MSI A88XM-E35 Motherboard Review: Micro-A88X for $68

MSI A88XM-E35 In The Box

Extra contents in a motherboard box can be fun or help reduce the overall cost of a build. Motherboard manufacturers are able to purchase in bulk, meaning that the overall additional cost to the end user should be minimal. However, on a motherboard this inexpensive, we should not hold out for much:

Driver CD
Manual
Rear Panel Guard
Two SATA Cables

It might make sense that users who go for this motherboard might not be using more than two SATA devices, but I would imagine that the self-build community might be looking at three – a boot SSD, a storage HDD and perhaps an optical media drive. I was not expecting more than two SATA cables, but I could hope that in the future four cables becomes the standard.

MSI A88XM-E35 Overclocking

Experience with MSI A88XM-E35

As mentioned in the BIOS and Software sections of this review, MSI has decided that users should not be adjusting the voltage on Kaveri on the A88XM-E35. This is a double edged sword, as there are some users who might want to reduce the voltage in order to remove extra heat from the CPU. As a result the only option we have is to adjust the CPU multiplier or the base clock. Given that we had restart issues at stock frequencies when the power delivery had no additional cooling, anyone overclocking Kaveri on this motherboard should use a good fan pointed at that area.

Methodology:

Our standard overclocking methodology is as follows. We select the automatic overclock options and test for stability with PovRay and OCCT to simulate high-end workloads. These stability tests aim to catch any immediate causes for memory or CPU errors.

For manual overclocks, based on the information gathered from previous testing, starts off at a nominal voltage and CPU multiplier, and the multiplier is increased until the stability tests are failed. The CPU voltage is increased gradually until the stability tests are passed, and the process repeated until the motherboard reduces the multiplier automatically (due to safety protocol) or the CPU temperature reaches a stupidly high level (100ºC+). Our test bed is not in a case, which should push overclocks higher with fresher (cooler) air.

Manual Overclock:

Due to the voltage limitations, our peak overclock was only 4.0 GHz for all cores: