ASRock ION 330-BD NetTop/HTPC

[krisstivers]

Does anyone have anymore information on this (i.e. price, release date, etc.)?

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/overvie...l=ION%20330-BD

ASRock ION 330-BD NetTop/HTPC


Intel® Dual Core Atom™ 330
NVIDIA® ION™ graphics processor
BD Combo
Small (2.5L)
Silent (acoustic below 26 dB)
Stylish (High gloss outlook)
Energy Star 5.0 level (Low power consumption)
ASRock OC Tuner (Overclocking)
ASRock Instant Boot

[longboarder543]

It's available now on Newegg.com (newegg is a really reputable site for purchasing consumer electronics, in case you don't know about them). In case you're having doubts about the performance of this box -- The Atom 330 is dual core, so that's a heck of a lot better than the single core Atom's like the N270, and combined with ION I'm confident there's enough muscle for web streaming and blu-ray playback if you decide to add a slot-load BD drive. Flash HD is a mess - it tends to stutter even on high-end hardware that is purpose-built for HD decoding, so I wouldn't expect HD Flash to be perfect. That is no fault of this machine though, but rather Adobe's issue.

[blckman]

Originally Posted by krisstivers

Does anyone have anymore information on this (i.e. price, release date, etc.)?

http://www.asrock.com/nettop/overvie...l=ION%20330-BD

ASRock ION 330-BD NetTop/HTPC


Intel® Dual Core Atom™ 330
NVIDIA® ION™ graphics processor
BD Combo
Small (2.5L)
Silent (acoustic below 26 dB)
Stylish (High gloss outlook)
Energy Star 5.0 level (Low power consumption)
ASRock OC Tuner (Overclocking)
ASRock Instant Boot

Hello krisstivers. Check this link out about a review on this specific system. Not a bad price at all. You'll see the pricing and availability here. In addition, these folks have reviewed. I would also think that I would rather just purchase the bare system and then add a maybe a blu-ray writer instead of player to the system. One thing to mention though is that remember computer parts are like cars in my honest opinion. Sometimes and most times(unless the computer part or item is for collectors and rare), the value depreciates. Therefore, many of these blu-ray drives are cheaper now because this review was written on June 17, 2009. Look on newegg or pricewatch.com if you plan on getting the system. Also HDNation just did a wonderful write on the November 17, 2009 show about this HTPC with an MSI board with a hell-of-a sound system on the board. Good luck and here is the link pertaining to this system and HDNation.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/279..._hd/index.html


http://revision3.com/hdnation


Off on tangent a bit. Do any of you all in this entire forum ever remember Leo Laporte, Patrick Norton, and a couple of other notable names from TechTV? I used to love that show and miss it so much. Remember, G4TV used to be TechTV years ago. Boy, times sure have changed.

[hoogoosedmoose41]

question for the experts? could the optical drive on this Mini PC be swapped out for a second hard drive and have it fit?
If I could could fit 2 hard drives in that sucker it would make one hell of an audio server computer. I have about 600 GB in wav files for my music collection.

[blckman]

Originally Posted by hoogoosedmoose41

question for the experts? could the optical drive on this Mini PC be swapped out for a second hard drive and have it fit?
If I could could fit 2 hard drives in that sucker it would make one hell of an audio server computer. I have about 600 GB in wav files for my music collection.

Good question hoogoosedmoose41. I would assume you want to keep that 600GB amount of music in tact and just ghost or copy that drive. That box looks very small. The only way we would know is to open it up. I'm looking at the illustrations on newegg.com and this rig looks really small. Only we can tell by opening it. I mean, you could save yourself some trouble by maybe just purchasing a 1.5TB or 2TB drive for a little of nothing. I think I see you might want your cake and it it too. Have good music and with plenty of room for other media storage as well. In that case, if this system doesn't allow you to put one hard drive on top of each other, then you might want to look at a different set-up. I'm a sucker for helping. Whoops...just stumbled upon the video. In this video it clearly shows that this is a notebook sized drive with a notebook based drive mounted on the bottom of the drive. I know this won't fit now. Sorry to tell you that. Looks like from this system as well that the largest drive I see as of this writing is 640GB at newegg.com for $139.99 and is only at 5400 rpms. Good luck and here's the video in the internal workings of this system.

http://www.viddler.com/explore/TweakTown/videos/36/

[BLindsay]

1TB Laptop drives have been released now to which is nice

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=626

(little thicker then most notebook drives but should fit in that)

[blckman]

Originally Posted by BLindsay

1TB Laptop drives have been released now to which is nice

http://www.anandtech.com/weblog/showpost.aspx?i=626

(little thicker then most notebook drives but should fit in that)

I stand corrected. Thanks BLindsay for correcting my mistake. I would say he could really do that rig now. I just don't know about the drive though. I've always been a bit skepticle about blu-ray laptop based drives. Don't get me wrong. Some people have not had one single issue with their laptop blu-ray equipped drives. However, I am seeing a great deal of people posting malfunctions and non-playable media on those type of drives lately. Good luck with this build though.