Sapphire PURE FUSION MINI E350 Pro Reviews

PURE WHITE FUSION E350 (IPC-E350M1W) and PURE FUSION MINI E350 (IPC-E350M1) mainboards are more typical rather than unique products. In fact, they can’t boast any remarkable advantages that would make them stand out among others. On the other hand, they are free from any obvious drawbacks, too, so if you are happy with the price and the available slots and controllers, then PURE WHITE FUSION E350 or PURE FUSION MINI E350 (IPC-E350M1) can be a good choice. PURE WHITE FUSION E350 is appealing due to its simple design and moderate power appetites, while PURE FUSION MINI E350 offers a lot of SATA ports, supports USB 3.0, has built-in Bluetooth and an additional Mini-PCIe slot. Note that in their current implementation both mainboards have not the best cooling system, but this issue will likely be resolved in the upcoming BIOS updates.


This time around, it appears that the ITX format has a lot going for it as AMD's Fusion technology has made it possible to combined adequate performance and power saving with a half-decent, usable feature set to make the format an interesting proposition for people wanting to build a very small media platform. It's a real shame that Sapphire didn't include a Wi-Fi card with the Pure Fusion Mini E350, especially as it went to the trouble of adding Bluetooth to the board. Even worse, there's no provision for mounting an aerial(s), should you have brought a third-party Wi-Fi card. Although its early days for AMD's latest technology, it works well and is ideal for very small form factors, something that Sapphire has proved quite nicely with the Pure Fusion Mini E350.

As for the Sapphire Pure Fusion Mini E350, our initial dismay at its SO-DIMM slots was tempered once we studied the whole board. It was probably a concession to enable the mini-PCIe slot, which is useful for adding features like Wi-Fi. Therefore, while the Sapphire has fewer features on paper compared to the ASUS, it is a leaner and in some cases, more appropriate set of features. Unfortunately, the Sapphire tended to finish last or near the bottom in our benchmarks. It may not be significant to the end-user but it was consistently behind the rest. The US$140 price tag is somewhat competitive, but once you factor the need to get SO-DIMM memory (which does cost a little more), the value proposition of the board isn't at the same level of the other models we've seen.

To conclude this review, there are some things I don’t care for about this board. One thing is that this board uses laptop memory. This does give you more room on the board, but laptop memory isn’t always the easiest thing to find. Another gripe is that this board’s processor doesn’t support a 64bit OS. This does give you some limitations on the programs that you’ll be able to run, and the amount of memory that you can use. Honestly though, these are some pretty small gripes. If you are the type of person that isn’t going to be using this to any Folding or high-end gaming, then this will be a great system to start with. Also, if you need a cheap backup system, but you still want some nice features, this will be a great motherboard for your system. I am considering using this myself for a backup system.

The Fusion APU while still new, is definitely a big contender on the block. The Atom processor has been the big man on campus with low power systems, HTPCs and netbooks but now with the release of the AMD Fusion APU, I would not be surprised to see a shift in brands for mobile and low power systems. Sapphire did an excellent job of tying in this new processor technology with the features we want and need for the perfect low power platform of the future.