MSI's Mini-ITX FM2+ A88XI AC Features 802.11ac WiFi

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

MSI's new FM2+ Mini-ITX board carries a Wireless 802.11ac adapter.

MSI has announced a new performance-oriented Mini-ITX board, though this time it's one with an FM2+ socket, making it built for AMD processors rather than Intel processors.

The motherboard, known as the MSI AX88XI AC, carries a number of interesting features. For starters, it has support for up to 32 GB of DDR3 memory through the use of two DIMMs, and has the facilities to connect up to four SATA3 devices. Also aboard is a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, as well as a single Mini-PCIe slot (populated by the Wireless AC adapter).

Rear I/O connectivity is handled by a legacy PS/2 port, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, four USB 2.0 ports, stereo analogue audio paired with optical SPDIF out for digital surround, Gigabit Ethernet, and all topped off with a VGA port, DVI port, and an HDMI 1.4a port. Additional USB 3.0 connectivity is found through the onboard header.

MSI gave no word on when the motherboard would hit shelves, nor was there word on pricing.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • c123456
    Completely black mobo with the new Silverstone Raven mITX case that was on here last week... was this planned advertising?
    Reply
  • Wisecracker
    ""The MSI A88XI AC also features two DDR3 DIMM slots (up to 32GB 2400(OC) MHz Dual Channel Memory, with AMP & XMP support)""

    From MSI
    Reply
  • firefoxx04
    The wireless adapter looks like the same one Asrock uses. The wires are really thin and annoying to route. They work well though.The difference between this one and the asrock is that the MSI has actual anttenas that mount to the board while the assrock uses a stupid external adapter that you place outside of the case. The adapter has the dumb thin wires as well. It works really well despite the thin wires.I wish I had this option for my itx build that I did two weeks ago. I dont trust the family to not rip out those thin external wires on the asrock board. Another thing I notice right away is the nice heatsink on the mosfets. The asrock A88 board does not have any. That might pose a problem for overclocking. Nice to see that on the MSI board. The FM2 and FM2+ chips have some nice overclocking headroom if you can fit a decent cooler or AIO watercooler in these small cases.
    Reply
  • Fek
    Completely black mobo with the new Silverstone Raven mITX case that was on here last week... was this planned advertising?
    Are you talking about the RVZ01? If so.. FM2+ makes very little sense in a case that big with room for a 13 inch GPU.The new AMD APUs are great for what they are.. but the second you plan to add a GPU to your build they become poor value.
    Reply