Asus AM1I-A Features
The AM1 platform’s advantages are supposed to be that it’s cheap and converts very little energy into heat. Asus primarily caters to that theme, though its AM1I-A is the most expensive board in this round-up at $55.
Some builders might even argue that the AM1I-A is the most feature-rich, with both DVI and HDMI outputs on the back panel, legacy serial and VGA ports, and two additional USB 2.0 ports on the I/O panel compared to most competitors. And most users wouldn’t even notice anything missing, since the PCIe x4 slot has an open end to support longer PCIe x16 graphics cards.
Keep looking, and you'll find headers for a second serial port and parallel port internally, just like the 486s of yore, in addition to the two internal USB 2.0 dual-port headers. Yet, the one reminder that this is a fully modern platform, a front-panel USB 3.0 header, is left blank. Nearby there's an empty pad for the controller that would have driven the extra connectivity. Fortunately, Kabini does support a couple of USB 3.0 ports natively, and Asus exposes this functionality on the AM1I-A's back panel.
In total, the AM1I-A has two more I/O panel USB 2.0 ports and one more serial port—also on the I/O panel—compared to its competitors. It also includes two SATA cables, which are perfectly sufficient for AMD’s Socket FS1b SoCs, which enable two SATA 6Gb/s ports.