the NDA still in effect on the performance figures for this baby (gaming performance is allowed but that’s the meat of our review so we’re holding that for now) so we’re just gonna treat everyone to a little bit of a tour of the new FM2 board from GIGABYTE.

Check out our review of the A10-5800K featuring this motherboard: http://www.back2gaming.com/review/gigabyte-f2a85x-up4-motherboard/

GIGABYTE has chosen to remain loyal to its typical packaging style, shipping the F2A85X-UP4 in their classic white box with the product name highlighted with large texts. A large array of marketing can be seen on the front and back of the packaging.

The F2A85X-UP4 comes in a humble package with three pairs of SATA cables, some documentation, and a driver installation disc. As a mostly HTPC and entertainment-oriented product, we can expect wireless and Bluetooth capable boards in the future. For now, GIGABYTE offers a straight-up, no-nonsense package and serves their board raw and hard.

With the product finally out of its anti-static plastic and cardboard confines, we can now admire the F2A85X-UP4 more closely. GIGABYTE again keeping it low-key and true with a fully matte black finish PCB and an all black scheme with just a touch of gray to give some variance to the overall layout. The standard PCH heatsink makes another appearance with another heatsink near the socket to keep the 8-phase VRM in check.

The matte PCB is present all throughout the board all the way to the back with the metal retention backplate the most visible in this shot. Very clean soldering work, might I add.

Starting our in-dept tour of the board, we have the back I/O ports starting from the left we have a combo PS/2 port accompanied by 2 USB3.0 ports. This is followed up by video display ports covered with protectors which include D-SUB, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort for multi-monitor support. Next to these are a USB2.0 ports with a long eSATA port followed by an Ethernet port with another pair of USB3.0 ports. Round off this part of the board are the 8-channel audio powered by Realtek ALC892.

Heading over to the lower-half of the F2A85X-UP4, we check out the expansion slots. A total of three PCI-E x16 slots and another three PCI-E x1 slot make up the majority of this area with a lone PCI slot for legacy devices. We see a lot of headers at the lower edge of the board with your standard options like front panel audio, USB2.0 and front panel headers make out the lower edge. We also slots for TPM and a lone SATA3 port on the lower right corner which seems to be intended for front eSATA or external HDD/SSD docks which can be found on newer cases nowadays.

Another angle of the lower right corner. From this view, we can see the six (6) SATAIII ports, all of which are powered off the A85 chipset. That also includes the lone one on the bottom edge. Moving on, we see the Debug LED right next to the DualBIOS chips. This board features a dual-BIOS configuration which lets users switch between two different BIOS which comes in handy for a lot of situations. A front USB3.0 header can be seen near the center-right edge. Very optimal position, so props to GIGABYTE for keeping that in mind.

AMD’s new line of processor still supports dual-channel configurations so we’re still going to see plenty of 4-DIMM layouts for this product. In this shot, we can see the 24-pin PSU adapter conveniently placed in the outer edge for easy cable routing. This is typically the area where most companies cram their OC features but since the UP4 is a mainstream product, we get a large onboard power button and two small tack buttons for CLR_CMOS and Reset.

Here’s a closer look on that VRM area. Sweet-looking component and just oozes of quality. We still would’ve fancied some flashier heatsink design though.

And finally, here’s the baby that will make or break this motherboard. We can’t show performance figures yet as per NDA but all of that will change in few days time.

We present this gallery for reference and your perusal if you are checking out FM2-based solutions. Here’s the entire set for your viewing pleasure:

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