Unboxing ASUS’ F1A75-M PRO Socket FM1 Motherboard

We took a look at GIGABYTE’s ATX A75-UD4H motherboard a couple of weeks ago, and in the post, I mentioned that I’d love to take a look at an mATX FM1 board since that seems to be the perfect platform for what AMD’s upcoming Lynx chips are going to be offering. Well, lo and behold, an ASUS F1A75-M PRO showed up last week, and as the ‘M’ would suggest, it’s in fact an mATX offering.

As a quick reminder, AMD will soon be launching its first Llano-based desktop APUs, codenamed Lynx. These will require a motherboard with both the A75 chipset and FM1 socket to be taken advantage of, and from what we’ve been able to surmise so far, the integrated graphics chips should give Intel’s IGP a run for its money (it’s a Radeon chip, after all…)

I’m not sure of the F1A75-M PRO’s price-point, as I’ve yet to hear back from ASUS on it, but if I had to guess, I’d expect it to retail for around the $125 mark (this is simply based on the features supplied and recent motherboard pricing). For the money, the board looks to deliver on all fronts. It could be the base to a killer HTPC, or even a gamer box, with the ability to run dual-GPUs (assuming you are using a chassis that gives a bit of wiggle-room at the bottom of the board).

‘Packed’ might be an understatement when talking about this board. See the four dark blue connectors at the bottom? None of those are FireWire… all are USB 2.0. That’s right… with the internal connections alone, you’ll be able to add a total of 8 USB 2.0 ports to your rig, which come in addition to the 2x USB 2.0 and 4x USB 3.0 in the back. For even more expansion, the lighter blue connector to the right of those four is for USB 3.0 expansion.

Topping the previously-mentioned GIGABYTE board, ASUS’ features not four, but six side-mounted SATA ports at the bottom corner. With the chassis ATX connectors located in the same spot, installation should be a relative breeze. The CMOS clear jumper can also be found here, for those who might have gone a little too overkill on their overclock.

And once again, the FM1 socket:

If there were any doubts about this being a packed board, look no further than to the back I/O port. Here, there are 4x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, a full range of audio ports, a LAN, PS/2 keyboard/mouse and also HDMI, DVI and VGA for video output.

While it’s difficult to declare a winner between the two FM1 boards we’ve looked at so far, ASUS does give its users a rather sizable advantage with its EFI implementation. Yes, that’s right… EFI, on an AMD platform. Before we know it, ASUS’ entire line-up will feature EFI, and I for one can’t wait. It’ll be even nicer when the others all stop playing catchup and release their own variants as well.

AMD’s Lynx platform has me more excited than most other launches as of late, and I’ll be spending the rest of the week testing the platform until I go blind. The official release date has not been announced by AMD, but keep your eye on the site as we’ll be publishing our full review once able (though we may pro-long our release by a day if we feel the need to run more tests). Stay tuned!