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The ASrock E350M1 motherboard arrives in a plain, yet stylish silver box with only the name of the product visible from the front.
The bundle contains a manual, back plate, several sata cables and a software disc.
The Asrock E350M1 is a cleanly designed board which follows the reference design, being actively cooled. We were a little surprised not to see an ASrock sticker on the cooling fan (like the Sapphire product), to offer at least some company personalisation. The Asrock motherboard has a discrete PCI-E x 16 graphics slot but it only delivers x4 bandwidth.
The E350 APU features a third generation unified video decoder core with Microsoft DX11 capability and supports H.264, Divx and Xvid. Sapphire have installed a small fan to actively cool the heatsink.
We have seen several different board designs recently. Sapphire's Fusion board for instance requires SO-DIMMS, but the ASrock design uses traditional DDR3 memory with support up to 16GB. The board allows a connection of 4 SATA 3 devices with 6GB/s support.
All of the boards differ slightly in regards to connectivity layout. There is a PS2 port for older hardware, above two USB 2.0 ports. Next to this is a DVI and VGA connection and an HDMI port to cover all the digital bases. There are four more USB 2.0 ports with an eSATA port and a Lan 10/100/1000 port. Lastly there is surround sound and optical S/PDIF.
There are no USB 3.0 ports on this particular board design.
I honestly feel this is the best of them all, because of the price. I also dont think many media users will care about USB 3, so I always thought it was a weird inclusion in the first place.
No frills, but the price is great. ive found it for £70 in the UK, which is half the price of the asus board. Quite a saving, even if it isnt as nice.
Where did you find it for that price? I cant even find Uk stock at all.
Impossible to get fusion products over here. sucks.
hits a good price point, but the asus board has me spoilt for choice, looks so much better with a lot more options.
the passively cooled boards appeal to me more than these ones. those little fans are a failure waiting to happen
The system configuration mentioned at the end uses SO-DIMM memory, even though the review says the Asrock uses normal DIMMs. And why use a 2.5″ disk when the case supports 3.5″?
The SO-Dimm listed once was a typo. its regular memory used. fixed that.
The 2.5 inch drive was used because it was handy at the time, the case certainly supports both yes, so either could be used. Some people building this system might be using a smaller chassis and a 2.5 inch drive would be viable, perhaps even an SSD for quicker boot times. I think a lot of people might have spare 2.5 inch laying around. or perhaps its just me !