We Bought the Cheapest AM4 Motherboard on Amazon...
# Review: Gigabyte A320M-S2H Motherboard - The Cheapest Rice on Amazon?
In this video, we decided to buy the cheapest rice on motherboard on Amazon. As of November 15th, that was the **Gigabyte A320M-S2H** for $50. This video is sponsored by *World of Warships NA*. If you haven't already heard of this game, you're missing out! It's so cool to be able to support something like this. Well, *The Four Ships* has the perfect balance of action and strategy with a heavy dose of true-to-life graphics, ship design, and physics. Command a massive naval fleet with over 200 unique ships and play across 11 different nations. It doesn't hurt to try, and I've got a feeling you'll be hooked. Best of all, you don't need to pay anything to play. Join now by the link below and register with the code **"play war ships 2018"** to receive 252 balloons, 1 million credits of premium ship, and more.
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## Gigabyte A320M-S2H Motherboard Review
This motherboard is a peculiar one, falling into the micro ATX subset. The board is also physically slimmer than conventional ATX counterparts, meaning you might have some extra space between your 24-pin and the cable routing cutouts in your case. Aesthetically, it isn't the sharpest tool in the shed. I mean, this is a $50 board, but at least it doesn't look like a mess. We've got a black PCB for starters, one full 16-lane Gen 3 PCIe slot, and two smaller single-lane slots just below the s2h. It does not support CrossFire or SLI—not that you could manage to make it work anyway with this slot config.
The board also lacks integrated Wi-Fi, only has two DIMM slots, two fan hubs, and a barebones audio interface with the ALC 887 codec. Not all is bad, however—one pleasant surprise is that this board supports 2nd gen Ryzen processors out of the box, including Ryzen 2200G and 2400G. So, you'll be able to make use of the HDMI port. However, we're not sure which gen we're looking at here since it isn't listed, meaning it's probably 1.4. This is disappointing because Ryzen APUs openly support HDMI 2.0 configs for 4K 60fps playback. With 1.4, you'll be locked to 4K 30Hz. This was confirmed with my 4K panel—you'll need discrete graphics if you intend to use this board for an HTPC, which is a bit disappointing. Why would you buy a micro ATX in the first place? But if you aren't an HD user just yet, you'll still find DVI and D-sub ports on the s2h.
Additional rear I/O includes two PS2 ports (for USB 3.1 ports), two USB-to ports, and an RJ45 port packed with the Realtek Gigabit LAN driver. The remainder of the board's layout is fairly straightforward—the A320 chipset resides under this small heatsink, doesn't really do much for SATA three ports are staggered to the right, and the 24-pin sits in its usual spot along with an 8-pin EPS up near the top left.
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## Unique Features and Design
Another peculiar feature of this board is M.2 support. If you plan to use an Athlon processor for this board, you'll be locked to the state or interface but horizon processors can drive a PCIe-based connection for use with significantly faster solid-state drives. This is something I did not expect to find on a $50 board, but I'll take it. No heatsink is included, but it's still cool that it's there.
If you're worried about power delivery—yeah, it really shouldn't. Not that you could conventionally overclock with this chipset anyway. I actually found that the BIOS will make it seem as though you're overclocking, but you really can't and like I said earlier, buyers of these boards should be those concerned with very tight budgets so overclocking probably isn't at the top of your priority list.
With that said, let's take a look at the VRM. The A320M utilizes an Intersil 95712, which is actually the same chip Gigabyte uses on their B350 and X370 motherboards. It relies on a 4+3 phase array, nothing on this board is doubled. Meaning that we've got two phases up top for SOC and four down to the left of the socket for V-core. For core CPUs, it shouldn't have a problem with this board, and because this is a locked chipset, we don't expect anything approaching 10 watts of heat from the VRM itself.
For C10 in MOSFETs on the high side for Co 6 is on the low side, and we do have two of those per face. No VRM heatsink is included with this board, however, which again complements the locked aspect of the chipset. All in all, despite a subpar power delivery system, we've got going on here, this is actually pretty good one seen in the context of other first-gen Ryzen boards from Gigabyte. You'll actually find that a lot of B350 boards use a very similar setup from a power delivery standpoint. So, I'm kind of impressed here—the 95712 is the same Intersil PWM generator regulator used in those higher-end boards too. That's pretty cool.
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## Testing and Overclocking Experience
In our testing, the SOC VRM managed to fare sixty degrees Celsius via probing. Keep in mind, actual temps were likely hotter, but we'll use the same testing methodology going forward. A top-mounted CPU fan config certainly does play a role into our VRM's peak temperature. So expect this to change if we switch to something a little more aftermarket like maybe a hybrid 212 Evo or a Cryo Rig 7.
Our 65W Ryzen 1300X, while under an identical load, managed to pull almost as exact TDP about 64 watts as measured with our clamp meter over hot lines in our EPS. The CPU reached a comfortable 71 degrees, and our stock cooler managed to stay under 40 decibels thanks in large part to the CPU's low TDP.
Now, with respect to the s2h BIOS—it's pretty much what you've come to expect from most Gigabyte boards at this point. I'm not the biggest fan of this style UEFI but it does get the job done. Fan curves can be configured here, boot drives can be selected here, and XMP profiles can be toggled here—that's pretty much all you need to know about this A320 BIOS. Given the fact that the chipset boasting a very limited set of functions, I mean you can't do much other than maybe overclock RAM and like I said change pan configs and select your POH. I don't know what else you'd want to do on an A320 BIOS but that's about all I was interested in.
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## Overclocking Attempts and Limitations
One thing I do want to show you in real-time—I've seen a few instances in forums where people have claimed they've been able to overclock on A320 chipsets. And I think what they're actually seeing here is the fact that they can, like I said in the video, manually toggle the multiplier right—the CPU clock ratio. This is what Gigabyte calls it. So you can change this to whatever you want. Look, I can change this to 55—boom! I got a 5.5 GHz overclock right on paper. But then we go to save this and this setting will hold by the way. It will show up again if we reboot—it'll act as though it's stuck now. But we'll go to save and exit, and I'll show you in CPU-Z what the system is actually reporting.
The CPU frequency is operating at and it is nowhere near 5.5—actually, it will cap at around 3.6, which I think is what the CPU out of the box essentially turbos to its AM version of just automatic overclocking. So we're opening up CPU-Z and obviously if the 5.5 GHz overclock actually stuck there's no way we put into the operating system—there's I have not come across any CPU that will just allow me to auto-voltage manually overclock multipliers 55 and let it boot stable. That's the first red flag. Second is that CPU-Z is saying that we're running at every now and then it peaks to three point eight but when we run an all-core benchmark, like Night of 64, which is what we did in the video, then you'll see this core speed will cap out at roughly thirty-six hundred megahertz—3.6 GHz—and that is essentially the cap for the CPU without any manual overclock set.
Which tells us that anything we're doing in the BIOS or the bios says that we're actually overclocking is not actually sticking in the system. So I have a feeling that most if not all of those people claiming their A320 chipsets allow them to overclock—well, they're just falling for the placebo effect. If we ran Cinebench before and after a manual overclock in our BIOS, then we would probably see no gain at all because we're not actually changing anything—the BIOS just says we are.
Also, for those wondering there is no base clock toggle anywhere in here it seems—this was disabled bloodfall—which would also indicate that Gigabyte does not want you to do any manual overclocking at all. That would be our second resort right basically overclocking was something we did heavily with locked Scylla excuse from Intel but there is no toggle for that that I can find in this BIOS here.
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## Conclusion and Value Proposition
So, here's a synopsis on the DL as bare-bones as this thing is—Gigabytes actually included a few decent features including the 10.2 port we addressed earlier along with PWM fan support usually just see voltage control but PW support is nice—you'll still find a USB 3 hub as well something i forgot to mention earlier—just know type-c support—but all in all for $50, CA through 20mm s2h is too shabby. I mean now, now listen for the question of kebaya bility which I want to talk about next—that's a different story.
The A320 chipset is packed full of compromises including but not limited to obviously CPU overclock ability all rise in CPU support unlock multipliers. So it seems kind of like a waste to pair them with locked chipsets especially the higher-end skis—it's a bit like on Intel side purchasing an i5 8600K and then pairing it with a B360 chipset. In my opinion, those two just don't add up. And to be honest, Gigabyte sells a nearly identical B350 boards for something in the realm of like 5 to 10 bucks more. So the idea that A320 chipsets have a place in the market at these current price points seems a bit far-fetched. I would say this should be priced more in the realm of $40 or less.
My advice is spend a few extra bucks on the better board, maybe even a better VRM than the one Gigabyte recycled through pretty much its entire first-gen rise and lineup—nothing performance-wise was really an issue here—but the lack of native overclocking support is a real kick in the teeth in my opinion. There may be occasional BIOS updates that support overclocking in the future you know base clock overclocking but as a general rule these chipsets are locked because their power delivery layouts aren't rated for higher wattages.
I mean come on, imagine like running at 2700X overclocked on this port here—the VOM doesn't even have a heatsink and when you're dealing with a hundred amps right under load things can get quite toasty and that's dangerous. So if you're intent going into this video was to give the A320 chipset a chance—don't, for most if not all gamers on a budget—the B350 or X450 chipsets will go a long way for just a few extra bucks again, the overclocking is a huge part of that but you may also get onboard Wi-Fi, CrossFire and SLI support, additional SATA ports, RAM slots. I mean two Ram slots are you kidding me—the list goes on.
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## Final Thoughts
I did have a lot of fun creating this video though and I do appreciate you taking time out of your day to indulge in your morbid curiosity like I did here. Cheap stuff is always fun to test—maybe next time I'll throw 2700X into this thing and overclock it until the chokes melt away—I don't know, I might want to try that outside—we shall see.
If you guys like this video, give me a thumbs up; if you feel the complete opposite—if you hate everything about it—you know what to do—red subscribe button is down below. If you want to click that, I would appreciate it. Stay tuned for the next video—this is science studio—thanks for indulging in your curiosities with me.
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This article provides a detailed breakdown of the Gigabyte A320M-S2H motherboard, its features, limitations, and overall value proposition for budget-conscious builders.