Ryan investigated MSI’s E350IA-E45 AMD Brazos Fusion APU Platform, one of the first non-mobile implementations of the Zacate platform.  Outputs on the mini-ITX board include 8-channel audio with optical and coaxial connections, VGA and HDMI which supports streaming uncompressed audio to a high-end receiver, a single Gigabit NIC (no inbuilt wireless), a single PS2 port, six USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports.  It also sports a cooling fan that was Ryan’s favourite part of the whole system. 

Check out the full review.

 

A non-mobile Zacate for the HTPC fan - Motherboards 2

"The MSI E350IA-E45 mini-ITX Fusion APU motherboard is our first experience with a desktop form factor iteration of AMD’s latest CPU technology and we came away very impressed by the implementation. The board is low cost yet offers features that will prevent your system from being outdated quickly like support for SATA 6.0 Gb/s storage and USB 3.0 devices. With relatively low power consumption and performance that beats the best that Intel’s Atom can throw at it, the MSI E350IA-E45 is a fantastic option for consumer looking for a mini-ITX system."

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