Final Thoughts
After it’s all said and done you really cannot go wrong with the M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 board from ASUS. It supports USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s and has great overclocking potential all in a budget board, and if you take the price into consideration you are really coming out on top. At just over $100 this board really is a value.
I think the best thing about the board is the USB 3.0 support. There are so many products coming out that support USB 3.0 it is great to have it on this board, although you only get two ports. I see USB 3.0 being adopted much faster than SATA 6GB/s, although having SATA 6GB/s on this board is not a bad thing at all. SATA 6GB/s is just more expensive to get in to and if you are building a budget system you are not likely to get a SATA 6GB/s SSD.
ASUS really packs features in their board and this one is no exception. The MemOK feature is just great, especially for new system builders. It allows users to boot the system even if there is a memory conflict. The Core Unlocker and Turbo Unlocker are also nice added features. The Turbo Unlocker will up the CPU by up to 500MHz under load. Simple things like this are just great to have on a board, especially a budget board.
The integrated graphics make this board perfect for someone who does not want to play games and just needs the system to surf the web or do basic computing. Don’t worry though if you want to play games just throw a graphics card in there and you are good to go.
There really is not much bad I can say about this board. The one thing that puzzled me was that even on the website and the retail box it says that this board supports CrossFireX, but there is no official CrossFire support for this chipset. This means the second PCI-E slot is only capable of supporting a x4 connection. Maybe this is why no CrossFire bridge was included with the board.
Right now this board sells for $119.99 at my favorite online retailer, which is a great price considering all of the features. Overall ThinkComputers gives the ASUS M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3 AMD 880G motherboard a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Price
– SATA 6GB/s support
– USB 3.0 support
– Good overclocking
– Turbo Unlocker and Core Unlocker
Cons:
– CrossFireX not supported