Foxconn X38A Motherboard Review

Foxconn puts a new spin on the X38 chipset.

While Foxconn has been a large player in the OEM market for quite some time, they disappeared from the competition in the enthusiast ranks. It looks like Foxconn has decided to jump back into this market segment. Their latest offering the Foxconn X38A is what we will be taking a close look at today. Lets take a quick look at the feature list below:

In all a well rounded feature set for an X38 based board. And ringing in around $240.00 makes it a very decent deal when compared against similar X38 boards. The X38 chipset brings PCIe-Gen2.0 to the table, which in theory doubles the available bandwidth. But, if you look closer, Foxconn an even more interesting trick out of its hat. The board supports both DDR2 and DDR3 ram modules. Boards that have tried to pull of this trick in the past generally have suffered performance loss in either configuration. It will be interesting to find out if any observable loss will be detected after running the board through its benchmark paces.

Foxconn included clear cmos, power, and reset switches directly on the board. This coupled in with the post code LED makes this board very tweaker friendly. Well lets dig in and see how this board stacks up.