The Gigabyte GA-A320M-DS2
mainboard is based on the second cheapest AMD chipset, the A320, which offers the least amount of ports, slots and BIOS tweaks... but in terms of mainboard price, this may turn out to be the cheapest, as the cheaper chipset, the A300, is meant for mini-ITX boards, which need additional layers, thus adding to the price.
mainboard is based on the second cheapest AMD chipset, the A320, which offers the least amount of ports, slots and BIOS tweaks... but in terms of mainboard price, this may turn out to be the cheapest, as the cheaper chipset, the A300, is meant for mini-ITX boards, which need additional layers, thus adding to the price.First about compatibility. This mainboard has:
- analog VGA port and a single link DVI port
- PCI-Express 3.0 slots, backwards compatible with 2.0
- 6 x USB 2.0/1.1 ports
- 4 x SATAIII ports, backwards compatible with SATAI and SATAII
- one PS/2 port for mouse and/or keyboard
What you can't use from an older PC is the memory, as the mainboard has two DDR4-2667MHz slots, supporting ECC (with the appropriate CPU).
The CPU you'll be using on socket AM4 will most likely be a RyZen
(or later), BUT the mainboard can also be used to replace a defective mainboard in an OEM system, which was fitted with old-fashion 28nm Excavator AM4 CPU or APU (first released in 2016). The following 28nm processors are supported by the mainboard: Athlon X4 950, A6-9500E, A6-9500, A8-9600, A10-9700E, A10-9700, A12-9800E, A12-9800.
(or later), BUT the mainboard can also be used to replace a defective mainboard in an OEM system, which was fitted with old-fashion 28nm Excavator AM4 CPU or APU (first released in 2016). The following 28nm processors are supported by the mainboard: Athlon X4 950, A6-9500E, A6-9500, A8-9600, A10-9700E, A10-9700, A12-9800E, A12-9800.
Although this mainboard can be used in a single video card gaming PC, a high end card would almost certainly cover the two small PCI Express x1 slots, so just keep that in mind, when shopping for add-in cards and USB adapters.
As you may have figured out already, there's no M.2 slot on this board, so it's not recommended for applications which need that ultra-fast storage of up to 4GB/s, but personally I can't think of any App, which wouldn't work just fine on a couple of mid-range SSDs, operating at 550MB/s each on SATA III.