MSI A78M-E45 FM2+ Unboxing

[DavidtheDoom]

MSI A78M-E45 Motherboard

Introduction

MSI A78M-E45 is a mid-entry level motherboard for simple APU gaming machines and home entertainment PCs. It's aggressively priced and I managed to get hold on this motherboard from the store for approx. 54 USD(Sweden). Even-though it is a entry level motherboard it has overclocking features, quiet a beefy VRM heatsink, Four Dimm slots and two physical 16x PCIe slots, the bottom one is only 4x electrical.

Box Front

Box Rear

 

Included Accessories

A quick look in the box.

The I/O Shield is plain metallic with punched markings for which connector is which. There are 2 high quality sata cables with straight to 90° angled connectors with latches. Simple white/black colours. What I actually freaked out a bit over was the really nice sized motherboard manual. It's brilliant. Far smaller than the regular one. Better for the environment and easier to handle with one hand, perfect!

Included

Chipset

AMDs newest FM2+ Platform is a revised version of the FM2 platform, the specific chipset this motherboard is built upon is the model A78, also known as Bolton-D3. The chipset features nothing especially spectacular but full native USB 3.0, AHCI Sata controller running 6x 6Gb/s sata connections and supports raid 0, 1 and 10. The total TDP of the chipset is approx. 8W making the platform fairly low power driven compared to older chipsets and platforms. When combined with a FM2+ APU the motherboard supports PCIe 3.0 but runs on the integrated PCIe controller of the CPU, meaning that the FM2 processor will be limited to "only" PCIe 2.0.

 

The LAN is a 1Gb/s integrated controller so ample of bandwidth.

 

Integrated Peripherals

MSI have designed this motherboard fairly well, the Chipset is decent featuring most of the features one might want and need for a mother PC. However, the Audio chipset integrated on the motherboard might leave some left to desire, although the Audio chip supports 7.1Channels HD Audio it is only an analog out, there is no Digital auto. Also the performance and fidelity given of the Realtek ALC887, is not the best. It does the job, but that is about it. Persons using USB-driven Headphones, a TV through HDMI or cheap PC Speakers might not care. But for those audiophiles and analog headphone users might wanna look at some other DACs.

 

Internal Layout and Aesthetics

Considering this is one of the mid-entry level motherboards it is in my honest opinion on of the better looking motherboards. The PCB itself is actually a brown tint which makes the black connectors blacker, and the blue brighter. Neat! The layout is simple yet clever.

Layout

The 1x PCIe is unfortunately beneath the 16x PCIe graphics slot rendering the use of a WiFi, capture or sound card much harder. Placing this 1x slot on the top would have made much more sense sin the clearance for a big air cooler would be far greater when no card in the 1x would be in use. The next PCIe is on the bottom making it suitable for a second graphics card in cases with five expansion slots such as the BitFenix Phenom with an extra gap between the two cards.

 

The VRM Heatsink is impressive considering the price and competitions closest lineups. Might help with overclocking. The Auxiliary CPU power is only a 4pin which limits the power to the socket from the PSU directly to only 150Ws. Completely sufficient, remember, the motherboards supply some power aswell. Considering the power usage of a AMD A10 7850k should be far be low the total of 150W overclocked so there is no reason to despair.

VRM Heatsink

What I find the Motherboard lacking is the amount of fan headers. There is a 4-pin CPUFan, a 4-pin SysFan and a 3-pin SysFan, that's it. Something which severely limits the amount of supported fan without the use of adapters. Personally I'd like to see at least one more 3-pin. Preferable 2more for a total of 4 SysFans.

 

There are 8 mounting holes(the MSI website states 6 which is wrong) and the motherboard is a full size mATX in width.

The PCB is the same MSI use for higher end cards indicated of the vacant slot for 2 additional Sata Ports.

Vacant slot for Sata-ports

 

Memory

The motherboard features four Memory slots capable of supporting up to 64GB of Ram, it does not on the other-hand support ECC-memory which limits the actual memory to a maximum of 32GB since there is no real supply of 16GB non-ECC ram as of yet. It supports memory speeds a maximum of 2133MHz which puts it on par with the integrated Memory Controller in the AMD APU flagships, clever design. It utilities a dual channel design and supports both AMP (AMD Memory Profile) and XMP (Extreme Memory Profile).

 

UEFI

Still in progress.

 

Connectivity

There is a fair bit of connectivity on the motherboard. The HDMI also is 4k resolution capable. I would really like a DisplayPort connector though.

I/O Panel

Summary

This is a really interesting motherboard, MSI have taken a sub $70 mATX motherboard with both decent cooling for the power phases and VRM and enabled both CrossfireX and lots of Ram-expandability making this motherboard really attractive for a simple cheap machine.

 

Full PhotoAlbum

[Nineshadow]

Pretty good.I think this should be in member reviews though.

[DavidtheDoom]

Pretty good.I think this should be in member reviews though.

You are completely right. I've asked a mod to move the thread. I intended it to be posted there but must have miss-clicked when looking around the forum.

[ColonelPhantom]

Nice review! Just a question, is this board good for some OC'ing? Not too much, more like an Athlon II X4-860K at 4.5 gHz.

[thom]

can this board handle OC'ing???like a10 6790K at 4.ghz then OC at 4.7ghz with 2x4gb 1600mhz memory ram?

[STRMfrmXMN]

can this board handle OC'ing???like a10 6790K at 4.ghz then OC at 4.7ghz with 2x4gb 1600mhz memory ram?

He said it could. Cheap FM2+ boards that OC are easy to come by.

[Whaler_99]

Nice review! Just a question, is this board good for some OC'ing? Not too much, more like an Athlon II X4-860K at 4.5 gHz.

 

FYI, last post was back in Feb of 2014. You did ask a valid question, but on the whole, we frown on thread necro'ing. Might get more responses if you start a new thread with your specific question in the proper section.

[Opcode]

can this board handle OC'ing???like a10 6790K at 4.ghz then OC at 4.7ghz with 2x4gb 1600mhz memory ram?

I wouldn't expect anything spectacular with this board as it has a weak VRM. If you wanna overclock at high clocks get something like this or this.