MSI and Sapphire are the latest actors to jump on the AMD Fusion train by announcing motherboards with integrated AMD E-350 APUs. Both companies focus on the Mini-ITX format but functionality and design separate the two, among other the cooling and memory technology.
MSI E350IA-E45 use only desktop components and beside the integrated E-350 APU with dual 1.6 GHz Bobcat cores and Radeon HD 6310 GPU we find dual DDR3-1333 slots, a single PCIe x16 slot (x4 bandwidth), four SATA 6,0 Gbps connectors and two USB 3.0 ports.
The cooling has a cubish shape with a small 40mm fan in the middle, its great mass should make it more than sufficient even at low RPMs. The circuit board has a dark brown color and will start shipping in the coming weeks.
Sapphire Pure White Fusion E350M1W measures 17x17cm as the Mini-ITX format dictates, but Sapphire has chosen to use more of the space available and used less spacious SO-DIMM slots. This made room for an extra mini PCI-Express x1 port next to the full-size PCIe x16 slot (x4 bandwidth).
The motherboard supports Bluetooth, Gigabit ethernet, five SATA 6.0 Gbps ports and two USB 3.0 ports. The cooler is smaller than the one found on MSI’s motherboard, but should be good enough for cooling the energy efficient E-350 APU.
To make use of the integrated graphics processor both companies has chosen to supply the boards with HDMI, DVI and VGA outputs. There is also support for analog 7.1 audio.
