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The Gigabyte GA-A55M-DS2 motherboard is a compact, Micro ATX board, comprising the AMD A55 chipset and is a generally well-laid out power efficient motherboard.
That said, if you elect to add a dedicated GPU, you sacrifice the PCIe x1 slot, as it is obstructed by the graphics card heat sink and fan, even with a low profile, single-slot design such as the VTX 6450 we used in our testing.
One other PCIx16 slot is fitted to the board. Gigabyte have remained faithful to the company colours, by opting for a blue PCB.
The power connectors are found in the usual top left (40pin) and middle right locations (20+4 pin), with four vertical SATA 3Gb/sec ports, located just below the 24-pin power connector.
The board features two DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting speeds up to 1866Mhz, although 2x4Gb DDR3 1600Mhz modules were used for the testing. A maximum of 32Gb of system memory is supported.
The board features the on/off power charge function, allowing for the charging of USB devices and four rear USB 2.0 sockets are provided, with support for an additional two via headers on the motherboard. USB 3.0 is not supported, however.
We were surprised to see only two system fan headers on the board, one of which is used by the CPU cooler, the other being located at the bottom amongst the front panel connections.
Realtek HD Audio is provided by rear sockets (line in, line out and microphone) and headers for front audio, with up to 7.1 surround sound being supported if an additional front panel HD Audio Module is used. An SP-DIF connection is also provided for optical audio.
PS/2 connectors are provided for keyboard and mouse and video is supported by VGA (D-sub) and DVI-D connectors. Those who may be looking to use this for an HTPC application may be disappointed as no HDMI connection is fitted to the board which means the audio signal will need to be carried via dedicated audio cables. Gigabit Ethernet comes as standard.
The Dual Bios feature is supported, as we have come to expect from Gigabyte motherboards.
£50 for the cpu and £50 for the gigabyte mobo is pretty good isnt it ? id always been put off bying a system like this for my tv as the motherboards were often well over £100 even if the processors were cheap.
im tempted now. shall try and talk my credit card into accepting the charge.
Nice setup on Dabs for these, makes it easier to work out where to get the bits,
only thing is, they should have made some complete systems with memory, power supply etc, took a few quid from them. would have worked a lot better. seems a bit ‘half assed’ having a page with the A4’s and motherboards and nothing else. these are ideal for students who maybe need the help
Hybrid crossfire has always sucked, glad to see it hasnt gotten better all of a sudden.
not a bad deal for the price, but its probably slow as molasses for a work machine. Adding a cheap SSD might help.
Im curious, can it be overclocked?
its pretty good value for money. Not sure id want one, but would be good for a server system
I have that proc. and Gigabyte MB and i am very satisfied with that. Plus i got Ati Saphyre graphic card with 1 GB. As it was said, it is really good for lite gaming, and very cheap. And @Brian, yes it can be overclocked! 🙂
Is there such a thing as an intel atom quad core? The 6450 is pretty puny so really adds not very much except heat and cost. A 6670 or better would kick things up a notch/