14 DAY TRIAL // ASUS took the time to release various things at IFA 2011, but it also created some other items, such as a certain motherboard featuring AMD chip support and the micro-ATX form factor.
By now, consumers will probably be acquainted with AMD's collection of APUs (accelerated processing units).
Powered by the Fusion technology, they have x86 cores and high-quality graphics (with DirectX 11 support) on the same die.
It so happens that one such APU is the chip that ASUS targeted when it designed its newest small form factor motherboard.
As opposed to most SFF mainboards, designed for the E-350 chip, the newcomer is made for the AMD E-450 dual-core.
This item has a clock speed of 1.65 GHz for both Bobcat cores, support for DDR3-1333 memory and the Radeon HD 6320 DirectX 11 graphics (80 Stream Processors).
That said, the platform itself, named E45M1-M PRO, has a 3-phase VRAM for powering the APU, 24-pin ATX with 4-pin CPU power, a pair of DDR3 DIMM slots (single-channel DDR3) and a large heatsink.
What's more, ASUS threw in five SATA 6.0 Gbps ports, eSATA 6.0 Gbps, HDMI, DVI, D-Sub, 7.1 channel audio, optical SPDIF output, Gigabit Ethernet, Firewire, USB 3.0 (two connectors) and, of course, some USB 2.0 ports.
Finally, the ASUS EPU (energy processing unit) chip is present, so that power efficiency might be even further maximized.
All in all, the ASUS E45M1-M PRO (loaded with UEFI firmware, complete with ASUS' EZ-Mode GUI setup program) measures 244 x 183 mm and comes with four expansion slots (two legacy PCI, one PCI Express x1 and one PCI Express 2.0 x16).
Finally, a fan can be placed on top of the aforementioned heatsink (to better chill the APU and the Hudson M1 chipset).
Unfortunately, though the product page exists already, pricing and availability were left unmentioned.