ASRock ION 330HT-BD Home Theater PC

Introduction:

The HTPC (Home Theater PC) market is a huge and highly competitive industry. New products are constantly coming out that offer more features and better performance. ASRock's ION 330 series of NetTop / Home Theater PCs are an excellent design that packs a lot of punch into a tiny footprint. The top of the line model, the ION 330HT-BD, features a Blu-ray drive for the ultimate home theater high definition experience!

Several ION systems are available from ASRock, the table below briefly covers some of the more popular models and prices:

The combination of Intel's low-power dual-core Atom processor with Nvidia's ION chipset allows for a quiet and cool running system. Most video decoding can be offloaded to the ION graphics, allowing for smooth 1080p video playback, freeing up the CPU to perform its other tasks.

From a convenience standpoint, the ASRock ION 330 series are perfect for people that want to purchase a turn-key system. All that is required is loading your OS of choice, which even ASRock has a special model/bundle that comes loaded with Windows 7 Home Premium. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find a retailer selling that model at the time of this review so I don't know what the price would be.