With a number of 890FX chipset motherboards on the market, it is actually hard to find out which is the best for you. Everything seemed so perfect. You get your SATA 6Gbps native to your SB850 southbridge chipset, and other features such as ATI Quad Crossfire X support, as well as the highly useful and fast USB3.0, what else could you ask for more? Since you’re already getting the best out of the best, other considerations should come into place. For example, special features of the motherboard, build quality, and of course price.
Today with me, I have the Biostar TA890FXE motherboard. One distinct factors that makes this board to get noticed is undoubtedly the price of it. Compared to the other 890FX chipset motherboards on the market, this is the cheapest while high end features are still available with it. The pricetag on this motherboard is so light that you can almost forget about the other motherboards of 890FX chipset on the market if you have a tight budget. It is a full ATX motherboard, so you’re sure that you’re able to populated those expansion slots with whatever add on cards you have. Featuring 4x PCI-e x16 slots, Quad Crossfire X is supported, but sadly due to the placement of those PCIe X16 slots, 2 of the PCI-e X16 Slots will be covered if you’re using a graphics card that makes use of 2 slots, so you’ll have to take note of that before making your decision.
Besides that, BIOREMOTE is a free remote controller provided with the motherboard that allows you to control your PC remotely at a distance of 6m away, making this motherboard a great powerful home theatre PC. Not forgetting the support for the newest Phenom II x6 processors, you’re ready to frag your opponents with that extra frame per second on your games powered by AMD processors. A maximum TDP support is 140w, which means all the current AMD processors on the market is supported, up to the Phenom II x4 965 C2 revision of TDP 140w. Remember that this is actually a AM3 motherboard and is NOT backwards compatible with your AM2 processors such as your Athlon x2 and your Phenom x4s, however, a great variety of AM3 processors such as the Athlon II x2,x3,x4 and your Phenom II x2,x3,x4,x6 is supported. So do look out for the “II” for the model name of your processors when choosing the correct AMD processor.
With the 890FX chipset, you get a higher support of DDR3 memory with up to 1600MHz in dual channel. I’ll recommend you to get those AMD black edition Dual Channel RAMs from OCZ or Patriot so that you get the best out of the memory because of the support for AMD Overdrive.
Tons of special features that comes normally with Biostar motherboards are also available on the TA890FXE. In fact, although with the affordable price range of the motherboard, TA890FXE is actually the highest end motherboard from Biostar’s lineup. Biostar has not skimped on its features. Bio-Unlocking allows the TA890FXE to unlock hidden cores from the Phenom II and Athlon II processors. Get the best performance out of the money you pay for the processor. With just a few presses on the keyboard, you’re Phenom II x2 may just become a Phenom II x4. *Note- Not all processors unlocks. It depends on the batch of the processors as well as the physical state of the processor. Some processor already have damaged cores so it was disabled. The newer processors could only contain two cores and thus unlocking is physically impossible. Athlon IIs may unlock the extra L3 cache if they come with Deneb cores, which means are actually Phenom II parts.
O.N.E feature of the TA890FXE is certainly ONE of a kind. It simplifies overclocking by allowing users to choose between 3 kinds of overclocking profile, again pushing your systems to the limit and get the best out of your system.
Rapid debug 3 is Biostar’s name for their POST Code LED indicator. This is common in all motherboard, but rare in motherboards in this price range. This shows how Biostar treat this board as their flagship board.
On the other hand, technical features aside, the design of the board is actually one of the best I can see from Biostar. Biostar is actually well known for their T series of motherboard for both Intel and AMD, and this time for the 890FX motherboard they offer, there is actually quite a cool and beefy heatsink at the VRM area as well as northbridge area.
One thing that really discouraged me is the lack of USB 3.0 support for this motherboard, which should have been included to make this motherboard REALLY the best value motherboard on the market. Moreover, the red USB ports at the back are also misleading, making people think that they are USB3.0 ports and I believe that it could be some sort of false advertising, but there is just no evidence to do that. I apologize that I’ve made a mistake in the video stating that they are USB3.0.
Overall, this value oriented 890FX chipset motherboard is certainly for those who are really on a budget but yet want the high end features from a 890FX chipset. Add a Crossfire X setup with 2×5870 and also a USB3.0 card, together with a X-FI sound card, you’re be getting a system that everyone is going to envy because it is actually a really powerful system that is light on the wallet. Not forgetting the great price to performance ratio of the Phenom II x6 1055T or 1090T processor! This motherboard is definitely worth the buy if you trust the emerging brand name Biostar. If not, go for the better named Asus or MSI and Gigabyte.
