The Biostar A10N-8800E Motherboard Review: Carrizo in 2019?!
by Dr. Ian Cutress & Gavin Bonshor on August 14, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- CPUs
- AMD
- Biostar
- Mini ITX
- HTPC
- Carrizo
- A10N-8800E
- FX-8800P
- Athlon 200GE
Board Features
The Biostar A10N-8800E is a mini-ITX motherboard designed for low powered computing, edge computing, and offers a range of low cost, but decent quality features. These include a Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit NIC with a Realtek ALC887 HD audio codec which offers three 3.5 mm audio jacks on the rear panel. Equipped with its own integrated CPU in the form of a Carizzo based AMD FX-8800P processor which is usually found in notebooks and as a result, is power efficient with a TDP of just 15 W. Due to the mini-ITX form factor, there are two memory slots with support for up to 32 GB of DDR4-2133 RAM, and allows users to either utilize the onboard Radeon 7 integrated graphics, or use their own discrete graphics card with a full-length PCIe 3.0 x16 slot.
Overall, the idea here is to provide all you need for a SFF system capable of edge compute, OpenCL, or some gaming, at $88.
Biostar A10N-8800E Mini-ITX Motherboard | |||
Warranty Period | 3 Years | ||
Product Page | Link | ||
Price | $88 | ||
Size | Mini-ITX | ||
CPU Interface | FM2+ | ||
Chipset | AMD Carizzo | ||
Memory Slots (DDR4) | Two DDR4 Supporting 32 GB Dual Channel Up to DDR4-2133 |
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Video Outputs | 1 x HDMI 1.4 1 x D-Sub |
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Network Connectivity | Realtek RTL8111H Gigabit | ||
Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC887 | ||
PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x16 | ||
PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) | N/A | ||
Onboard SATA | Two | ||
Onboard M.2 | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA | ||
USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | N/A | ||
USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) | 2 x Type-A Rear Panel 1 x Header (two ports) |
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USB 2.0 | 2 x Type-A Rear Panel 1 x Header (two ports) |
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Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX 1 x 4-pin CPU |
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Fan Headers | 2 x System (3-pin) | ||
IO Panel | 2 x USB 3.1 G1 Type-A 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A 1 x Network RJ45 (Realtek) 3 x 3.5mm Audio Jacks (Realtek) 1 x HDMI 1.4 1 x D-Sub 1 x PS/2 Mouse port 1 x PS/2 Keyboard port |
On the rear panel is two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A, two USB 2.0 ports, a pair of video outputs consisting of an HDMI 1.4, and D-Sub, with a separate PS/2 keyboard and mouse port. To power the Biostar A10N-8800E, users will need a 24-pin 12 V ATX motherboard power cable, as well as a single 4-pin 12 V ATX CPU power cable from the power supply. With edge computing being its focus, the Biostar A10N-8800E is a low-cost mini-ITX option (sub $100) which has everything a user could need for a small form factor HTPC as the quad-core FX-8800P processor has HEVC encoding capabilities, but another use case scenario could be a small office system without the need for anything high powered, and with a smaller desktop footprint.
Test Bed
As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
While we have been able to measure audio performance from previous Z370 motherboards, the task has been made even harder with the roll-out of the Z390 chipset and none of the boards tested so far has played ball. It seems all USB support for Windows 7 is now extinct so until we can find a reliable way of measuring audio performance on Windows 10 or until a workaround can be found, audio testing will have to be done at a later date.
Biostar A10N-8800E Test Setup | |||
Processor | AMD FX-8800P, 15W 4 Cores, 4 Threads, 2.1 GHz (3.4 GHz Turbo) |
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Motherboard | Biostar A10N-8800E (Firmware W418) | ||
Cooling | Integrated Heatsink /w Cooling Fan | ||
Power Supply | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU | ||
Memory | 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 Ran at DDR4-2133 CL16-18-18-35 2T |
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Video Card | Radeon R7 Integrated Graphics | ||
Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
Case | Open Benchtable BC1.1 (Silver) | ||
Operating System | Windows 10 RS3 inc. Spectre/Meltdown Patches |
For the sake of comparison, we wanted to put the CPU against AMD's lowest cost socketed option. The AMD Athlon 200GE currently retails for $57, with the cheapest AM4 motherboard being the GIGABYTE GA-A320M-S2H or ASRock A320M-HDV R4.0 at $55, making a total of $112. Comparing $88 vs $112 is an important point here - if you are tied for cash, you might go with the $88 option. But what performance uplift do you get from an additional $24?
AMD Athlon 200GE Test Setup | |||
Processor | AMD Athlon 200GE 35W 2 Cores, 4 Threads, 2.1 GHz (3.4 GHz Turbo) |
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Motherboard | ASRock B450 Gaming-ITX/ac (Firmware 3.30) | ||
Cooling | AMD Stock Cooler | ||
Power Supply | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU | ||
Memory | 2x16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-2400 Ran at DDR4-2133 CL16-18-18-35 2T |
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Video Card | Radeon Vega 3 Integrated Graphics | ||
Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
Case | Open Benchtable BC1.1 (Silver) | ||
Operating System | Windows 10 RS3 inc. Spectre/Meltdown Patches |
Due to timing, we used an on-hand B450 ITX board, that comes in at $127. This is a bit overkill, we know.
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
New Test Suite: Spectre and Meltdown Hardened
Since the start of our Z390 reviews, we are using an updated OS, updated drivers, and updated software. This is in line with our CPU testing updates, which includes Spectre and Meltdown patches.
73 Comments
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_Rain - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
BothArbie - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
Whatever this board *can* do, not being human it can't "opine". And even humans can't "opine to be".Rocket321 - Wednesday, August 14, 2019 - link
It seems like the obvious thing to do here would be A) put a bunch of SATA on it, or B) put multiple NICs on it. A nice home nas / router / microserver. But as it is, it doesn't quite fit either niche.Haawser - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
I bought the A68N-5600 instead. It has an A10-4655M 'Trinity' (4C/6CUs) but also has 4x Sata ports instead of the M.2 slot. Seems to recognise and use DDR3-1600 without a problem. Makes for a very nice mini-PC that costs next to nothing. TBH I'm quite surprised how snappy it is in Windows 10 with a $20 64GB SSD boot drive. I had a dual core Atom mini-ITX before, and this is waaay faster. Like night and day.quadibloc - Thursday, August 15, 2019 - link
Looking at the photo, with the CPU in the center under a small ribbed heatsink with a fan on the top; except for the fact that the fan is rotated by 45 degrees, took me back to the days of my 486 builds, when CPUs were cooled that way, instead of by the elaborate coolers required for most of today's desktop processors.John_M - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
486s didn't have coolers - they just had bare ceramic packaging. The more elaborate AMD and Cyrix 486-compatible processors usually had passive heatsinks, but Pentiums were the first to be actively cooled.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
For the price, Biostar should have included a better fan to support a BIOS switch to go between 35W and 15W.Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
Also, the latency settings are terrible for the RAM. Is there no way to tighten the timings via the BIOS?Oxford Guy - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
I was able to run 16 GB of dual rank DDR3 2133 at 9-11-10 CR1 with an overclocked FX 8 core with full stability on a cheap motherboard. It seems truly unfortunate to witness a newer-generation memory have far worse performance on the roughly the same CPU architecture.vowif - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
nice