AMD Zacate mini-ITX Motherboards Preview

Gigabyte GA-E350N-USB3 Preview

Manufacturer: Gigabyte

The first AMD Fusion APUs, codenamed Bobcat, have just been launched. What's more, we've already managed to have a look at a number of mini-ITX motherboards using the dual-core Zacate flavour of the CPU architecture.

First up is Gigabyte's GA-E350N-USB3 board. Much like the Atom-based mini-ITX boards of yesterday, the GA-E350N-USB3 integrates the E-350 APU onto the actual PCB itself. This is because there is simply no socket option available from AMD.


The board's colour scheme follows Gigabyte's traditional blue styling, although the heatsink for the APU and Hudson 'M1' southbridge is a deep silver, much like the heatsinks on Gigabyte's recent P55 and P67-based hardware. Gigabyte explained that it could passively cool the board, but many users don't understand that passive fins still need space to form a convection cycle in order to cool correctly. As such, sticking the board in a tiny mini-ITX case would obstruct the needs of the passive cooling system. Basically, you'll need a fan unless you have plenty of case airflow.

On the plus side, though, it's worth noting that the heatsink is screwed down properly, without push-pins, and this is now a common feature of all Gigabyte motherboards, including those at the low end.