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The Asus E35M1-I Deluxe motherboard arrives in a chunky blue box with details of the specifications on all sides.
Inside we have literature, a software disc, back plate, 2 sata cables and 2 wireless antenna.
This board differs when compared to the other Fusion products we have reviewed so far. Asus have removed the small cooling fan and have instead created a monster heatsink, which is actually that substantial it is passively cooled.
While Sapphire opted for SO-DIMMS on their Fusion board, Asus have went for full size slots, meaning you can use any desktop based DDR3 directly in the board. It also requires a single 4 pin power connector, right behind one of the heatsinks. In an overclocked state we managed to push the DDR3 memory to 1600mhz, which is well in excess of listed AMD specifications.
There are five SATA 3 connectors, all of which are 6GB/s capable.
Next to the main power connector is the front panel connector. The Asus motherboard has a discrete PCI-E x 16 graphics slot but it only delivers x4 bandwidth. Not a failing of this particular board, but a universal AMD design decision.
The motherboard has several fan headers tucked in behind the right hand section of the heatsink.
To give an idea of the diminutive size of the board, we have fitted 4GB of Corsair Dominator DDR3 above, with the additional cooling fan. This can be used in the case, but unfortunately it does block the discrete slot.
Connectivity is very strong on this ASUS board. We have several USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 ports, DVI out, and an older PS2 connector. There is also a hybrid eSATA/USB 2.0 connector and a lan 10/100/1000 port for networking connectivity. Additionally there is a bluetooth transmitter and wireless header. There are also audio out connectors with optical S/PDIF.
