Not much has happened in the FM2+ world since we tested boards with that CPU socket four years ago, but AMD proved that the market for DDR3-compatible platforms soldiers on with 2018’s A8-7680 CPU. To use that CPU, of course, you'll need a motherboard, and Biostar supports small markets just as small markets support it. In this case its with the A68MHE motherboard announced today. There’s no word yet on U.S. pricing, but we expect it to vary wildly between $50 and $100 depending on the seller, as has been the case with previous Biostar FM2+ motherboards.
Small enough to qualify as Flex-ATX and requiring nothing more than the old four-pin P4 (ATX12V) connector for CPU power, the 21.5 x 17 cm A68MHE could be the perfect board to upgrade your decades-old office machine. Unfortunately, the A68MHE does not have any breakout headers for legacy serial or parallel ports, and that will likely rule out its use in some point-of-sale terminals.
Likewise, your older system upgrade will also need a drive upgrade, unless you can find an ATA to SATA adapter that works with both your drive and modern motherboard firmware. But you still get USB 2.0 headers for your front-panel ports, a pair of PS/2 ports for your legacy keyboard and mouse and a 15-pin D-Sub output to connect your SVGA CRT to integrated graphics, so we see little by way of connectivity that would disrupt your legacy theme.
The A68MHE also fits within Biostar’s “Bitcoin Mining” theme by supporting an inexpensive CPU and a PCIe graphics card or mining ASIC. You’ll probably want your legacy memory to be fast for that, so the board supports two DIMMs at up to 2600MHz data rates.
Other specs include four SATA ports, HDMI, Realtek’s legacy ALC662 audio codec and RTL8111H Gigabit Ethernet, which, in case you’re wondering, is also 100Mb and 10Mb compatible.
