Hands On: ASRock ION 330 Nettop PC

Manufacturer: ASRock	Model: ION 330 Net-top PC
Price: £239.99/$429	Web: ASRock

With our first baby on the way next year, my wife and I sat down a couple of weeks ago to review our family finances (I’ve heard on the grapevine that kids cost money). Looking through our monthly bills, we both noticed that at £60 a month, our Sky TV satellite subscription was a healthy chunk of our outgoings and, with TV and films becoming widely available from all manner of online and offline sources, it’s a luxury we could do without.

A project was proposed – cancel the Sky subscription, cancel our LoveFilm DVD subscription and replace with a small, silent HTPC running Windows Media Centre, connected to the UK’s Freeview network (multiple digital channels, HD available about the same time as I’ll need to start changing nappies). Any TV we may miss from Sky’s premium channels can be picked up on DVD, streamed via Apple TV (or other alternative online sources) or, if we’re desperate, via Sky’s new Media Center plug-in (subscriptions apply, so we would need to be desperate). All agreed, and the savings meant that the WAF (wife acceptance factor) would be high, as long as I found a small, killer HTPC that could fit neatly in the TV cabinet and didn’t sound like a hovercraft when in use.

The answer came in roughly 1 minute thanks to Google – the ASRock ION 330 combines a low power dual-core Intel Atom 330 processor with NVIDIA’s ION GPU with the boast of 1080p high definition video served up via HDMI. For less than £250. Too good to be true? Let’s find out!

What’s in the Box?

You’ll find the ION 330 available at many of your favourite online stores. When it arrives, you’ll open a small, branded box, neatly packed with your new PC, a power cable and not a huge amount more.

In the box, you’ll find:

• ASRock ION 330 Net-top PC
• Support CD
• Power Adaptor and Cable
• DVI to HDMI Adaptor
• Slip Mat
• Quick Start Leaflet

That’s your lot – no mouse, keyboard or even operating system, so whilst the PC itself is low cost, you’ll have a few extras to add on before you complete the package.

What’s Inside?

The ION 330 is a dinky little machine – easily small enough to fit into my TV cabinet (once the Sky box is removed) at just 195mm (W) x 70mm (H) x 186mm (L). But there’s a little bit of power tucked away in that small package. Specs as follows:

Clearly, ASRock’s product naming belies their desire to push a couple of product features to the fore. The Intel Atom 330 processor is swiftly becoming an old friend of WGS, powering an assortment of home servers we’ve reviewed and now we’re starting to see it appear in lower specification HTPCs too. The 1.6GHz dual cores do not consume a lot of power, and yet are beefy enough to deliver 1080p video, from digital files or via Blu-ray (ASRock also sell the ION 300-BD, which replaces the DVD drive with a slimline Blu-ray disc player). It’s a cool trick, pulled off in part thanks to the inclusion of NVIDIA’s ION GPU platform. ION is a system/motherboard platform which combines the Intel Atom with NVIDIA’s GeForce 9400M chipset, specifically designed for netbooks and net-tops. That gives you full 1080P high definition video along with 7.1 surround sound and support for DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.2 – small and mighty indeed.

For £250, the rest of the specification is generous, with 2Gb RAM, DVD drive and a 320Gb 2.5” hard drive included – plenty for a HTPC backed up by Windows Home Server. Gigabit LAN means you can throw high definition around with ease, and with a maximum 26dB noise output, the fans aren’t going to disturb you whilst watching TV.