Asus E35M1-I vs Asrock E350M1

I'm looking to build a Car PC. I've narrowed the motherboard choice down to these two motherboards. The Asus one has many more features at an extra cost obviously. I don't really about these features or the price difference. I'm more interested in getting the fastest boot time possible.

I'm planning on using Windows 7 hibernation for the computer so I want to know which of these motherboards will give me the shortest time between power on and loading windows. The Asrock has "Instant Boot" not sure if this will be of any use to me but hopefully someone can help out...

Cheers
Dan

Either one should do the job. Asrock doesnt do a very good job of explaining what "instant boot" is on there product detail page. I dont think it has anything to do with resuming from hibernation though. Their youtube video shows the "instant boot" video starting up about 1 whole second faster than a non "instant boot" system lol

From what I understand instant boot from shutdown state is a cheat. It restarts and then suspends/hibernates so that when you turn it on it happens faster. So, it's a fresh boot in that it was restarted but it starts faster because resume from suspend/hibernation is faster than a fresh start from power off.

Asus and ASrock are the same company, they should be pretty equal in terms of quality. ASrock was Asus's cheaper brand but that line has definitely blurred over time.

Yes, Instant Boot has two different variants. Using both of them, you will shutdown the computer as normal, and once the computer shuts down, the motherboard will start the computer again. This is where the two variants differ:

The faster method will put your computer to sleep, which is fine in a home environment, but in a car that may or may not be used infrequently, you probably don't want to put your computer to sleep.

So the second option uses hibernation. This will take a bit longer, but your computer will be drawing a fraction of the power.

I plan on using Instant Boot in my build with the Hibernation method. The big advantage to Instant Boot, over just putting it into hibernation all the time, is you will be frequently rebooting your system, which is a big plus, versus just putting it into hibernation all the time.

Cheers for the fast responses guys, Instant Boot does sound like it may be useful. I'm assuming the Asus model doesn't have a similar feature? Would there be much benefit of having bluetooth and wifi built into the board rather than separate USB devices?

I have the ASROCK 350. Instant boot is just their version of Hybrid Sleep. I don't use it since boot up time is about the same as regular Hybernation. Also, I like that the board is quiet, low power, and can play HD movies with no issues. The issues are the CPU is pretty slow, but I knew that already. Sometimes I can see and hear it be very latent handling Centrafuse. Also the biggest issue is that it takes an forever just to complete POST. There is a workaround though to complete post in under a second by disabling USB Legacy Support. But sometimes when my power supply doesn't shut down properly, it goes to the boot prompt asking if I want continue or something (I cant remember). Guess what? I can't do ***** because I disabled USB Legacy support. Even PS2 keyboard won't work. So I have to reset CMOS which is a pain in the ***. I'm hoping Asrock will update the BIOS and decrease the POST time.

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Originally Posted by audballz

I have the ASROCK 350. Instant boot is just their version of Hybrid Sleep. I don't use it since boot up time is about the same as regular Hybernation. Also, I like that the board is quiet, low power, and can play HD movies with no issues. The issues are the CPU is pretty slow, but I knew that already. Sometimes I can see and hear it be very latent handling Centrafuse. Also the biggest issue is that it takes an forever just to complete POST. There is a workaround though to complete post in under a second by disabling USB Legacy Support. But sometimes when my power supply doesn't shut down properly, it goes to the boot prompt asking if I want continue or something (I cant remember). Guess what? I can't do ***** because I disabled USB Legacy support. Even PS2 keyboard won't work. So I have to reset CMOS which is a pain in the ***. I'm hoping Asrock will update the BIOS and decrease the POST time.

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Instant Boot is different than straight hibernation in one important aspect. It reboots your computer before it puts it in hibernation. This helps keep your computer running stable. I have found on laptops that entering Hibernation often can result in unpredictable behaviour. This way, you only ever enter hibernation once, and the next time you'll reboot your computer before entering hibernation, which can go a long ways in improving stability and speed.

Great for people who like to fully shutdown their pc. But id like to continue where I left off when I start my car.

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Originally Posted by audballz

Great for people who like to fully shutdown their pc. But id like to continue where I left off when I start my car.

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Out of curiosity, since I am new to this CarPC world, what is it that you like to continue when you start your car again, that isn't accomplished either by the information your front end saves when you shutdown (things like last song playing), or by making a few programs automatically startup on bootup?

yes last song playing or last radio station playing or whatever plugin I was using in centrafuse. If using Instant Boot, I'd have to wait for Centrafuse to load again, which does take awhile, click on the Warning Safety pop up, and then finally brings me to the main screen. Where as hibernate takes me to where I was at in Centrafuse.