ASRock ION 330-BD

With is sights clearly set on the living room, ASRock has included a Blu-ray disc player in its ASRock ION 330-BD.  Powered by the winning team of an Intel Atom 330 CPU and Nvidia ION graphics chipset, it's a mini PC-media centre hybrid that's both powerful and affordable.

Hardware: Mixed messages

ASRock seems to be sending out mixed messages with the design of the ION 330-BD.  On the one hand, we like the steel chassis which feels very solid, but on the other, we were disappointed by the cheap-looking black plastic panel at the front.  The power button doesn't sound too great when you press it, and the panel that covers the front of the Blu-ray drawer bends it when you press the button to open it.  It would have made more sense to move this button over to one side.  The whole thing is also noticeably larger than than a rival like the EeeBox PC EB1501, to name just one.  It's perfectly acceptable though, and won't look out of place in your front room.

It's quiet when you use it for office work, but the ION 330-BD is much more audible when its ION chipset starts working.  That includes playing video games, which leaves it very noisy.  Fortunately, though, you can hardly hear it when playing video.  On the other hand, playing Blu-ray discs is less quite.

All of the connectivity options are at the back, with absolutely nothing on the front, which is really annoying if you want to plug in a pair of headphones or a USB key.

You have to go looking at the back, but at least ASRock has covered all of the bases: there are six USB 2.0 ports, HDMI and VGA inputs, an RJ45 port, a headphone, mic and line in jacks and an S/PDIF optical audio out.  It's still missing a memory card reader and WiFi, though.  That means you'll have to use a USB WiFi key.  Unfortunately, though, all six of the USB ports are very close together and that can be a problem if you have too many peripherals connected, which can often be the case with things like WiFi dongles or TV tuners.  If you plan on using one, then you'll soon find the amount of space available is limited.

No remote is supplied, and there isn't a keyboard or mouse either.  There is, however, a version of with an infra-red remote and more inputs and outputs: the ASRock ION 330HT-BD.

All of the components are accessible by removing two small screws.  Opening it up is very easy and you can add more RAM or upgrade the hard drive if you wish.

ASRock ION 330-BD - Front	ASRock ION 330-BD - Back
Combined Blu-ray player and DVD writer - 2.5'' hard drive	Motherboard, two RAM slots, and two fans

Processor Power: dual-core Atom speeds things up--but not by much
Windows 7 index: 3,3. Details: CPU 3.3 - Memory 4.5 - Graphics 4.4 - Gaming graphics 5.3 - Main hard drive 5.9.

As you might have guessed from the name, the ASRock ION 330-BD uses an Intel Atom 330 CPU and an Nvidia ION graphics chipset.  That's a combination that's found in plenty of other products in this segment, and we are already familiar with their performance.  They're not really cut out for heavyweight tasks like video editing or 3D work.  To give you an example, it took 28 minutes 14 seconds to finish our Cinema 4D test, whereas even an entry-level chip like the AMD Phenom II X2 550 only needs 6 m 53 s.  We found a similar discrepancy across our whole range of tests, with this computer coming in between three and five times slower than others we've tested.  The CPU's two cores don't really help with difficult jobs, but they do make things run more smoothly when you're multitasking.

Playing 1080p HD video files--the equivalent of what you'll find on a Blu-ray disc--is the real strength of the ION chipset found in this device.  The fluidity is excellent thanks to the hardware acceleration that you can use with apps like Boxee, Media Player Classic HC or PowerDVD, although this last one is paid-for.  Other software, including Badaboom (which converts video files), SuperLoiloScope (for editing HD content) or Photoshop CS4 can also use the hardware to speed up their handling of images and video.  As useful as that might be for some specialists, all of these apps are only likely to apply to a very limited number of users.

The energy consumption starts off at 1 W and reissues to 22 W when displaying the Windows desktop.  If you're watching video, the hardware acceleration saves 2.5 W, bringing consumption down from 31 W to 29 W, but reduces the load on the CPU from 80% to 10%.

3D Gaming: older games with details turned down--or else 2D

The ION-Atom duo aren't powerful enough for the most recent 3D gameS.  You can still enjoy slightly older titles, though, as long as you keep the level of detail down to minimum.  Half-Life 2 and Team Fortress 2 were both playable if we didn't push the resolution too far. 

Audio Quality: great optical audio out

Wherever you can, use either the HDMI output or the TOSLink optical audio for listening to music or watching films.  The analogue audio inputs and outputs are acceptable, but still a long way short of the quality produced by their digital counterparts.  The mic input is OK for chatting online, but isn't good enough to use to record music for instance.

No OS

As usual with ASRock, this computer comes without an operating system.  That means it's up to you to install whatever you life.  Although that might be good news for anybody who uses Open Source software, it's less welcome for Windows users who have to shell out extra cash for an OEM licence.  Fortunately, though, all of the drivers are included on a separate CD and can also be downloaded.