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
BIOS
The Biostar A10N-8800E uses a simplistic UEFI firmware with grey and white text on a black background. The grey text signifies that the element is non-customizable, whereas the options in white text provide some function. The firmware is divided into four primary sections with the left-hand side displaying an informative list of information from CPU core speed to the current CPU temperature, date, and time. Across the top is the word ‘Motherboard’, while the central panel houses all of the settings that users can customize such as enabling, or disabling controllers, power settings and even enable the IOMMU function. The last panel sits at the right-hand side of the screen which provides a helpful and informative key listing.
To be honest, from Biostar, I had expected a more legacy BIOS setup with blue-on-blue. The fact that this is somewhat graphical, for a board at this level, is somewhat amazing.
Entering the firmware can be done by pressing the Del key, and upon entering, users will be brought to the initial splash screen. The BIOS information screen is very basic in its layout and offers a list of information such as the compliance of the firmware, the version installed, and it's build date. Users can also customize the system date and time.
Within the advanced tab, users can access the majority of the core settings within the firmware. This includes the SATA configuration, the smart fan control, CPU configuration, and the CSM configuration. Users looking to alter or customize the built-in power settings such as PStates, these can be found within the CPU Configuration sub-section.
The fan control section of the Biostar A10N-8800E firmware is somewhat primitive with a basic set of adjustable temperature parameters including off, on, a start value, and allow users to select between an automated control mode and manually. There is an option to calibrate the selected fan, but there is no option to sync between the two available fan headers.
Where users would usually find Biostar’s overclocking options, the O.N.E section contains a very basic set of options with no CPU core clock control or voltage configuration. The only option users can overclock is the memory with two different DDR memory voltage settings; default or overvolted at 1.27 V. Users can also select the memory frequency, although options here are limited to 2133 MHz which is the maximum frequency the AMD FX-8800P processor supports.
Overall the firmware on the Biostar A10N-8800E SoC motherboard is easy to navigate, is clear and concise, and for the platform it represents, doesn’t really need anything over the top to make it effective. The user interface works well with the white text on a dark grey/black background, and the basic fan control within the firmware is quite useful.
Software
Bundled with the A10N-8800E is a software installation disc which contains all of the available drivers and software applications supported by this AMD Carrizo based SoC motherboard.
There are limited software and driver options available with A10N-8800E which include an ATI Chipset driver, a Realtek networking and audio driver, as well as a BIOSCreen utility, eHot-Line utility, a temperature monitor, and a BIOS updater.
Biostar's eHot-Line software allows users to contact Biostar directly in regards to any diagnostical related issues and current issues in which the less tech-savvy may not adept at dealing with. It allows users to input basic information such as memory module brand for potentially incompatibility issues, as well as the power supply model which could provide useful information to Biostars support team in helping diagnose issues. The software allows you to copy in other users via the use of the CC E-Mail option.
Also included in the software is a basic temperature monitor which provides users with temperature from two onboard sensors with the minimum, current, and maximum values all available for viewing. The GUI is very archaic and Biostar hasn't put any extra research into the design of the skin, but it's effective and it works absolutely fine.
With motherboard vendors updating firmware quite regularly in this day and age, Biostar has also included a basic variant of its BIOS Update utility. Users can simply download the BIOS from the download section on the official product page, There are options to update the BIOS from the downloaded file, and there's also the option to backup the current BIOS just in case there are complications with the new BIOS; users can simply flashback from the back up file by going through the same process.
Overall the software bundle is similar to the accessories with the Biostar A10N-8800E motherboard, simplistic, useful, but more to the point, they do the intended job without fanfare which is important for a product such as this.
73 Comments
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hojnikb - Friday, August 16, 2019 - link
I bet there must be a ton of leftover chips, that amd is selling for peanuts.DominionSeraph - Saturday, August 17, 2019 - link
Now compare it to an i5 2400 system you can get off ebay for $90.Haawser - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
Yeah, but you can't put that in a 1.5L mini-itx box with a pico-PSU and make a tiny little PC can you ? It's the low watts and low cooler height that make these type of boards so attractive.John_M - Saturday, September 14, 2019 - link
It's also available new, unlike the i5 2400 from ebay.skomo - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
I love this kind of "things".Will this "combo" ideal to run various emulators? Psx, ps2, Dolphin (NGC/WII)?
I'd love one under my TV.
versesuvius - Sunday, August 18, 2019 - link
They probably made this motherboard 3 years ago but forgot to sell it.RuthLMartinez - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
hypraeses - Monday, August 19, 2019 - link
I bought one of these a little while ago as it seemed to fit with a bunch of leftover parts collected over the years and wanted to play with it for comparison as a living room PC. It seems okay, but perhaps not the best value. The biggest flaw I had at least with the personal unit I had was it would regularly thermal throttle (95C) even with the fan profile on aggressive or manual full. Sitting at the BIOS alone for an hour seemed to be too much for it. I tried different thermal paste, new springs/pins, screws etc for mounting and eventually tried different heatsinks. It seems in general this one is relatively poor. I ended up taking an drill and angle grinder to an old stock Socket AM2/AM3 heatsink to make clearances and went with that. I used nail polish on the surface mount components around the die, then covered it in thermal paste as well as the die then epoxied the heatsink down (as my drill/tapping skills weren't up to the task). It seems to peak at 49C now and maintain full clocks.What I want know, how is anyone else's thermals with these boards? I would personally go with the 320GE if I had a do-over purely because of the annoyances of cooling.
pc start - Friday, August 23, 2019 - link
eu particularmente não gosto de cpu integrada.lwatcdr - Saturday, August 31, 2019 - link
I want to know why the author used the word two and not the number 2 in the chart for the quantity of SATA ports on the board? It is just really inconsistent and frankly annoying. If the reason is that is how the manufacture did it and they just cut and pasted it, shame on you.