Tag: Asus

How-To: Upgrading the WiFi on the ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE

My media center has an excellent ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE motherboard, based on the dual-core AMD Fusion E-450 (aka “Zakate”) chip. This motherboard has a built-in AMD Radeon HD 6320 graphics chip which can render full HD content just fine.

ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE

ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE
Mini ITX Motherboard

The only problem is that the WiFi card that comes with the ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE motherboard lacks support for the 5GHz band.

The ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE is a Mini ITX  (6.7×6.7 inches / 17×17 cm) card, which I’ve stashed inside an old Silvestone Sugo SG05 case to make a decent media center PC for cheap. I’ve replaced the single 12cm case fan in the front with a silent Noctua fan and used an SSD instead of a regular harddisk, all in the name of silence.

Being the DELUXE edition, it comes with an onboard wireless card, which is connected by two wires to two antenna connectors sticking out at the back of the case (by the IO shield).

It all sounds great, but there’s a problem: the WiFi card that comes with the motherboard doesn’t support the 5GHz band on my wireless home router.

Read on to find out exactly why this is a problem and how I fixed it! Continue reading

ASUS Sabertooth X79 Qualified Vendors List

In case you’re looking for some compatible memory modules that are confirmed to work on the ASUS Sabertooth X79 motherboard, the Qualified Vendors List (QVL) can be found below, as well as a quick overview of possible memory configurations.

Download the PDF version:
ASUS Sabertooth X79 Qualified Vendors List

 

Lifetime PC User Buys a Mac

For all my life I’ve been loyal to PC. It’s been a pretty good relationship, certainly with its ups and downs like in any relationship. It started back in 1992 with my dad’s i486-based computer, and after that there was no stopping us. Fast forward to today, and I’ve been through more than a dozen machines and numerous rebuilds. I’ve even built a couple of water cooled rigs just for the hell of it.

I’ve been a steadfast supporter of the PC platform and what it stands for. I’ve regularly argued against Apple whenever they’ve done bad things, such as locking down pretty much everything they make to suit their business models, or enforcing unfair censorship of publishers’ content – all the while pointing fingers at other. So, I hope my point is made clear: understand that it would take a lot to make me buy an Apple product.

Just a few days ago in July of 2011, however, I decided to do just that. Continue reading