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ASRock E350M1 Brazos Review

by on21 February 2011

Index




The ASRock E350M1 board

It's an ITX form factor with 17cm on each side with just one PCIe 2.0 x16 slot which of course is only connected with four lanes. The first thing I noticed that this is one of the very few non-solid capactiors designs in the retail market. While it's quite obvious that OEMs will save a cent or two by using cheaper components, it does not make much sense in the retail market, if the price of such board will go up 50 cents more or not, at least for tech savvy customers it wouldn't matter. The APU is covered by a small cooler with an awefully noisy 4900rpm 4cm fan. Interestingly the board features the 24pin power-connector, which could be considerer overkill. Most legacy connectors are gone, but there is still a useless serial connector on the board. The FCH does support six SATA ports, but ASRock only uses five. In the right corner there is empty space for a USB 3.0 chip, so expect this board also with USB 3.0 support after all.

ASRock E350M1 front



The backpanel is ASRock standard with a useless PS/2 port and more than useless VGA connector. Sorry folks, it just doesn't make sense to convert a digital signal into an analog which is then converted back to digital inside the monitor except you are the rare one still using a Cathode Ray Tube. There would be also be space enough to fit two more USB 2.0 ports.

 

ASRock E350M1 backpanel


 


Last modified on 21 February 2011
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