BIOSTAR TA990FXE AMD 990FX Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

The BIOSTAR TA990FXE AMD 990FX AM3+ motherboard proved to be a great board today. For the most part we didn’t experience any issues while we were using the BIOSTAR TA990FXE. We did run into an interesting issue during the physical setup of the system, though. The heatsinks surrounding the AMD AM3+ socket were tall enough, and the fins on the Ultra U12-40656 Carbon X7 CPU cooler are low enough that I had a hard time securing it with the mounting hardware.

As you can see above, the mounting hardware of our CPU cooler isn’t the easiest to reach. The upside to this is that it isn’t often that one changes the CPU cooler. The downside is that it would be incredibly difficult to do with the system installed inside a chassis. I haven’t found many CPU coolers that are orientated this way for AMD systems, so for most this won’t be an issue.

There isn’t much to say about the performance of the BIOSTAR TA990FXE motherboard. It was right on par with the other AMD 990FX motherboards that we have tested with the AMD FX-8150 ‘Bulldozer’. The only test that showed a significant difference was SiSoftware Sandra Memory Bandwidth. The BIOSTAR TA990FXE was a little bit on the low side with an aggregate performance of 16.4GB/s. Our two other systems had aggregate performances of ~17.15GB/s and ~17.5GB/s.

Whenever we setup a motherboard for testing, we update the BIOS to the latest one available on the company’s website. When we went over to BIOSTAR.com the only BIOS available for the TA990FXE was the initial release BIOS dated September 7, 2011. Since the release of the BIOSTAR TA990FXE, AMD has launched the FX series of processors. Our other boards each had a BIOS update on or around the day of the AMD ‘Bulldozer’ launch and another since the launch. I do know that BIOSTAR has an updated BIOS coming out soon which will enable support for NVIDIA SLI.

When deciding on a new motherboard there are always a couple of areas to look at. First is the features that you need in a motherboard; the BIOSTAR TA990FXE has a rather solid feature set. Compared to some though, it’s not as packed with features. BIOSTAR kept the features down, which in turn kept the price down. The BIOSTAR TA990FXE retails for only $129.99 which is one of the lowest priced AMD 990FX AM3+ motherboards on the market today. The third area that is typically looked at is the length of warranty. No matter which manufacturer you buy a motherboard from, there is always the chance for a DOA board or issues down the road. BIOSTAR has their motherboards backed by a three year warranty.

Legit Bottom Line: Once again BIOSTAR has hit the nail on the head with a great board at a great value!