Oh, another quick question. It sounds like from the earlier discussion that the Seasonic SS-400ET was used for the review. But in the test setup part, it says a PicoPSU 120 + 60W brick was used. So was it the Seasonic or the Pico?

the pico according to the review.

i think the reason the seasonic was mistaken was because it's mentioned in the previous page explaining ac to dc conversion. i fell for it too until i took a closer look at the test system component list.

The Tech Report's review is up. Using a no-name (nMEDIAPC) 60W switcher+brick for the PSU, they saw 14W idle.

The board they used is probably more efficient than the one tested by SPCR. The trouble is that they didn't get the same version MSI sells to the public so we don't know if these 14W are indicative of what one could expect from the actual product.
Does anyone know if the blue cover and the fan can be removed from MSI's board by the way?

Wait, what? Searching google for MSI E350IA-E45 shows that it's for sale... Granted, apparently it's not available at any of the popular vendors like amazon or newegg.

the board is a early sample, the retail ones will have the bigger heatsink. presumably everything else will remain the same so 14w idle should be achievable, msi have proved that they are one of the more efficient motherboard makers.

a good review too, i especially like the power consumption graphs, switching from the 610w psu to the picopsu reduced power consumption by about 50%!

Not quite. They switched the PSU as well as took out the video card.

Another kind of interesting data point...Anandtech reviewed HP's dm1z E-350 based laptop. The 55WH battery lasted ~500 minutes while idling. That averages to 6.6W DC while idling....with an LCD display. The DC power while playing x264 at 720p averaged 11.9W. So, the potential is there for a really decent, low idle and load power, media center appliance.

oops.

mobile platforms are impressive indeed, one of the advantages of buying a nettop is that it will most likely use less power than a custom mitx build.

Yes, and I don't get it: how do they do it??

If we take just the cpu and a mitx board. Shouldn't those components be pretty much the same in terms of power draw as the analogous setup in a notebook/nettop? So, assume we have the same CPU and both using integrated graphics. Where do the additional power savings come from, specifically?? The motherboards should not have that much difference, right? So then how? Is it the hard drive, the memory?

a few things that come to mind:
sodimms
switching off things like usb, wifi, audio(?), touchpad(?), keyboard(?)
less i/o ports
less pci lanes?
binned cpus/apus
mobile version of the hudson chipset?
mobile audio?
no mouse

when your power draw is so low all the little things add up... probably.

Excellent review. I've read other Brazos articles and you guys just have the best, all articles really

My buddy just purchased the HP dm1z laptop with the AMD E-350 and he's a big fan. His thoughts after I showed him the Anandtech review:


Lawrence, did you check for an updated driver? I briefly checked the article but didn't see anything besides the normal "run the newest BIOS" in the testing procedures.

Im about to build a htpc/nas probably with the amd fusion e-350 and a 4or5 2tb westerndigital green hds in raid 5.

What i would like to know is how it performs when playing a 50gig blueray disc with TrueHD audio in 7.1 surround throu the hdmi ?
will performance be the same as when the analog ports is used or will cpu utalization rise ?

Also do anyone of you know if such a raid array will slow things down much when playing back blueray hd 1080p? Will i need a raid controller card or am i going to be just fine with software raid ?

Another "how low can you go" power datapoint - Anandtech reviews Sony Vaio and MSI E-350 laptops.

Sony's average idle power is 5.1W DC and uses 10W DC when playing H.264 @ 720p.

Merkill, here's Anantech's initial E-350 review and their comments on video decode/BD CPU utilization, etc..

Ok new question. (At least, I think; not 100% sure if anyone brought this up yet or not)

What is the deal with the display limitations on this motherboard? The official ASUS specs list that both the DVI port and the HDMI port support a maximum of 1920x1080 resolution. What the hell? What is the reason for this (low) limit? Is it the AMD integrated graphics that is to blame?

I briefly came back to checking out this mobo because it would save me $200 over the SB setup I was planning on getting. But I really want to plug in a couple 1920x1200 monitors into my PC at some point in the future. Or at least 1 such screen. So I guess this revelation about the limits puts this mobo out of consideration for me.

that is very strange indeed.

a quick look at the asus website shows that the itx version, the e35m1-i, has 1920x1200 max on the dvi and 1920x1080 max for the hdmi. i've been looking at the asrock boards myself, which lists the dvi and hdmi at 1920x1200 max...

I have been noticing this trend in Intel graphics chips. The top resolution has been trending in the wrong direction for years.

Wow, you're kidding, what a ridiculous trend. I too plan to get a 1920x1200 monitor some time.

Isn't 1920x1200 the typical limit for integrated solutions? Higher resolutions like 2560x1600 require dual-link DVI, which is usually only available on discrete cards.

One exception might be DisplayPort, which I think I've seen on some motherboards with integrated video and supports >1920x1200.

I recollect going higher with VGA.

Analog has infinite resolution, right?

I thought we were talking about digital outputs here. Looking at the manual, 2560x1600@60 seems to be the maximum for the D-Sub output on the E35M1-M Pro.

As others have mentioned, though, only 1920x1080 on DVI according to the manual. I can't imagine it not actually supporting 1920x1200, though. It certainly doesn't seem to be a limitation of the AMD chipset since it sounds like other E-350 boards are capable of this resolution over DVI.

Yeah, we are talking about digital. At least I am. I wouldn't want to use old-school VGA.

Anyway, after much debate on another forum (link), I am thinking the 1080p limit must be a mistake by ASUS. Check out this board, for instance: E35M1-I DELUXE (link). It's very similar, but the specs for DVI state 1920x1200 max (unlike the board in this review). I bet the DVI also supports up to 1200.

The more interesting question is why doesn't it support dual link DVI and the analogous bandwidth for HDMI? That seems stupid... the gpu should handle higher resolutions. I read here (link) that the E-350 APU supports HDMI 1.4a, which has much higher max resolution. I don't understand why it's not implemented in the board itself.

Dual-link DVI probably requires more logic on the APU, more pins and traces, etc. Extra cost and complexity that AMD might not feel is worth it for integrated solutions at this time.

Might also be a way for them to segment their market. For example, if you want to be able to do power-user stuff like run a very high resolution 30" display, AMD may want you to go out and buy one of their fancier discrete cards instead of being able to use a cheap integrated solution. Especially with APUs about to gobble up a good portion of the budget and mainstream video card market in the coming years, keeping features like dual-link DVI, support for >2 monitors, etc. exclusive to their discrete solutions may be one way AMD plans to make sure there will still be some demand out there for these products.

I've been waiting for the E35M1-I DELUXE to drop in price for a fanless HTPC build, instead it's completely unavailable! And there's not much selection of e350's at all. Are they unable to meet demand or are they withdrawing it from the market for some reason? Since I'm making a custom case anyway maybe I should just get the E35M1-M Pro and build a slightly bigger case. But I thought the better heatpiped heatsink on the Deluxe would be worth it. Could it not be?