Foxconn M7PMX-S review

Foxconn's M7PMX-S is a microATX board intended for entertainment PCs. That much is obvious from the HDMI port on the back, which is driven by an integrated GeForce 7100 GPU.

Unfortunately, this particular graphics chipset doesn't include Nvidia's PureVideo engine, so most of the burden of Blu-ray or other HD decoding will fall on your processor. It isn't DirectX 10 compatible, either, although it lacks the power to run modern games above low resolutions anyway. There's no multi-GPU support, either, so your only options are to live with the integrated graphics or replace it with a discrete card.

Being a microATX board, the M7PMX-S is also limited in terms of expansion, although that's perhaps forgiveable given its price and intended use. It's this month's only board to feature just two DIMM slots and a maximum RAM limit of 4GB. Its four SATA channels and four USB sockets are acceptable but on the meagre side. And while it's great to have HDMI support, there's no separate digital audio connector, and no analogue TV output.

Although this is a cheap board, Foxconn has given it a decent BIOS that will let you push your RAM up to 1,066MHz and play with the processor settings. Frustratingly, though, the CPU ratio can only be set in 1x steps, which limits your options.

The idle power drain of the M7PMX-S was this month's lowest at 95W, and its integrated graphics mean you can save more power by eschewing a graphics card. However, as an HD video platform, this board will work the CPU harder than a more modern one, pushing up cooling demands and power consumption. Still, for less than £40 you can't really complain.

Author: Darien Graham-Smith