For the longest time, Asus was the kind of company that was only known by techies and enthusiasts. Asus had very popular motherboards and other internal components, but it had very little in terms of consumer end products. That changed in recent years with the release of devices like the Eee PC line of netbooks.
The Eee branding soon expanded into the realm of all-in-one PCs with the Asus Eee Top and now the company is going one step further with its one of its first home theater PCs. Working off a subsidiary, we discover the ASRock Ion 330HT NetTop. It’s got ASRock branding, but this is an Asus product through and through.
Features and Specifications
Interestingly enough, the name of this product is actually very indicative of what you find under the hood. Powering the show is an Intel Dual Core Atom 330 processor (1.6GHz) and the graphics come by way of the powerful NVIDIA ION graphics processor.
According to the official marketing materials, this combination is said to be perfect for full HD 1080p playback capabilities. And the HT part of the name? That’s for home theater. You’ll also find an Ion 330HT-BD variation which comes pre-installed with a Blu-ray Disc drive.
Other highlights include the integrated 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, RAID 0 and RAID 1 support, powered eSATA port, multiple USB ports, Media Center Edition (MCE) remote control, HDMI output, 320GB hard drive, and 2GB DDR2-800 RAM (upgradeable to 4GB).
What’s in the Box?
Popping open the box, we discover the ASRock Ion 330HT itself, the necessary power supply and cable, remote control, HDMI to DVI adapter, extra SATA cable, some hard drive mounting screws, supporting documentation, driver CD, and a soft mat.
There is no cable included for connecting the HTPC to your television, so you’ll need to go out and grab an HDMI cable on your own. Thankfully, there are some pretty affordable options out there that don’t start with Mon- and end with -ster.
First Impressions
The official product page for the ASRock Ion 330HT is a little amusing for one primary reason. I don’t mind the high-gloss finish of the body on this device, but I wouldn’t say that the paint is “similar to the paint of a Mercedes-Benz.” The gloss does make for a fingerprint magnet though.
There are many other companies that produce small form factor PCs and home theater PC cases, but the ASRock Ion 330HT sounds like it’s supposed to work right out of the box. This should lower the barrier of entry for many people who aren’t as keen to build their own computers.
The overall size of the Ion 330HT is quite impressive as well. It’s a little thicker than a Nintendo Wii, but it has about the same footprint at 195mm x 70mm x 186mm. The low power consumption, as evidenced by its Energy Star 5.0 achievement, is quite nice too. Especially since a home theatre PC is meant to be left on most of the time.
Inputs and Outputs
Whereas the Asus Eee Top ET1602 1B was more of a competitor to something like the Apple iMac series, the ASRock Ion 330HT NetTop belongs in your living room. It doesn’t come with a monitor, because your HDTV should be its screen and your 7.1 surround sound system should be its speakers.
Going from left to right, we see the AC power port, a series of audio jacks (including S/PDIF digital out), Ethernet/LAN, six USB 2.0 ports, HDMI out, VGA out, and a powered eSATA port. You’ll also notice a small fan in the center that helps to keep things cool.
Where’s the Operating System?
And this is one of the first things that struck me like a brick wall. Considering that the Ion 330HT is meant to be a consumer-friendly device that works right out of the box, not unlike a cheaper HD media player, it’s surprising to find that this HTPC did not come pre-installed with any operating system. If you do nothing else but connect the Ion 330HT to your television with an HDMI cable, you’ll get treated to a black screen with a somewhat cryptic message. If this is being marketed at the average consumer, they’ll assume that something is wrong.
It may not be an issue for more tech-savvy enthusiasts, but it does mean that you’ll need to supply your own OS. This of course means that your mileage, user experience and performance may vary depending on your OS of choice. This is not always ideal, especially since the machine was made for Windows 7 and thus so are all the utilities and drivers fort his machine.
For the purposes of this review, we managed to get an evaluation copy of Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit. ASRock has also informed us that a new version of the Ion 330HT will be shipping with the OS and will be known as the ION330 HT/W7HP. The system will be pre-installed with the OS and all applicable utilities and be ready to go out of the box.
Usability and General Performance
Remember that Media Center remote control that came bundled in with the HTPC? Don’t expect that to work right out of the box either, so you’ll need to go through the usual configuration to get the Media Center side of the equation to be operational.
After everything was reasonably configured and setup, however, the ASRock Ion 330HT was no more difficult to use than any entry-level computer. I chose to use the Microsoft Wireless Desktop 3000 since its wireless range makes it a good candidate for the living room.
In general, I was reasonably pleased with what the ASRock Ion 330HT had to offer in terms of everyday HTPC performance. Streaming YouTube videos over the Wi-Fi connection was a breeze, as was navigating through my music and video collection with Windows Media Player.
Part of this may be dependent on the types of video files that you throw at it, but I did find that some videos ended up looking choppy or having out-of-sync audio at times. I also had some trouble playing a regular DVD movie out of the box, but that was rectified with some new software. Yes, VLC plays everything.
Benchmarks: HD Tune
So, how did this HTPC hold up in the testing and benchmark arena? For starters, I ran the 320GB 2.5″ drive through HD Tune 2.55. As you can see through the screenshot above (click for the big version), it came out with an average transfer rate of 56.3MB/sec, a burst rate of 87.5MB/sec, and an access time of 18.3ms.
Benchmarks: 3DMark and PCMark
While the HD Tune test yielded acceptable results, the same could not be said with 3DMark06. When I tried to run that benchmark, I was treated to the lovely error message shown above.
I encountered problems when trying to run PCMark05 as well. The test would fail and result in a black screen when it got around to the graphics tests. Removing these tests from the gauntlet, I was able to complete the rest of the benchmark. Since it was not able to compute a graphics score, I was not able to get a PCMark overall score. You can see the CPU score (1892) and memory score (2256) however. Clearly, there are still some driver issues present with the nVIDIA ION platform when it comes to compatibility with some benchmarks, but at least the overall HTPC user experience seemed fine.
Closing Thoughts
While I certainly like the form factor, design, and plethora of USB ports, this HTPC cannot be sold without an OS as it completely ruins the out of the box experience. Since ASRock has rectified that in a new SKU with a pre-installed OS plus required media software, then much of my concerns are laid to rest. Putting some credit in ASRock’s favour, offering the system without an OS can be construed as giving the consumer some choice in whether or not they want Windows 7 or not.
On the downside, since ASRock can’t control the OS installed, then your user experience can vary depending on the OS and software installed. For those that just want to turn it on and go, we strongly recommend that you buy the OS pre-installed version of this machine. Though it is nice to know that the enthusiast option is there.
Performance seemed mostly fine from a subjective point of view, since the nVIDIA Ion GPU and dual core Atom had little trouble with video playback. Unfortunately, the drivers might need some more polishing to pass our benchmarks. In reality, the machine is no power house so benchmarks don’t really reflect the user experience which has been quite good.
The ASRock Ion 330HT NetTop represents a solid effort from Asus’ little brother at around $439US. Toss in a suitable OS (or buy it pre-installed for a few dollars more), bump the RAM a bit, and you should be good to go. Thankfully, both of those upgrades are easy DIY projects with this product making it a very flexible solution for your HTPC needs.
Pros
- Small and classy form factor
- No shortage of USB 2.0 ports
- Full support of 7.1 surround sound
- Good video performance for the price
Cons
- No front-mounted USB ports
Overall Rating: 8.5/10.0
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