Asrock’s 880CXH-USB3 is slimmer than most ATX boards, measuring 305x224mm. It’s also somewhat short of ports and uses the budget AMD 880CX chipset.
There’s only one PCI-E x16 slot, but there’s little benefit to be gained by using two PCI-E graphics cards. Most expansion cards will fit into either the two PCI-E x1 or three PCI slots, and a double-height graphics card won’t block any other ports. Other features include five SATA2 connectors and four memory slots capable of taking up to 16GB of RAM at 1,800MHz.
At the back are an eSATA port and six USB ports, including one USB3 port. Confusingly, both the USB3 port and one of its USB2 neighbours are blue. There are five 3.5mm analogue audio ports and an optical S/PDIF port. You can also output audio and video from the HDMI port, which the integrated ATI Radeon HD 4250 can use to output full-quality Blu-ray video and DVD-quality audio. It’s not up to modern 3D gaming and managed just 3.8fps in our CoD4 benchmark.
The 880GXH-USB3 isn’t that fast, but it’s cheap, with lots of features. If you don’t need SATA3, it’s a great way to save a bit of money.
