Fusion E-350 Review: ASUS E35M1-I Deluxe, ECS HDC-I and Zotac FUSION350-A-E
by Ian Cutress on July 14, 2011 11:00 AM ESTOn the outside, this Zotac Fusion board mimics the view I see in almost all of Zotac's product range - mini-ITX, jam-packed full of features, and for a little price premium. Some of this is true - the FUSION350-A-E has a Cooler Master designed passive cooler, SO-DIMM memory to improve space on the board, and a Wifi card with a pair of antenna. For the most part, however, I've found this board has underperformed. In terms of performance, it's nothing spectacular (or worse than the rest at times), and doesn't offer anything significantly different. It needs a fresh injection of BIOS and software, as well as more robust controllers to become a more desirable product.
Visual Inspection
On the front of it, looking at the Zotac board and seeing such a small cooler compared to the ASUS board can be a bit puzzling. On show are the obvious copper heatpipes, and a Cooler Master logo, showing the joining of the two companies to produce the passive heatsink. Along the top sports a USB 3.0 header, a CPU fan header (a chipset requirement, even if it is a passive solution), and the two SO-DIMM memory slots.
Along the right hand side is the 24-pin power connector, the clear CMOS jumper, a 4-pin system fan header and the front panel connectors. Nothing too out of the ordinary here, though there is space to put the SATA connectors here rather than above the open ended PCIe x4 slot.
The open ended PCIe x4 slot is essentially what a PCIe x16 slot is when it is in x4 mode. So there is scope to add some GPUs here. Above this are the four SATA 6 Gbps connectors and the mini-PCIe wifi card, which is hooked into the antenna holders on the I/O panel automatically. The board also sports a COM header, a USB 2.0 header, a SPDIF out header, and the front panel audio header, all in the corner around the PCIe x4 and the I/O panel.
Nothing too different on the I/O panel compared to other models, except the USB 3.0 ports powered by a VIA controller are directly below a legacy PS2 port. This motherboard supports HDMI, DisplayPort and DVI from the onboard connectors (VGA requires a converter). Alongside four USB 2.0 ports is the eSATA 3 Gbps, a gigabit Ethernet port, 8-channel HD audio and an optical SPDIF output.
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CZroe - Saturday, July 16, 2011 - link
Regarding the Asus board not having HDMI1.4, you never seem to confirm that the others do or don't. have it. Should I assume they do or don't?"...and a Wifi card with a pair of antenna"
Antennae is the plural of "antenna." ;)
You wonder about the VGA reference in the Asus board's BIOS, but other boards clearly include a DVI to VGA adapter. Even if the Asus board doesn't include it, it could be referring to that unless it is DVI-D only. Does it support a VGA adapter?
"how overclocking effects gaming"
"Effects" should be affects.
Akdor 1154 - Saturday, July 16, 2011 - link
Given these boards are clearly pushed at the HTPC usage scenario (HDMI, TOSLINK optical outputs, one of the most powerful onboard GPUs ever made, passive cooling, etc) it is very disappointing to not see any of this functionality tested out.How did they perform decoding video? Given the high CPU usage on network utilization, is there any issue playing high bitrate content from a NAS somewhere else? Can I encode? How did the GPU perform on OpenCL tasks (namely, again, content encoding)? Can the PCI-E slot take a TV tuner? What about Flash, if only for Youtube? How about upscaling low-resolution content?
And for the love of God, given two passive and one active cooling setups, how did they fare in a REAL case? Don't know many people who run their HTPCs in open-air, and the nice small cases available can be quite restrictive in terms of airflow - so will the passively cooled boards even be suitable for these? How about fan noise? It would seem Zotac and ASUS went passive because of noise concerns, so how bad was the ECS's little 40mm fan?
What about WiFi performance? You complained about one only supporting HDMI 1.3b; did the others support 1.4 (and hence 3D) perfectly? Did you test this? There was an issue with Windows' audio buffer latency - it would have been great to see this actually tested out to see if it made any difference, instead of a vague "some people might be able to hear it". Did the problematic board skip at all?
Summing up the lack of insight in the way this review was carried out.. <b>did you even test Blu-Ray playback</b>?
I'd love to see this information added to this review - I'd also be interested to know how many people you think would purchase this intending to run Metro 2033 on it.
And finally it seems your comment form is broken in Opera.
evolucion8 - Sunday, July 17, 2011 - link
And the odd thing is when they were testing its IGP performance with Metro 2033, calling it "the Crysis of DX11 until Crysis 2 arrives, so Crysis 2 haven't been released yet? Mishmash of old and new sentences of old articles glued together. Pretty much the same thing that apoppin does on Allienbabletech and his horrible lack of focus and handbacked marketing propagandism.Plus the fact that the review has a lack of objectivity as it isnt compared to its direct rival the Atom/ION combination. I wonder who will stick a GTX 580, play games or will use it for WinRaR archiving. Atom and Fusion aren't powerhouses, are CPU's for very basic stuff and HTPC and they would had done tests in that arena, like web browsing tests, movie playback, Flash tests, USB and HD performance etc. Totally irrelevant, how low can this go?! Definitively one of the worst reviews I've ever seen.
Overall, a HTPC oriented system tested with unconventional tests against much more expensive and powerful solutions. It is like taking a Ferrari and test its performance under water and in outerspace and comparing it against the Columbia Shuttle and Navy's Nuclear Submarine. Things had gone under spiral lately and integrity has been long gone in here, a pity.
PR3ACH3R - Sunday, July 17, 2011 - link
@ Ian CutressThanks for the review,
I think you touched upon a few important points like thermal performance, but as a whole, this review leaves a lot to be desired.
it is incomplete, & fails to address what the target audience of these products, wants to know.
Did this review help me decide what board to buy for HTPC use?
I'm afraid not.
Ichinisan - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
It's pretty clear why the Asus BIOS mentions "VGA." The Asus and Zotac boards have DVI-I connectors, so they have extra pins for analog and work with a VGA adapters.dakky21 - Saturday, November 5, 2011 - link
I registered on this board just to say that... not ALL boards have overclock function !!!!I just bought HDC-I v1.0 yesterday, in fact only because I read it had overclock option, but what a cold shower - it does not have. At least not where it should be, under Frequency/Voltage control in BIOS.
dakky21 - Sunday, November 6, 2011 - link
To clarify, my board has BIOS version 2.10.1208 (03/24/2011) and there is NO Turbo Mode in Frequency/Voltage control. No way of getting around 33% more speed. Unfortunately, I bought this board just because of that. Never again trust reviewers or ECS...