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Thread: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

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    Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Designed for the laptop market, Gigabyte shoehorns the AMD Brazos platform into a mini-ITX board. We give you the lowdown.
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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    A good start for the Brazos but two very silly design decisions:

    1. A fan. This board is built for HTPC - passive heatsink only

    2. The SATA sockets. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to place them in the middle of the board? SATA socket belong on the edge. Now for an HTPC it is probably unlikely that the PCI-E slot will be used for a graphics card but could be used for a dual TV tuner. So in a small case where airflow will be crucial using this board means you have to snake the SATA cables over a the TV tuner card or at 90 degree bend over the memory

    I think I will wait until better designs emerge from Asus, ASrock etc

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    For me, it's the price that does it.

    If someone comes out with one around £100 (preferably on the cheaper side!), I think I'll look at it seriously. One way to save money - drop the USB3.

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by cjs150 View Post
    A good start for the Brazos but two very silly design decisions:

    1. A fan. This board is built for HTPC - passive heatsink only

    2. The SATA sockets. Who on earth thought it was a good idea to place them in the middle of the board? SATA socket belong on the edge. Now for an HTPC it is probably unlikely that the PCI-E slot will be used for a graphics card but could be used for a dual TV tuner. So in a small case where airflow will be crucial using this board means you have to snake the SATA cables over a the TV tuner card or at 90 degree bend over the memory

    I think I will wait until better designs emerge from Asus, ASrock etc
    1. I have seen somewhere advice from Gigabyte that the fan is a precaution and in a well ventilated case (often not the scenario with ITX) that it can run passive without issue.

    2. Depends on the case... the Antec ISK I intend to use does not suffer from this problem as the cables must rise vertically to the drives which are above the level of motherboard, on the motherboard edge, especially turned 90 degrees as on many desktop boards would actually be worse in this case.

    I'm thinking about getting this board, the Asus one has a monster heatsink, all passive but would be hard to fit in a tiny case I wonder, also it is overkill with built-in wireless (Gigabit wired for media use thanks) and Bluetooth. The Sapphire board uses SO-DIMMS and has a stupid tiny heatsink, and the MSI board has a covered heatsink that wouldn't work well passive... Gigabyte win so far, but yes you never know ASRock may turn a good one out.

    It's worth noting that although Sandy Bridge has been delayed it should be ~£175 for a cheaper ITX H67 board and 35W i3, whilst it would be greater power usage at load the idle draw is not going to be much worse.
    Last edited by kingpotnoodle; 28-02-2011 at 12:16 PM.

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Talking of passive:

    http://news.softpedia.com/news/ECS-I...s-186005.shtml

    Yes I know it's ECS, but it could be OK...

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by tickedon View Post
    For me, it's the price that does it.

    If someone comes out with one around £100 (preferably on the cheaper side!), I think I'll look at it seriously. One way to save money - drop the USB3.
    The MSI E350IA-E45 is around £100 on pre-order on OcUK:
    http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...03&subcat=1949

    It has SATA3.0 and USB3.0 and AFAIK looks to be one of the better value AMD Zacate motherboards.

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH View Post
    The MSI E350IA-E45 is around £100 on pre-order on OcUK:
    http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showpr...03&subcat=1949

    It has SATA3.0 and USB3.0 and AFAIK looks to be one of the better value AMD Zacate motherboards.
    Loud fan according to Anandtech though, and with that enclosed structure it wouldn't run well passive, odd design from MSI.

    I just been looking around as I want to rebuild my old HTPC and I think I'll hang on for Intel to kick the H61 chipset, or revised H67 out of the door, and stretch to the i3 2100T (35W), will be vastly more powerful for not that much more money and should still run pretty cool. The H61/67 chipset is 6.1W, the CPU max 35W and the only other thing I'd put in would be a PCI-E TV card...

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle View Post
    Loud fan according to Anandtech though, and with that enclosed structure it wouldn't run well passive, odd design from MSI.
    The retail motherboard actually has a different heatsink to the one shown in the listing!



    Here is a video of the motherboard when running:

    http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...emp-noise.html


    Quote Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle View Post
    I just been looking around as I want to rebuild my old HTPC and I think I'll hang on for Intel to kick the H61 chipset, or revised H67 out of the door, and stretch to the i3 2100T (35W), will be vastly more powerful for not that much more money and should still run pretty cool. The H61/67 chipset is 6.1W, the CPU max 35W and the only other thing I'd put in would be a PCI-E TV card...
    It depends on what you are using your HTPC for. If it is for video playback and web-browsing I would not go with a Core i3 2100T as the CPU is around £100 alone. The modern IGPs negate the need for a very fast CPU for such purposes anyway. On top of this a Core i3 2100T and its associated motherboard will consume much more power too and would dump more heat into the case as a result.

    Even the cheapest H67 ITX motherboard is around £70 and lacks USB3.0 too. This makes it £70 more expensive than the MSI Zacate motherboard and even if an H61 mini ITX motherboard was released I doubt it will be under £50.
    £50 to £70 is actually considerably more expensive and would cover the cost of an Antec ISK300 case and a 65W or 150W DC-DC PSU:

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/166838...edium=products

    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/193759...edium=products
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 28-02-2011 at 02:50 PM.

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH View Post
    The retail motherboard actually has a different heatsink to the one shown in the listing!
    [/url]
    Ahh yeah that's a better heatsink, similar to the Gigabyte one :-)

    But mighty LOL at testing an ITX board with a 6870 and a 1200W PSU... no wonder their power numbers are 50-60W!

    It depends on what you are using your HTPC for. If it is for video playback and web-browsing I would not go with a Core i3 2100T as the CPU is around £100 alone...... Antec ISK300 case and a 65W or 150W DC-DC PSU:
    Already got an ISK-300 from my old homebrew server I'm replacing with an HP Microserver, so I'm planning to re-use that.

    2 things other than raw grunt attract me to the Core i3/H6x over Fusion - HDMI 1.4a (my AV reciever is 1.4a, so then I'd only need a 3D TV just in case it ever becomes compelling) and the baked in encoding abilities, it would futureproof me more and mean I won't feel like rebuilding again anytime soon! USB 3.0 I can probably live without on my media PC, storage is all done on my server, and I can always plug a USB 3.0 drive into my other PC.

    I'm probably going to go the £190 ish for an Intel H67 board with USB 3.0, eSATA, a proper Intel Gigabit NIC and then drop a 2100T in and use a low profile heatsink along with 2 low speed fans in the ISK, I reckon it'll be fine the only other things will be a low profile Blackgold TV card, an SSD for the OS and a spinny drive for recorder storage cache before it's archived to the server. Probably won't even bother with an optical drive, I have a separate Blu-ray player anyway.

    Edit: Regarding power draw:

    http://www.missingremote.com/review/...tx-motherboard

    ~15W idle, <45W load, although that's without TV card.

    And the CIR header is interesting!
    Last edited by kingpotnoodle; 28-02-2011 at 03:28 PM.

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle View Post
    Edit: Regarding power draw:

    http://www.missingremote.com/review/...tx-motherboard

    ~15W idle, <45W load, although that's without TV card.
    TBH,since different websites use different methods to measure power draw it would be better to wait until some more reviews of the Core i3 2100T are released which compare it to other CPUs.

    Anyway, here is a comparison of various processors including the E350,D525 and Core i3 2100:

    http://techreport.com/articles.x/20401/5

    Look at the power consumption results for the E350 and D525 with a DC-DC power supply and integrated graphics. Hexus used a CX400W for testing the power consumption with the Gigabyte motherboard.
    Last edited by CAT-THE-FIFTH; 28-02-2011 at 04:12 PM.

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH View Post
    TBH,since different websites use different methods to measure power draw it would be better to wait until some more reviews of the Core i3 2100T are released which compare it to other CPUs.

    Anyway, here is a comparison of various processors including the E350,D525 and Core i3 2100:

    http://techreport.com/articles.x/20401/5

    Look at the power consumption results for the E350 and D525 with a DC-DC power supply and integrated graphics. Hexus used a CX400W for testing the power consumption with the Gigabyte motherboard.
    Oh I'd definitely be using a brick and DC-DC, the one with the ISK-300 which is pretty efficient, my current D510MO build with it is <20W with 2 spinny drives. The Core i3 2100T, 2.5GHz and 35W is a good bet I reckon, I will see more reviews before I buy anyway as need to wait for B3 stepping boards get in stock at good retailers... if the whole box is 20-30W idle I'll be happy enough, better than the 70-80W my current mATX HTPC is sucking out the wall!!

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by kingpotnoodle View Post
    Oh I'd definitely be using a brick and DC-DC, the one with the ISK-300 which is pretty efficient, my current D510MO build with it is <20W with 2 spinny drives. The Core i3 2100T, 2.5GHz and 35W is a good bet I reckon, I will see more reviews before I buy anyway as need to wait for B3 stepping boards get in stock at good retailers... if the whole box is 20-30W idle I'll be happy enough, better than the 70-80W my current mATX HTPC is sucking out the wall!!
    TBH,I don't see the point of reviews using high wattage ATX PSUs to test the power consumption of Atom,Zacate or CULV based systems. At least they should be using DC-DC or 100W ~ 200W 1U PSUs as these are the sort of PSUs you would find in SFF cases.

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by CAT-THE-FIFTH View Post
    TBH,I don't see the point of reviews using high wattage ATX PSUs to test the power consumption of Atom,Zacate or CULV based systems. At least they should be using DC-DC or 100W ~ 200W 1U PSUs as these are the sort of PSUs you would find in SFF cases.
    Definitely, it's so misleading... high W supplies must be managing ~50% efficiency with such low loads, or worse.

    I don't think many people realise that the 80+ efficiency rating thing is generally only for loads over 20% of capacity. Assuming Hexus' 400W unit is genuinely 80+ certified, that only means it promises 80% efficiency over 80W draw, still 100W at the wall.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_PLUS

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Looking at some of the other mini-ITX boards now available for Brazos they all have the sata sockets in roughly the same place.

    Obviously this is based on a reference design - but it is still a lousy design decision

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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Interesting to see the performance with the discrete gfx card. I was somewhat surprised at how CPU bound this was. I guess we won't be seeing any Rock Extreme CTX pro type builds centred around this CPU type, which is fine. Let's hope that the full fat Bobcat is at least comparable to the current Gen Intel stuff....

    I'd like to have seen some benchies that include media streaming because one application for this is going to be HTPC. Smooth 1080P playback? Apologies if I have missed the analysis that says it's smooth or not if it is in there.... I've read it once and flicked through it again but no such metric sticks out to me.

    Also, I'll ask the perennial question..... No - not can it play Crysis, but can it fold....If so, how much?
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    Re: Reviews - Gigabyte E350N-USB3 AMD Fusion APU motherboard review

    Quote Originally Posted by Tattysnuc View Post
    Let's hope that the full fat Bobcat is at least comparable to the current Gen Intel stuff....
    This is the "full-fat" Bobcat, I assume you mean Llano, the Stars+ cored desktop/laptop Fusion CPU? Which will be much faster.

    Bobcat like this is for SFF and ultraportables.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tattysnuc View Post
    I'd like to have seen some benchies that include media streaming because one application for this is going to be HTPC. Smooth 1080P playback? Apologies if I have missed the analysis that says it's smooth or not if it is in there.... I've read it once and flicked through it again but no such metric sticks out to me.
    The integrated graphics compare to a 5450, video quality is about the same. Smooth, basic enhancements but not as good as a more powerful graphics card. However the IQ benefits from high end cards over this level require good eyes and screens to see...

    Quote Originally Posted by Tattysnuc View Post
    Also, I'll ask the perennial question..... No - not can it play Crysis, but can it fold....If so, how much?
    As someone who pays their electricity bill I don't fold... but I'd wager it's pretty crap, even per Watt.

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