Biostar A880G+

Zitat: While I have long been a fan of Biostar´s T-series motherboards for many years, I have shied away from their standard class of desktop products. Aside from their difference in appearance, these much cheaper versions of their boards offered few of the same features as the enthusiast-class T-series. However Biostar appears to have changed this beginning with their latest collection of AMD 800-series chipset offerings. Not only does the A880G+ look nearly identical to the TA880G+ but also mimics it in features and options. The A880G+ is substantially smaller than its TA880G+ sibling, and there are a handful of concessions that are made to squeeze everything onto the narrower PCB. It loses two DIMM slots, two SATA ports, one USB header and a 1x PCI-e slot, as well as offering a more basic audio component and a reduced number of rear I/O jacks. But all of the important bits are there, the AMD 880G/SB710 chipset, dual-channel DDR3, Gigabit LAN, HDMI and more. Up to 125W processors are supported thanks to solid state capacitors and chokes for the CPU phase power, core unlocking is available through the ACC SB710 SouthBridge and GameBoost offers a single hotkey overclock of the onboard HD4250 graphics. Where the A880G+ really shines is in it´s huge power savings over a comparable full-size 880G motherboard. The Kill-A-Watt meter registered only 48W usage at idle, and 126W under a full CPU/GPU load using an Athlon-II X2 processor and onboard HD4250 graphics. If you´re looking for a real power miser of a motherboard to use in an HTPC application, look no further. That´s easily the lowest idle draw of any board we´ve tested, nearly by half. The Biostar A880G+ comes in right around $60 at most online retailers, making it also the least expensive 800-series motherboard I could find, even less than many 700-series boards still on the market. Obviously the compact footprint and smaller feature set are not for everyone, but it would make a perfect addition to any HTPC or SFF desktop class computer.