ASUS have kindly provided their E35M1-I Deluxe ITX Motherboard for testing. Follow the link to see if this tiny board is a mini marvel!
Product on Review: E35M1-I Deluxe ITX Motherboard
Manufacturer: ASUS
Street Price: Around £128 at time of review
Manufacturer: ASUS
Street Price: Around £128 at time of review
ASUS are still making waves across the PC hardware world – their excellent GPU’s seem to be consistently well reviewed and likewise their motherboards have always been the product of choice for a great many enthusiasts over the years.
That drive to produce excellence no matter what the product has helped them to secure an enviable reputation as one of the PC world’s top manufacturers. Even the HTPC market is in their sights with ASUS aiming squarely at the compact home cinema market with their brand new E35M1-I Deluxe. Using the ultra compact ITX form factor the board packs a truck load of current features like USB 3.0, SATA 6.0Gbps (courtesy of AMD’s Hudson M1 chipset) and AMD’s low power Zacate E350 dual core processor.
The processor is AMD’s APU (Accelerated Processor Unit) design and part of AMD’s Brazos platform. It integrates the Northbridge, CPU and GPU on a single chip and as obviously impressive as all that is I would say that the peak power draw of only 18w is even more impressive!
Additional features such as the silent fanless heatsink design, an HDMI output, onboard bluetooth and ‘N class’ wireless and an extremely user friendly BIOS really stand out in a product that would normally be at the basic end of motherboard design.
Today we’ll take a look at every aspect of this tiny board from the physical hardware engineered onto the board to the software that is bundled with it. Whilst it exists at a price point similar to that of a higher end board its potential low power performance, generous feature set and compact design may well offset that disadvantage and make for a competitive product.
Specifications
It’s an impressive specification in a very compact design. Reasonable USB 3.0 connectivity and the excellent SATA 6.0Gbps support is nice to see. HD playback should also be well supported by the HD 6310 GPU which packs UVD3 and is DirectX 11 capable. Solid capacitors all round also help to instil the impression of a quality product.
Packaging, extras and the E35M1-I Deluxe
In typical ASUS fashion the E35M1-I is attractively and tidily packaged and identifies many of the main features offered by the board.
Box front.
The rear contains more specific details and specifications.
Box rear.
Within the box you get a selection of accessories including a quickstart guide, instruction manual, driver and utility DVD (and case sticker!), I/O plate, SATA leads and the two aerials for the Wireless N card on the board.
Instructions, DVD, backplate, etc…
Out of the packaging it’s clear to see that this board is something special. With almost half of the surface of the board dominated by that heatsink it certainly looks the part. A stylish black and blue design greets the user with some sockets (fan headers and SATA ports) identified in white.
E35M1-I Deluxe top.
The rear of the board is nothing spectacular to look at but it’s nice to see no less than six screw points holding that heatsink in place.
E35M1-I Deluxe base.
Here is the E35M1-I Deluxe next to a Zotac 9300 with heatsink in place. As you can see the slim nature of the ASUS design means that despite its considerable dimensions it still sits virtually flush with the highest points of the I/O socets. Indeed, with standard DDR3 DIMMS installed the heatsink is no taller than the memory. It’s a sleek and impressive design – I hope it performs well!
Zotac GeForce 9300 next to the E35M1-I Deluxe.
Closer look
Moving closer you can see the dual heat pipe design at work. The diameter of the pipes tends to correlate with performance so by the look of these they should do a decent job!
The heatsinks large heatpipe assembly.
There actually looks to be a third heatpipe in place but since ASUS only list it as having two I presume that it loops back via the end cap sat at the I/O end of the heatsink.
The heatsink cap sat over the I/O plate.
From a low angle you can just about see the heatsinks large base plate.
Heatsink base plate.
Removing the board reveals the two main board chips – the Hudson M1 on the left and the Zacate E350 on the right.
The two board chips.
The heatsink uses two copper plates to contact the dual heatpipes. There are also soft chip standoffs to help protect the naked cores from angled contacts with the plates. ASUS have used solid setting TIM pads – the only negative of this approach is that if the heatsink is removed it’s a bit of a job to remove the hardened material and reapply. You certainly shouldn’t ever simply pop it back ‘as is’ since the contact will never be the same.
The heatsink plates and TIM.
Close ups of the chips at work on the board…
The Zacate E350 dual core APU. The brains of the board.
The E350.
And the Hudson M1 which takes care of the six SATA 6.0Gbps ports!
Hudson M1.
Closer look continued
At the top of the board resides the standard 4-pin ATX 12v connector. Also present is a debug port switch, ASUS’ own Turbo Key II for overclocking and a USB header providing two of the board potential 14 USB connections.
4-pin ATX socket and Turbo Key II.
At PCB level it’s easy to see the complexity of these super compact motherboards!!!
The wonders of ITX motherboards.
To the right of the heatsink are the dual DDR3 memory slots. These can accept up to 8GB in total (2x4GB dimms) which is certainly more than enough for the average HTPC user. Also in shot is the 24-pin ATX power adapter and just below the heatsink and to the left of the blue DDR3 slot is ASUS’ own MemOK! button to help recover the board from a failed overclock state.
DDR3 slots, power connector and MemOK! button.
The boards wireless 802.11n capability is provided courtesy of this laptop style card that resides in a small mini PCIe slot on the board. It’s two connection points run to the I/O plate of the board for connection to the supplied aerials.
The 802.11n wireless card.
Next to the wireless card are dual USB headers to allow the connection of a further four USB devices and five of the six SATA 6.0Gbps sockets on the board.
Decent USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gbps support.
At the very base of the board we find the PCI-e 16x slot. A side not however – this slot only runs @ 4x speed. As a result of this gaming with higher end cards may result in compromised performance. Not that you’d be using such a card with this set up but thought I’d mention it anyway!
The full length (but only 4x speed!) PCIe slot.
The last notable feature of the board itself are two fan headers located between the I/O plate and heatsink. Now this is designed to operate in a fanless mode but ASUS have kindly included these just in case your cases airflow is severely restricted or if you just felt the need to add a fan. Either way I will be testing the board in both fanless and fan cooled situations.
CPU and chassis fan headers.
At the rear of the board is the I/O plate. It’s quite well appointed with dual Wireless N sockets, a PS2 keyboard/mouse socket, a total of 6 USB sockets (4 are USB 2.0 only whilst the two blue sockets are USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 compatible), an HDMI port, optical S/PDIF port, a DVI-I port, an eSATA 6.0Gbps port, an inbuilt Bluetooth 3.0 adapter, gigabit LAN socket and three audio jack points.
I/O plate.
Software
The E35M1-I Deluxe is bundled with a decent selection of typical ASUS utilities as well as copies of both Adobe Reader 9 and Norton Internet Security 2011.
Driver installation section plus Norton 2011.
The driver and utility disk can be used to individually install items or fully install everything in each section via the ‘ASUS InstAll’ button at the top right of each tabbed page.
Utility section.
Having installed all relevant drivers I moved onto the utilities. The first of which is the instantly recognisable ‘AI Suite II’
This program sits in the notification area ready for the user to either monitor system status or action adjustments aimed at tailoring the system to your needs. We’ve looked at it before but as it differs slightly due to system variations as well as standard AI Suite II updates I’ve included a couple of screens to give an idea of what there is available.
Fan Expert allows control of fan speed dependent upon temperatures – particularly useful in an HTPC setup as intrusive fan noise is a gigantic ‘no no’ when enjoying your favourite movie!
Fan Expert.
Probe II as the name suggests deals with voltage, temperature and fan speed monitoring and threshold control all present in one useful bundle. It can be set up to log Alert status event based on any chosen variable the user decides it wants the program to monitor.
Probe II.
Sensor Recorder is a very useful program – particularly to users either stress testing the motherboard or simply concerned about temperature and voltage related issues . It’s a program that once again monitors these levels, temperatures and speeds but presents the results in an easy to understand and immediately recognisable timeline graph. The graph can be adjusted very simply – the two axis can be stretched to better accommodate the result traces that show system state over time.
Sensor Recorder.
The last section of interest in AI Suite II is the ASUS Update area. Here the motherboards BIOS version can be identified, updated and even backed up. Updates can be done in a couple of different ways – either directly from the ASUS website or from a file downloaded elsewhere and now present on this machine. It’s typically straight forward and certainly light years ahead of the quite dated ‘floppy drive’ style update routines.
ASUS Update.
Software continued
ASUS AI Charger is another bundled utility and is brand new to me. It’s a program supplied by ASUS to charge Apple devices like iPhone’s, iPod’s and even iPad’s and is touted as offering improved charge times that are up to 50% faster. As I understand it the utility increases the powered throughput of the USB socket when an Apple device is plugged in. It may sound like a brute force approach but it is supposedly just what Apples own desktops and portable computers do. Unfortunately I do not have any Apple hardware to test this but it’s at least nice to see this little utility here as I’m sure a lot of end users will appreciate the thought!
Ai Charger.
Also, regarding this charging utility, ASUS state that it will supposedly work on any manufacturers boards however after some research there have been a number of end users who experienced blue screens and instability caused by some incompatibility in either board design or system set up. I’d advise that you check online to see if others have had issues with similar systems just to avoid getting caught out.
The ASUS Vibe Fun Center is the last bundled utility I looked at and is an interesting little program. Described by ASUS as ‘a one-stop entertainment platform’ it provides a library of digital content available to ASUS users.
The ASUS VIBE default tile view.
Similar in scope to iTunes it’s at an early stage of development but certainly seems to have decent potential. Music, games, movies, e-books, radio and even streaming of live TV is on tap any time anywhere. It’s a very useful addition to the ASUS line up and is doubly the case when used with a HTPC board such as the E35M1-I Deluxe. Everything is clearly categorised and nicely laid out and although content seems a little limited right now I’m sure over time more will appear.
ASUS VIBE list view.
EFI BIOS
The BIOS of the E35M1-I Deluxe is part of a new breed of EFI BIOS interfaces with a more ‘windows driven’ style. Although not an absolute ‘must have’ I would say that mouse control and a consistently attractive and easy to follow layout is a refreshing change to the BIOS designs I’ve used all my life.
The home screen is a quickly understandable layout, it provides an easy to use interface allowing fast fan profile selection and boot priority as well as displaying important system status information. These range from hardware type, temperatures, voltages and fan speeds. Hit the blue button at the top right to either ‘save settings’ and restart, ‘load default settings’ and restart or enter the ‘Advanced Mode’.
The main EFI BIOS screen.
The Advanced Mode gives the full BIOS style control we all know and love. The main page provides BIOS and system information as well as system time and date settings and security options.
Advanced Mode.
Ai Tweaker is the meat of the BIOS providing full control of voltages, clock speeds and timing options. It’s straight forward and simple to use.
Ai Tweaker.
Moving along one more tab to the Advanced section allows adjustment of features onboard the motherboard.
The Advanced section.
For example in CPU configuration the user can adjust various CPU related features such as cool ‘n’ quiet.
Example of CPU adjustment.
The Monitor area provides monitoring of various aspects of the E35M1-I Deluxe and also allows adjustment of fan speed control and profiles as well as allowing the activation/deactivation of Anti Surge Support. The Anti Surge Support is another ASUS feature designed to protect valuable devices and the motherboard itself from damage caused by surges from your PSU.
Useful monitoring suite.
Boot order, start up screen and other related features are controlled in the Boot section.
Boot section.
Bios flashing can be done in the Tool section via the use of the ‘ASUS EZ Flash 2 Utility’. I’ve used it many times in the past and been perfectly happy with it. The ‘ASUS O.C. Profile’ section is located here too and allows the user to save successful overclocks that can be called up at the touch of a button. Perhaps a little superfluous when present on a motherboard like this but useful to have nonetheless.
BIOS flashing options and OC Profiles reside here.
Setup and overclocking
CPU: Onboard AMD Zacate dual core @ 1.6GHz
RAM: 4gb OCZ DDR3 1333mhz
HDD: 160gb WD 7200rpm SATA HDD
Optical drive: HP DVDRW and Liteon Bluray/HDDVD combi drive
CPU cooler: Onboard fanless ASUS design
PSU: Nexus RX8500 850w (120w pico PSU when installed in Hoojum case)
Onboard GPU: AMD HD 6310
Offboard GPU: Gainward GTX260 192SP
Case: DimasTech Bench/Test Table Easy V2.5 for main performance testing and within a Hoojum Cubit 3 for thermal testing.
RAM: 4gb OCZ DDR3 1333mhz
HDD: 160gb WD 7200rpm SATA HDD
Optical drive: HP DVDRW and Liteon Bluray/HDDVD combi drive
CPU cooler: Onboard fanless ASUS design
PSU: Nexus RX8500 850w (120w pico PSU when installed in Hoojum case)
Onboard GPU: AMD HD 6310
Offboard GPU: Gainward GTX260 192SP
Case: DimasTech Bench/Test Table Easy V2.5 for main performance testing and within a Hoojum Cubit 3 for thermal testing.
Overclocking
The AMD Zacate dual core chip residing in the E35M1-I Deluxe has a stock speed of 1.6GHz and whilst it certainly isn’t going to be labelled as an extreme piece of hardware it’s always fun to see what added value you can get from your purchase.
Clocking the board was a straightforward process. In typical ASUS fashion you get auto overclocking functionality to instantly extract additional performance from your hardware. A restart from BIOS and a 10 second wait later and the board has pushed the chip to 1.68GHz – a 5% boost isn’t great but as an effortless freebie it’ll do.
I thought there should at least be a little more so entered the Ai Tweaker section of the BIOS again and started adjusting voltages and clock speeds. It’s bus clock didn’t want to play past 110MHz – regardless of voltage changes and other tweaks the system would either refuse to boot, boot with default stock clocks or blue screen as it tried to get into windows.
So there you have it – a 1.76GHz clockspeed from a 0.35v voltage boost and bus clock of 110MHz. That’s 80MHz over the previous ‘auto overclock’ and 160MHz over the stock 1.6GHz clock and a 10% boost in clockspeed over stock.
It’ll be interesting to see how this translates into additional performance.
Installation
Installation onto the Bench table was typically a simple affair but the same could also be said regarding the Hoojum. The integrated nature of the components on the board (only the memory needs installing) and the fact the heatsink is large but low slung meant that clearance within the case was excellent. The optical drive and HDD made it into the case with no issues and all of the ancillary cabling was successfully connected – excellent stuff!
Sound
The E35M1-I Deluxe was as good as I’d hoped – that large heatsink meant that at normal clock speeds the board could run passively with no issues. When overclocked and using a fan of course there will be added noise but the automatic fan control on the board is just as impressive as the other ASUS motherboards I’ve tested. Not only that but you can also set various profiles ranging from silent to performance cooling and also fully adjust fan settings and create profiles of your very own. The tailored nature of this system really impresses!
Temps
Temperatures are best described as good across the board. As a fanless set up temperatures were obviously higher but the heatsink did a fairly decent job of keeping them in control – particularly when idling. These were of course increased under overclocked conditions but as you can see they weren’t by that much and still not high enough for me to be concerned.
Adding a fan really pushed load temperatures down by a noticeable amount. 23C difference at stock clocks and 27C difference when the CPU was at 1.76GHz.
Either way you look at it the performance is quite impressive.
HD playback, PCMark05 and SuperPi
I tested AV and desktop performance initially using Futuremark’s PCMark05, SuperPi, Cinebench and the x264 HD benchmark.
I primarily tried the board as a HD video source and used a Liteon Bluray/HDDVD combi drive for testing. After installing the relevant PowerDVD suite that came with the drive I tested a couple of disks from my collection. Playback was smooth throughout with no stuttering or slow down. I also tested a few HD video clips off the web with very similar results… seems like UVD3 is doing a good job here!
Now onto the benchmarks. Up first is PCMark05 a mixed test of general desktop duties to give a general overview of office style performance.
It really didn’t do as poorly as I’d suspected and in fact does a commendable job. Of course the Zacate E350 processor is not the most gutsy number cruncher around but it still returns a reasonable result reflecting numbers I’ve seen elsewhere for similar kind of hardware. In real terms general desktop performance is pretty good but of course ultimately highly intensive processes such as rendering and encoding will pose a problem and consequently effect the score.
SuperPi was next. This program offers a good impression of how raw clockspeed increases effect performance.
Well, somewhat unsurprisingly the SuperPi performance is not world beating. That being said at least you’re able to see the boost offered by overclocking here.
Cinebench and x264 HD
The Cinebench testing suite followed. Rendering a 3D image is quite a difficult task so this is a good test of raw performance. It’s multithreaded too so will fully utilise all the cores available to render the 300,000 polygons across around 2,000 objects in the scene.
Now we can see the limitation of that low power Zacate. It certainly isn’t a high performance chip – clocking offers a result that’s around 10% which is reflected in the clockspeed increase. However, when you consider the power usage over that X2 255 the scores make sense.
The final desktop test was the x264 HD benchmark. This ‘real time’ video encoding test makes four passes over two different files to convert a DVD quality MPEG-2 video into an x264 video file. I took the average of each of the four results from the two groups to generate the final result.
Once again it’s pulling up the rear but performance per watt is perfectly commendable.
3DMark06 and Vantage
Gaming tests are next but have been a little cut down due to the performance limitations of the hardware (the 4x speed full length PCIe socket will almost certainly have a negative effect on performance) and the fact I wanted to test the onboard HD 6310 GPU as well as the GTX260.
Up first is Futuremark’s 3DMark06 benchmark program.
The scores reflect what I suspected although not to the extent I feared. I’m sure it’s a combination of CPU limitation and that slow PCIe slot. The HD 6310 result is more than acceptable for a base specification HD GPU and manages to at least match if not better the ION setups even when one is on the other end of a 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo based dual core Pentium processor. That’s actually pretty impressive.
Next is Futuremark’s newer 3DMark Vantage benchmark program.
Again there’s a deficit as expected but here the gap is even less which surprised me. I think Vantage may be leaning on the GPU more than the CPU here. I did run the test multiple times and this represents the average accurately. As you can see the HD 6310 really suffers during the Vantage run. It’s obvious that this isn’t a gaming GPU.
Far Cry 2
Moving onto actual games – our results here represent the average frame rate produced by the system.
Far Cry 2 up first – using this game for testing is quite straight forward due to the inbuilt benchmarking program.
As well as using the GTX260 I also tested the HD 6310 GPU at various quality settings @ 1280×1024 to see if I could manage a realistically playable setting.
At 1280×1024 the HD 6310 really struggles at the highest and even medium settings. Smooth(ish) playback starts to appear at the lowest settings but with 2x AA still enabled. Turning off AA results in a framerate that would allow someone to play the game – it is possible, but not pretty! Overclocking does provide a slight increase in performance but in all honesty it’s barely noticeable.
The GTX260 at the highest quality settings almost matches the performance of the HD 6310 running the lowest game settings. The framerate is almost identical regardless of resolution which I think could be related to a bottleneck caused by that 4x PCIe slot. Overclocking did actually provide a little extra performance which pushed the average framerate up by around 2 FPS across the board. Although that doesn’t sound like much that does represent an increase of slightly more than 10%.
Unreal Tournament III
The other game on test is Unreal Tournament III. This is a game that scales well as clockspeed increases.
The onboard GPU manages to provide almost completely smooth playback once the graphics settings are set to the very lowest available levels. At medium and high settings the performance simply doesn’t cut it.
Using the GTX260 it seems that bottlenecking isn’t as much of an issue as we saw with Far Cry 2. Performance is solid but not spectacular and almost seems like another combination of limitations caused by raw CPU performance and that 4x PCIe slot. Overclocking provided a small boost in performance.
Conclusion
In all honesty there’s not much to say on this one. This little board is a feature packed and fully capable little media machine. It’s HD playback credentials seem fully realised and with the inclusion of certain key features it’s both futureproof and incredibly flexible.
Some might consider the £128 price tag as a little much but bearing in mind you wouldn’t have to purchase a CPU, GPU, bluetooth dongle, wireless card or even heatsink you could potentially construct a fully fledged media machine with Bluray capability for very close to £300.
They may also say that the raw performance offered by the combination of the E350 dual core and HD 6310 is weak and certainly no good for gaming or encoding. Of course that’s entirely true but as that’s simply not the focus of this piece of hardware I’m not going to hold that against it to any great degree.
The excellent ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe.
I’ve been impressed by the relevant and up to date specs which include the brilliant little AMD Fusion APU with all of the processing capability sat on one tiny and economical chip. (Indeed during testing the total system draw was tiny – it ranged from around 38w when idling and rose to no more than 55w when loaded up… absolutely marvellous!). I also like the convenient features including inbuilt Bluetooth 3.0 and N class wireless. Then there’s the USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gbps functionality… the list just goes on and on.
From there we move onto the biggest (quite literally) bonus feature of all – that impressive heatsink. I honestly thought the board would at the very least require some direct airflow but with either a little reasonable space around it or an exhaust fan in reasonable proximity the sink manages to dissipate the heat load. I suppose when you consider the relatively tiny amount of power going to the APU and chipset it’s unsurprising that it copes so nicely.
All in all I’ve been hugely impressed with the whole bundle. The ability to essentially run in total effortless silence without issue while playing your HD movie or allowing you to surf the net is truly excellent then add ASUS’ own 3 year warranty to that and it’s just the cherry on the top!
Pros
+ Very impressive specification
+ USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gbps support
+ Low power design
+ Inbuilt HD 6310 graphics
+ Fanless design works excellently
+ Good board layout
+ Inbuilt Wireless N
+ Great looking
+ Useful utilities
+ HDMI and optical digital outputs
+ 3 Year Warranty
Cons
– Cost might be a touch high for some
– Some may want more absolute performance
+ Very impressive specification
+ USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gbps support
+ Low power design
+ Inbuilt HD 6310 graphics
+ Fanless design works excellently
+ Good board layout
+ Inbuilt Wireless N
+ Great looking
+ Useful utilities
+ HDMI and optical digital outputs
+ 3 Year Warranty
Cons
– Cost might be a touch high for some
– Some may want more absolute performance
I choose to give the ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe the Vortez Gold Award.
