MSI FM2-A85XA-G43 AMD A85X Socket FM2 DDR3 ATX Motherboard

FM2 Socket A85X ATX Board

The MSI FM2-A85XA-G43 is an ATX motherboard built around the AMD A85X chipset for Socket FM2 processors. It accepts AMD A10, A8, A6 and A4 series CPUs and provides four DDR3 slots supporting up to 64GB of memory. The board targets builders assembling or refreshing FM2-based desktop systems.

Replaces Older FM2 Boards

This model upgrades from earlier FM2 designs by adding dual-channel DDR3 support up to 2400MHz when overclocked and eight SATA III ports for storage expansion. The jump is worthwhile when you need higher memory speeds or more drive connections than budget FM2 boards provide. Two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots, three PCIe 2.0 x1 slots and two legacy PCI slots cover multi-GPU and add-in card requirements.

PCIe 2.0 and SATA III Limits

PCIe 2.0 caps each lane at 5 GT/s, so the primary x16 slot and the secondary x4 slot share that bandwidth ceiling. SATA III tops out at 6 Gb/s per port, limiting sequential throughput on modern SSDs. The Realtek RTL8111E LAN controller handles 10, 100 and 1000 Mb/s Ethernet, and two rear USB 3.0 ports plus one internal header deliver 5 Gb/s USB connectivity.