Biostar 1155 TZ68A+ Review

Up Close

Externally the TZ68A+ package looks the part, highlighting all the features and looking resplendent in a blue wave. Opening the box we can see the first hints that this is a sub-£100 mobo as we have a plain IO Shield, 4 SATA cables and a Molex to SATA adaptor. Even the manual is rather sparse, even by the normally woeful motherboard standard.

      

Well no-one will accuse it of being a head turner. All the SATA ports are of the vertical variety and the heatsinks are functionary rather than designed with flair. But this is under a ton, so allowances have to be made. Thankfully Biostar have at least sourced all their plastic bits from the same two colours giving us a strawberries and cream appearance.

      

This definitely could be a good board to upgrade from your wheezy old system with as we’ve got two legacy PCI slots alongside the standard PCIe x16 and PCIe x1 variety. We can’t think of much call for a LPT port anymore, but maybe someone still has a 9 pin dot matrix printer somewhere.

      

The CPU socket is by no means as cramped as we’ve seen some, largely in part to the reduced power-phases that this price-point calls for. That might hurt the overclocking a bit. Round the back there is a PS2 port, a couple of USB3 and USB2 ports as well as the outputs for the HD3000 integrated graphics. All standard stuff.