ASRock E35LM1 AMD E-240 APU AMD A50M Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo

Pros: It has a mega ton of features for what you pay
The box my psu came in can probably run it.
Why is no one mentioning the bios simple and attractive

Cons: Slow painfully slow
No HDMI
I could not no matter what I did or how I did it install XP 32/64 bit guess it's not supported.

Other Thoughts: I originally bought it for an htpc build after getting everything all fired up I realized two things. One the processor could not handle running media center there was way too much lag when loading tv (yes I had dedicated graphics hd7xxx). Two the utilities that come with it are useless they eat too much processing speed. Needless to say this rig became a gift. If you want an htpc don't cheap out pay over 100 you'll thank yourself later. If you want to run Linux cool this will work otherwise all you are very limited to what you can do. This by no means weak just didn't meet my needs. You won't do better at this price.

Pros: Don't know, it doesn't work

Cons: I bought this ITX board for a project computer that was going to computer control DMX lights. The problem is there is no was to install windows of any kind on it. After booting from the windows cd I get the blue screen of death. I have changed cables, hard drives, memory and updated the bios to the newest version & changed every setting in the bios to make this work, and still the same problem exists. The forum and customer service for this company is worthless. I can't even get the forum to send me an email so I can sign up. Looks like I have a worthless paper weight and this entire project is dead in the water.

Other Thoughts: In all the years I have been building computers, I have never had this type of trouble with this lousy support. With a name like ASRock I should have known.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize that you having difficulty with mainboard.
BSOD usually related to memory.
Please set the UEFI BIOS default.
Test with 1 stick memory, try with another known good memory if its same issue.
Try with another Windows installation disc and optical drive.
If you have any technical questions or warranty issues please contact our Tech Support at 909-590-8308 or http://www.ASRock.com/support/tsd.asp. We can assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: user@ASRockamerica.com

Pros: Small, simple. pretty low power, Linux compatible.

Cons: The usual - could be faster, cheaper, richer, prettier, etc.

Other Thoughts: I bought three for Linux LTSP clients. now I'm buying three more. The case and power supply cost more than the mobo and ram.

Pros: Very capable little board. Any Linux, any BSD works with it. UEFI setup. it's not a silent system, but very barely noticible. I see 1 amd64 CPU after install. 4x SATAIII is a unique plus for a mini-itx board. Would be a nice whitebox NAS, if you can find a case that fits 3x HDD (for like software RAID5) + Optical.

Cons: Being an embedded platform, it's an all-in-one kit. Not able to upgrade CPU or GPU. Full-size DIMMs means less surface area to add features - but this is not really a con. I don't see any fakeraid option.

Other Thoughts: This board came to me with some kind of VGA issue - every boot warm/cold I get 5 long beeps, short normal 1 beep, and then system operates completely "normal". I am RMAing the board because of beep codes.

Pros: Great value. No issues with hardware compatibility.

Cons: I wish I'd read more about the included CPU before pulling the trigger on this. The AMD E-240 is clocked at 1.5 GHz and only has a single core. I got this for a NAS controller and unfortunately this CPU is the data-throughput bottleneck; it can't keep up with my network or my drives.

Other Thoughts: I would give less eggs because of the underpowered processor, but this is mostly my bad for buying uninformed. I do wish the "Details" page would mention the CPU specs.

Pros: Low power
Low price
4x SATA3 6.0Gbps
GigE

Cons: none so far

Other Thoughts: I bought this strictly for a FreeNAS build and it does its job as expected. This is my 3rd FreeNAS build and this system is a very good performer compared to my other mini-ITX FreeNAS systems.

I used 2x4GB DDR3, 4x2TB Hitachi drives with this build, along with the following enclosure:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811128074

Works great as a file server using FreeNAS 8.3.0 (www.freenas.org)

Pros: Almost no wait time when calling tech support.

Cons: Could not install the drivers from the DVD. After a fresh windows XP install, I spent hours trying to install the darn drivers from the DVD without success. After downloading the latest drivers from asrock website the VGA driver would make the system reboot all the time and would never finishing installing.

After hours on the phone with their tech support I decided to send all back to newegg. Building computers for over 10 years thought me to not fight a lost case.

Other Thoughts: People at their tech support are cocky and their expertise is open for debate. Each different tech person gave me a different and some timers conflicting answer for my questions. None of then were able to help me solve the problem.

Pros: Small form factor, comes with the processor already installed, accepts 240 pin ram, cheap but not cheaply built, very quiet.

Cons: Not good for watching streaming hd video on, should have known better with a 1.5 ghz single core.

Other Thoughts: Very good for basic computing tasks, just temper your expectations. Youtube works fine, Netflix works fine but slows the computer to a crawl. Still not bad for 60 bucks.

Pros: very surprising performance from a single core. pair this with a decent GPU and you will fly! plays games at medium settings when paired with a 6570.

Cons: ram is limited to 1066. does not run stable when using 1333 mode. 8gb limit

Other Thoughts: make a great HTPC

Pros: Adequate speed for a lot of things
Low power consumption
Inexpensive
Small

Cons: Some crashes when I tried using 1333 MHz memory settings. When I backed off to 1060 MHz it worked again.

Fan makes a little noise, but quite acceptable for my purposes.

Other Thoughts: Seems like a good board for use in special, limited purpose machines like a NAS, Firewall, or video server. Could be good for a low end desktop or kid's computer as well.

I bought it to experiment with Windows Home Server 2011. I found WHS would not work right with my router, and wasn't really very impressed with the software. I ditched WHS and now I have installed FreeNAS on it and I'm learning how to use that. FreeNAS is working well.

I have 4GB of G.Skill RAM, a couple of 500GB WD drives, and an SATA DVD burner in a Rosewill case with a Rosewill PSU. Once I set the memory speed down to 1060MHz everything works.