The E35M1-I Deluxe is bundled with a decent selection of typical ASUS utilities as well as copies of both Adobe Reader 9 and Norton Internet Security 2011.
Driver installation section plus Norton 2011.
The driver and utility disk can be used to individually install items or fully install everything in each section via the 'ASUS InstAll' button at the top right of each tabbed page.
Utility section.
Having installed all relevant drivers I moved onto the utilities. The first of which is the instantly recognisable 'AI Suite II'
This program sits in the notification area ready for the user to either monitor system status or action adjustments aimed at tailoring the system to your needs. We've looked at it before but as it differs slightly due to system variations as well as standard AI Suite II updates I've included a couple of screens to give an idea of what there is available.
Fan Expert allows control of fan speed dependent upon temperatures - particularly useful in an HTPC setup as intrusive fan noise is a gigantic 'no no' when enjoying your favourite movie!
Fan Expert.
Probe II as the name suggests deals with voltage, temperature and fan speed monitoring and threshold control all present in one useful bundle. It can be set up to log Alert status event based on any chosen variable the user decides it wants the program to monitor.
Probe II.
Sensor Recorder is a very useful program - particularly to users either stress testing the motherboard or simply concerned about temperature and voltage related issues . It's a program that once again monitors these levels, temperatures and speeds but presents the results in an easy to understand and immediately recognisable timeline graph. The graph can be adjusted very simply - the two axis can be stretched to better accommodate the result traces that show system state over time.
Sensor Recorder.
The last section of interest in AI Suite II is the ASUS Update area. Here the motherboards BIOS version can be identified, updated and even backed up. Updates can be done in a couple of different ways - either directly from the ASUS website or from a file downloaded elsewhere and now present on this machine. It's typically straight forward and certainly light years ahead of the quite dated 'floppy drive' style update routines.
ASUS Update.
