Asus E35M1-M Pro AMD Fusion Micro-ATX Motherboard Review

Final Thoughts
The Fusion platform has been a hot topic for a very long time with lots of hopes and dreams of fantastic results and amazing features and I’m proud to announce that it hasn’t let us down. The board has all of the features and functionality that a user would want in terms of USB 3.0 and SATA 6G connectivity support, has the latest PCI-Express and DDR3 technology and rivals the market in terms of ION and Atom. A nice feature that could have been implemented (as the Zotac ION based board had) is Wi-Fi, to just give that extra edge over most of the market.

The DirectX 11 capable APU gave really strong results throughout out testing phase in terms of synthetic benchmarks and gaming tests. The main use that we can see for a board like this would be for home servers or more commonly expected; HTPC’s giving the user exactly what they need and nothing more. This includes the ability to play HD video at 1080p, play 720p based games and also be used as a video encoding machine.

Power consumption and temperatures were lower than expected and with the additional fan at close range, you have a bit more flexibility to arrange the board how you want.

From the components that we chucked in with the E35M1-M Pro, we had no compatibility issues, and things booted up first time. The new GUI BIOS is going to be a massive thing to look out for, as we feel it will pave the way for the future and what can be achieved in terms of extra added support, print screen functions and MUCH more.

Price wise, we are seeing retailers list pre-orders at around £110, making this fantastic value for money when compared to the likes of the Zotac IONITX boards.

With all of the right ingredients on a stylish blue and black themed board, the Asus E35M1-M Pro can only be described as saying “it does exactly what it says on the tin”.

Pros:

• Reliable brand
• DirectX 11 GPU
• Low wattage
• All-in-one solution
• PCI-Express functionality
• DDR3 memory support
• Passively cooled
• Fantastic colour scheme
• USB 3.0
• SATA 6G
• New GUI based BIOS
• Perfect for multiple uses
  

Cons:

• Limited memory speed support
• Limited overclocking potential
  

Ratings:

• Design: 10
• Features: 9
  
• Performance: 8
• Value: 9