ASUS E35M1-I DELUXE Fusion AMD E-350 APU (1.6GHz, Dual-Core) AMD Hudson M1 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo

Pros: Lots of features. Lots of high speed connections. Runs cool. Worked great when it did work. Used it for a server / freenas box. Bios interface is sleek and easy on the eyes.

Cons: The flaky bios interface that would not save configurations correctly or boot from usb when instructed to.

Only certain manufacturer memory works with the board.

Changed bios config and board quit posting. Dead after 10 months.

Other Thoughts: This is the first Asus motherboard I have ever bought. RMA'd to ASUS. Crossing my fingers they will honor their 3 year warranty. If not then no more ASUS products for me.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Valued Customer,

We're sorry to hear about your experience with the motherboard. The issue may be that a BIOS setting used was out of board's allowed tolerance range. Please to save BIOS settings, please try clearing CMOS using onboard jumper and retry entering BIOS. If the issue persists after RMA, please contact me at cl-benson@asus.com (reference #C1037-9384 in the subject line) for continued support. Thank you.

For support information, please visit http://support.asus.com. For service, visit http://service.asus.com. For motherboard warranty, visit http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!Motherboard%20Warranty/c1c20; Refurbished products/accessories: http://www.service.asus.com/warranty.aspx#!refurbished-warranty/c16us. For RMA status, visit: http://am.eservice.asus.com/rmaweb/search/rmCustomerQueryAction.do?.

Regards,
Benson
ASUS Customer Loyalty

Pros: Very nice looking, excellent build quality, documentation and accessories all great. APU is faster than you probably think. Integrated GPU is quite capable with the right software. Looks amazing on a 120hz HDTV.

Cons: Still expensive. A little too expensive for how long it's been out. Had the setup been completely painless the price might be acceptable. I also docked a star because my board arrived with an ancient BIOS chiseled by cavemen.

Manufacturing date was summer of 2011.

Some of the RAM on the QVL list did not work as advertised, notably Kingston KVR1333D3N9/4G.

I bought 8 gigs to use 2gigs for the IGFX but the board would only post with one stick in either slot. Both just triggers the onboard RAM LED.

Updated BIOS which is best done by downloading the update from ASUS's site. You will need to rename the file to E35M1ID.rom. After this is done, boot to BIOS in advanced mode and find the option to go to EZFlash, over on the far right menu. I know the manual says there are other ways to update BIOS, but trust me, this is the best way.

BIOS 1404 supports this RAM and changes a few things. Even then you still may not be able to run 8gb of it, I had to use some Crucial Ballistix DDR3 to get the timings stable and then swap the RAM back in.

I have it posting consistently now with the full 8GB of KVR1333D3N9/4G, but we will see how long that lasts. You should definitely consider some other type of RAM for this board, low profile or not.

Ignore what the QVL list says, I have also had other ASUS boards that didn't like Kingston RAM...

Other Thoughts: This mobo seems to want to OC without you asking it to. If you are getting strange issues or posting issues, try setting the OC function to manual, then manually entering the stock settings.

BIOS is pretty otherwise. All fancy like.

I built this into a HTPC with zero moving parts. Along with a Samsung 840SSD this PC runs at 65c with pretty much no delay for anything. Picture is just amazing on a new 120hz HDTV and sound is great too.

In a hot climate or heavy use, a tiny heatsink fan is a good idea.

Pros: Great stability, small size, packed with features, very low power consumption.

Cons: Runs hot. I picked out a bunch of parts to build a small fanless HTPC, and it required me to use a couple small case fans to keep it cool. I'd give it 5 stars if it wasn't for the heat issue, plus the cost, as some comparable boards can be found for ~$100.

Other Thoughts: Installed the moterboard in a M350 case from mini-box.com. Has slight interference with the picoPSU and one of the memory slots, but I was aware of this, so I just purchased a single memory module. It did run very hot in this case though, due to relying on passive cooling. Having a couple quiet 40 mm case fans solves that though. I use it to run OpenELEC XBMC software, and it works great for that purpose. I have installed the OS to a CF card on a StarTech SATA to CF adapter. I've played a bunch of HD content, haven't found a file that it has problems with yet.k

Pros: a whole lot of features in one small board!!

Low power consumption

runs cool

5 SATA6 ports

Cons: -Could be a little faster
-Video drivers in ubuntu are useless for playing 1080p mkv files on this board.
-price is high

Other Thoughts: I originally bought this to handle windows 7 running XBMC and in the background having a virtual machine of ubuntu downloading all my stuff. It handles it well, but then i wanted to build an UnRAID server and have this run XBMC live. The problem is that this board does not do well running linux. Playing 1080p mkv files in xbmc live is horrible, not even watchable. However, if you run windows 7 and install the drivers, it performs well. As of right now, i have a different setup running xbmc and i use this board for UnRAID since it runs cool, and i can afford to run it 24/7 as a network file share.

Pros: Small size, fanless design, lots of extras on this one (bluetooth, wireless, 6G sata, usb 3)

Paired it with 4G of ram and 40 GB SDD. The SSD if just for the OS everything else runs off of the server.

I use this as my HTPC front-end.

Installed Win 7x64 with XBMC and Beyond TV link. XBMC plays mkv's at 1080p without any problems. I use Media Center for Netflix and it works fine also. Hulu player doesn't seem to have an issue either.

Cons: It's a little more than I wanted to pay but all in all, I don't have much to say bad about it.

Not a con but I'm a little old school I guess. When I went into the BIOS the first time, it was the first time I'd seen a BIOS laid out with a dashboard type screen. I've seen old Award and Ami type bios screens for so long it took a minute or 2 to get use to a new layout.

Other Thoughts: I was hesitant to buy this because of the low cpu power. First thing I tried when I got it running was to play a 1080p mkv file. It wasn't great to say the least. Then I realized I needed to turn on hardware accel in XBMC and it is now playing 1080p smooth.

I use Beyond TV link and haven't had a single issue with it viewing 1080i or 720p over the air signals.

I haven't tested the wifi since it is directly connected to my LAN. The Gigabit nic works like it should and bluetooth works like it should as well.

I'm using my previous Antec HTPC case made for a micro-atx board and have plenty of airflow so temperature hasn't been an issue either.

I'm pleased with the board and will buy another to replace another aging front-end.

Pros: An excellent board, doesn't run too hot and has a very large heatsink

I was able to play 720p video with no problems, ocassionally has problems with large frames at 1080p with an unoptimized copy of VLC.

PC games are playable, but not at high settings. Load times are OK.

Boots in the blink of an eye if set up properly.

Decent WIFI / DVI or HDMI out / eSata 6 / USB 3 are all pretty good.

Cons: Low CPU! This is really the only con. Out of curiosity, checked out the overclocking settings, overclocking does not allow you to go over the specified limit (1600 mhz) and I had no luck overclocking the RAM, but I suppose this may be by design due to the particular cooling technique of the board.

No display port.

Difficult to find a case that supports USB 3.0 front panel.

Other Thoughts: APU Mini-ITX form factor is great, but good luck finding a slim profile case that will show off how small this board is.

Not necessarily a pro or con, but you can easily create a media center with no moving parts with an SSD and this board.

Pros: Fully bundled.

Cons: I have come up to a strange issue when using this MB:
- I have a case with a 65W PSU, a Kingston KVR1333D3N9/4G module, a 100mmm fan and a OCZ Agility 60GB.
- I'm using this mobo as HTPC and I have only and external 1.5TB HDD (with self power supply) connected to it.
- From time to time the PC crash and does not display image anymore, I have to unplug the power cord and then plug it back and restart in order to make it work again.

Could it be an underpowered PSU or it's a faulty MB?

Pros: Mini ITX
Fanless Design
SATA 3 & USB 3

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: setup as a HTPC using Win 7 MC & HD HomeRun Prime.
System has very few hiccups watching HD TV or playing Blu-rays, was very surprised given the processor speed.

Pros: Great motherboard for the first 6 months.

Cons: Woke up one day to a motherboard that wouldn't post.

ASUS will not honour the warranty because the serial number sticker is missing. Since I didn't removed any stickers, I have to assume someone forgot to put it on there or that it fell off.

Other Thoughts: A 3 year warranty on a product that hasn't even existed a year and they won't honour it because of a stupid sticker.

I will never buy another ASUS product again.

Pros: After working the kinks out, this board has been a great HTPC board. Video playback is great at 1080P on a 55" LG flat panel. I'm running this in an microATX SilverStone HTPC case with three fans, so I haven't seen temperature issues like others have.

Cons: The board is picky when it comes to memory. I bought a G.Skill Ripjaw 4G stick, and everything seemed go smoothly during the install. The system, however, was always unstable after that, during every part of operation (POST, loading screen, operation). The system would just freeze with these fuzzy green dots and lines, and would require a power cycle to fix.

The problem was that the board auto-detected the RAM timings at 7-7-7-20, but the RAM specs were 9-9-9-24. After changing the timings to the right spec, the system has been absolutely rock solid since. In 11 years of PC building this is the first board that I have had to manually set RAM timings, so I took 1 egg off the rating.

Other Thoughts: I would recommend this to other HTPC builders. Just be sure to pay special attention to the memory you buy.