With the release of AMD’s ‘Trinity’ APUs, we’ve been treated to a varied selection of new motherboards to suit. Today we will be taking a look at ASRock’s ‘budget’ offering, the FM2A55M-DGS, a M-ATX board featuring a great price and decent feature set. It looks good, but is this a solid performer?
AMD’s Trinity APU series is based off the HD6000 graphics processing units, and ‘Piledriver’ CPU cores. While the Piledriver CPU portion has been controversial, the HD6000 technology is a proven performer. ASRock has developed various boards for the FM2 APUs, from this budget offering to high end ATX boards.
Specifications
| CPU | Support for Socket FM2 100W processors |
| Supports AMD’s Cool ‘n’ Quiet Technology/span> | |
| UMI-Link GEN2 | |
| Chipset | AMD A55 FCH (Hudson-D2) |
| Memory | Dual Channel DDR3 memory technology |
| 2 x DDR3 DIMM slots | |
| Supports DDR3 2400+(OC)/2133(OC)/1866/1600/1333/1066 non-ECC, un-buffered memory | |
| Max. capacity of system memory: 32GB* | |
| Supports Intel® Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 1.3 / 1.2 | |
| Supports AMD Memory Profile (AMP) | |
| *To reach the maximum 32GB of system memory, memory modules with 16GB capacity or above are required. ASRock will update the memory support list on the official website once these memory modules are available on the market. | |
| **Due to the operating system limitation, the actual memory size may be less than 4GB for the reservation for system usage under Windows® 32-bit OS. For Windows® 64-bit OS with 64-bit CPU, there is no such limitation. | |
| BIOS | 64Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with GUI support |
| Supports “Plug and Play” | |
| ACPI 1.1 Compliance Wake Up Events | |
| Supports jumperfree | |
| SMBIOS 2.3.1 Support | |
| DRAM, VDDP, VDDR, SB Voltage Multi-adjustment | |
| Video | Integrated AMD Radeon HD 7000 series graphics in A-series APU |
| DirectX 11, Pixel Shader 5.0 | |
| Max. shared memory 2GB | |
| Dual VGA Output: Support DVI and D-Sub ports by independent display controllers | |
| Supports Dual-link DVI with max. resolution up to 2560×1600 @ 75Hz | |
| Supports D-Sub with max. resolution up to 1920×1600 @ 60Hz | |
| Supports AMD Steady Video™ 2.0: New video post processing capability for automatic jutter reduction on home/online video | |
| Supports HDCP function with DVI port | |
| Supports Full HD 1080p Blu-ray (BD) / HD-DVD playback with DVI port | |
| Audio | 5.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC662 Audio Codec) |
| LAN | PCIE x1 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s |
| Realtek RTL8111E | |
| Supports Wake-On-LAN | |
| Supports LAN Cable Detection | |
| Supports Energy Efficient Ethernet 802.3az | |
| Supports PXE | |
| Expansion / Connectivity | 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot (PCIE1 @ x16 mode) -Supports AMD Dual Graphics |
| 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x1 slot | |
| 1 x PCI slot | |
| Connector | 6 x SATA2 3.0 Gb/s connectors, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 10), NCQ, AHCI and “Hot Plug” functions |
| 1 x IR header | |
| 1 x CIR header | |
| 1 x Print port header | |
| 1 x COM port header | |
| 1 x CPU Fan connector (4-pin) | |
| 1 x Chassis Fan connector (4-pin) | |
| 1 x Power Fan connector (3-pin) | |
| 24 pin ATX power connector | |
| 4 pin 12V power connector | |
| Front panel audio connector | |
| 3 x USB 2.0 headers (support 6 USB 2.0 ports) | |
| Rear I/O | 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port |
| 1x D-Sub Port | |
| 1x DVI-D Port | |
| 4x Ready-To-Use USB 2.0 Ports | |
| 1 x RJ-45 LAN Port with LED (ACT/LINK LED and SPEED LED) | |
| HD Audio Jack: Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone | |
| Form Factor | M-ATX |
| Other | Unique Feature- ASRock Extreme Tuning Utility (AXTU) ASRock Instant Boot ASRock Instant Flash ASRock APP Charger ASRock XFast USB ASRock XFast LAN ASRock XFast RAM ASRock Crashless BIOS ASRock OMG (Online Management Guard) ASRock Internet Flash ASRock UEFI System Browser ASRock Dehumidifier Function ASRock Easy RAID Installer ASRock Interactive UEFI Hybrid Booster ASRock U-COP Support CD- Drivers, Utilities, AntiVirus Software (Trial Version), CyberLink MediaEspresso 6.5 Trial, Google Chrome Browser and Toolbar Accessories- Quick Installation Guide, Support CD, I/O Shield, 2 x SATA Data Cables Hardware Monitor- CPU Temperature Sensing Chassis Temperature Sensing CPU/Chassis/Power Fan Tachometer CPU/Chassis Quiet Fan CPU/Chassis Fan Multi-Speed Control Voltage Monitoring: +12V, +5V, +3.3V, Vcore Solid Capacitor for CPU power OS- Microsoft® Windows® 8 / 8 64-bit / 7 / 7 64-bit / Vista™ / Vista™ 64-bit compliant Certifications- FCC, CE, WHQL ErP/EuP Ready (ErP/EuP ready power supply is required) |
(Borrowed from the ASRock product page)
As usual, ASRock has used the ‘black’ color scheme, with very few components not being this colour. This achieves a solid look which should please the modding community – except ASRock’s board coating has left the appearance of the PCB more brown than black due to the copper traces. This is a bit disappointing, but is to be expected in this price range – we saw the same on the ASRock H61M-ITX that we saw late last year.
The board features 2 DDR3 RAM slots, a PCIE v2 x16 slot, a PCIe v2 x1 slot and a PCI slot for older cards. 6 SATA 2.0 (3 gb/s) ports cover storage, and a multitude of headers are available for any other ports you need to add (LPT, Serial, etc). 3 fan headers cover your cooling needs, with the CPU and front fan fan headers being 4-pin PWM items.
Rear IO ports cover the basics, with PS/2 ports for mouse and keyboard, a VGA and DVI-D port for display outputs from the AMD APU, 4 USB 2.0 ports, the RJ45 jack for gigabit ethernet, and 3 audio jacks for 5.1 surround sound. Note the DVI-I port cannot be used with an adapter to run a VGA monitor, however you can run dual screens (hence the DGS/ Dual Graphics System moniker) from the board.
With the ‘budget’ target for this product, we expect some missing features – the board lacks USB3.0 and SATA 6gb/s connectors, has a simple 3+1-phase voltage regulation for the APU (we will cover this more on the next page), fewer audio channels and so forth. This may sound disapointing, but remember we are looking at ASRock’s cheapest FM2 board here.
Rumours, photos and profanities have been flying around the hardware discussion forums about ASRock FM2 boards and some power supply issues. Basically, a growing number of users have had PWM phases fail (quietly or spectacularly) under normal use on their ASRock FM2 boards. The most common board to have this issue is the now discontinued FM2A75M-ITX board. So what’s the cause here?
Simply put, AMD’s Trinity can be thirsty. Real thirsty for those tasty amperes. Without sufficient cooling, budget FM2 boards may have PWM overheating issues as the APU tries to draw a lot of current through lower spec power phases. Sharing a similar power phase design, the FM2A75M-ITX and the FM2A55M-DGS both have instability issues. In the 4 weeks our review sample has been in regular use, it has seen over 40 power-related Blue Screens of Death, even with a known quality FPS Hexa 500w PSU. In our experience the board is unstable without aftermarket cooling of the power phase MOSFETs, which is completely unnaceptable on a production board. Keep in mind we were using a 65w A4-5300, and the board is rated for 100w APUs!
So whats the issue here? Driving the APU’s graphics core is the problem – the boards are designed in a way that the GPU is powered by a single phase! This would normally be acceptable, if the MOSFETs had sufficient cooling (i.e. Heatsinks). I can’t imagine it would cost that much to add a MOSFET cooler to the board at the factory.
BIOS
The BIOS interface used on this board is a graphical UEFI system, like we saw with the H61M-ITX board last year. ASRock has obviously improved their code as the UEFI on this board is smooth, easy to use, and big free.
Conclusion
Sometimes when buying hardware, pinching pennies can lead to frustration, as it did here. The board was unstable in daily use as an office system, let alone as a gaming or media system. With some additional cooling on the MOSFETs with a larger top-down cooler such as the Scythe Big Shuriken or Prolimatech Samuel, and some small heatsinks for the MOSFETs, we imagine this board will be a solid product for years to come.
Overall, the stability issues has dropped the mark on what is otherwise a good value for money product:
Pros:
- 2400MHz RAM support for that extra APU boost
- Great price
- Adequate expansion capability
- Good colour scheme
Cons:
- Unstable in regular use
- No USB3.0
- No SATA 6gb/s
Overall Score:
| Criteria | Score out of 10 |
| Build Quality | 5 |
| Features | 6 |
| Value | 8 |
| Appearance and Layout | 8 |
| Ease of Use | 7 |
| Total | 34/50 |
SFFReview.com does not recommend this product without modification.
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Manufacturer’s Response
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