New toy: Asrock ION 330 (1 Viewer)

[gemx]

Hi,

after my server died because of too much heat i was looking for a new system which is smaller, supports GPU HD acc....

Then i came across the ASRock ION 330 which is pretty small and does everything i need since my DVB-S2 Card is a USB box.
I bought the tiny little box in a local shop for 285 € and after unpacking i was amazed how tiny this nice looking thing is.
It comes with no OS so since Windows 7 is available i went for installing Windows 7 Ultimate.

A nice thing about this box is, that there are overclocking profiles accessable directly from the bios.
The dual core atom normally runs @ 1,6 GHz but you can overclock it up to 2 GHz which worked quite good.

Installation of Windows 7 took about 30 minutes and all drivers where already integrated besides an ION specific device which you have to install from the CD.

The Windows 7 performance index is 3,5 overclocked @ 1,9 GHz.

At 1,9 GHz you just hear a constant very low volume "hum" from the cooler.
At the default speed of 1,6 GHz you can hardly hear any noise from the box.

I tried with MP ALPHA, TV-Service and latest SVN and everything works nearly out of the box

Windows 7 even comes with a Quicktime codec

I just needed the following filter to playback everything i can think of:
- Matroska splitter
- FLVSplitter
- PowerDVD
- FFDShow

Playback of 1080i HD content is absolutely smooth and the CPU is only used like around 30 %

So far - GREAT LITTLE BOX

Here are the specs

PU - Intel® Atom™ 330 (Dual-Core CPU)
Chipset - NVIDIA® ION™ graphics processor
Memory - 2GB DDR2 800 MHz memory, support dual channel, maximum memory capacity 4GB
VGA - NVIDIA® ION™ graphics, support DX10 / Full HD 1080p (Blu-ray / HD-DVD)* playback
HDD - 2.5” HDD 320GB
DVD - DVD Super Multi (Slim type)
I/O - 1 x HDMI (with HDMI to DVI adapter), 1 x D-Sub VGA, 6 x USB 2.0, 1 x S/PDIF (Optical)
LAN - Gigabit LAN
Sound - HD Audio 5.1 channel
System Acoustic - Below 26dB
Power Unit - 65W /19V Adapter
Dimension - 195mm (W) x 70mm (H) x 186mm (L)
Volume (liters) - 2.5L
Weight - 1.69Kg

 

[schrej]

I've also bought this nice little nettop and it works like a charm as a MP Client.
HD TV and Movies are running without any stuttering (only with DXVA enabled).

A USB an/or an SD-Card-Slot at the front side though would have been nice.

Joerg

 

[jonaskp]

Sounds great. I am thinking of buying one of these, since my current HTPC don't fit in our TV-"rack" and currently resides on the floor - and the newly bought iRobot Roomba doesn't like that (talk about a chain-reaction of gadget purchase :-S).

Do you know how it works with some 1080p material? I am mostly interested in how it handles Blu-ray playback, since I have a Blu-ray drive I want to connect to it.

 

[disaster123]

How did you solve the "remote" problem? Switch on with remote, switch off and complete control with a remote? Which one do you use?

 

[gemx]

As far as i remember the BIOS options it has WakeOn USB but never tried.

I am using a Logitech Harmony 525 with the MCE IR USB receiver but the box runs as a server (WebServer, Answering Machine, FaxServer...) so i never switch it off

 

[djspider]

I have problems....

I got my ION 330 today and was very excited, i havent managed to get MP working smooth though.
Its not a problem playing movies, i use Core AVC with CUDA endoding and it works very good, but MP itself freezes 2-3 secs in 10 seconds intervals or so.


Can you explain this?

https://forum.team-mediaportal.com/bugreports-74/asrock-nettop-ion-330-mediaportal-1-0-2-a-69558/

 

[Zapp]

As far as i remember the BIOS options it has WakeOn USB but never tried.

I am using a Logitech Harmony 525 with the MCE IR USB receiver but the box runs as a server (WebServer, Answering Machine, FaxServer...) so i never switch it off

Hold on, hold on... a bit of topic, but still...

I've had my eyes on one of these for some time now but this got my attention...

Answering machine, Fax server... What software do you use for that and do you have an external modem connected via USB?

/Jonas...

 

[SpudR]

MP itself freezes 2-3 secs in 10 seconds intervals or so.

That's the TV heartbeat again - search for it and you'll find some fixes (HINT: install and configure the TV service)

 

[AIstudio]

I take it these boxes have no Wifi?
If not is there any room in there to put a wifi card in. Just saves me cabling the house etc. My machines downstairs are all on LAN, but i would rather not go through cabling to upstairs
looks like a damn fine piece of kit though and I may cosider 3 of these for the rooms upstairs and also 1 for the backroom
My thoughts are running away with me now

Regards

Kev

 

[romuz]

I take it these boxes have no Wifi?
If not is there any room in there to put a wifi card in. Just saves me cabling the house etc. My machines downstairs are all on LAN, but i would rather not go through cabling to upstairs
looks like a damn fine piece of kit though and I may cosider 3 of these for the rooms upstairs and also 1 for the backroom
My thoughts are running away with me now

Regards

Kev

You can use Usb Wi-Fi stick for it
but you must know that wifi bandwidth is not enough for HD