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We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.
We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.
We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.
We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.
We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.
We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.
We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.
We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
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First of all: Great article! Based on this article (and a similar one on Legit reviews) I bought the Asus AT3N7A board.
Unfortunately, I am very disappointed with it. Despite their statement to you, it still has the faulty and whining fan, so the wrong one DID make it to the retail versions. To make things more nasty: Their "valued customer" tech support is utterly refusing to help me out. They state that a new fan DOES NOT exist and I should stop complaining (apparently, the think Anandtech and Legit reviews are telling lies).
I can't help hoping this is just a miscommunication/misunderstanding between your contacts and the info not making it to the tech support. But for now, I have had it with Asus and their beautiful lies.
Otherwise, the board performance very good, but the Fan and lousy tech support just spoil all the fun :(
Very usefull rewiev, but i don't understand where is diffenrent between Asus and Zotac board for the 20% power consum diffenrent.
Asus Express gate looks very good. But the power consum and noise fan is terrible.
When is poblem? Same CPU, same Chipsets and Asus takes 19W(?) more.
A thousand Thaanks on effort writing this article and all the troubleshooting and also all the great help on sending bck faulty reports on behalf of us.
Your enthusiasm on technology and service were greatly appreciated.
Thanks again.
The Atom CPU's lower power is the point of these.
You can also purchase the ITX boards with socket LGA775 or AM2 if you want a faster processor, but at a major increase in power use.
> I would still trust my $50 ebay P4
Trust? These are the same components as found on ATX boards, just a smaller form factor at 17cm x 17cm. ITX is designed for smaller size and lower power. Compare it to like buying a Mac Mini.
> 166MHz FSB
The Atom units are 533 FSB. Look at the "Rated FSB" value on CPUZ. The Bus Speed will be 1/2 for a two-way and 1/4 for a 4-way interleaved memory system. The regular ATX systems are the same for their FSB. You may wish to dl a copy of CPUZ and run it on your own system to see what the numbers mean.
Sorry, fingers working faster than brain and no post edit... :-)
DDR = double data rate, so 133 clock = 266 DDR freq, 2x interleave = 533 FSB, if I recall.
I've been using an Atom PC for my surfing system for quite some time now. It has the Intel 945GCLF2D, 2GB RAM, Kingston 64GB SSDnow, in an Apex MI-008 case. On sale all the parts cost me about $300CDN. The case is 8.5"W x 12.5"D x 5"H (just slightly larger than an APC ES750W brick UPS), supports 2x 3.5" and 1x 5.25", and includes a 250W internal PS. It would work for a HS or HTPC since you could fit an SSD OS drive, a 1-2TB HD, and a DVD.
I pulled the noisy fan off of the mobo and put a Noctua 80mm fan with the silencer connector (970RPM) blowing across the board from case vent-to-vent. It's so quiet you can hardly tell the system is on (it's half as loud as just a 3.5" HD's noise). The CPU runs at 25C, mobo at 40C. Temps go up by only ~5C under full load in Everest etc.
I'm running Windows 7RC and Kubuntu on it. Ubuntu (Gnome) is just too slow on the video. KDE performs not bad. But W7RC in Aero performs well, even on the GMA950. It is not as fast as my C2D or C2Q workstations of course, but it does ok for surfing. I also have a HS and HTPC but both of those are using C2D ATX, I personally wouldn't use an Atom for those since I prefer more performance, but for general surfing and a low-power system that I can leave on for downloading I don't care.
I'll probably upgrade the mobo sometime in the future to get the better video. I really recommend the small size and low noise of the Atom.
I want to build a server/HTPC combo, thing is it will have to be in my home and I can't get proper rest with a fan humming in the background.
I was thinking, would it be possible to build a completely fanless system using the IONITX-C-U? Using an SSD and the external power brick would give me a system without any moving parts. But what kind of temperatures would such a system generate?
Asus and Asrock have repeated the exact same mistake that prevented me from considering the Zotac - Only three drive connectors. My MiniITX file server requires four: One for the SD Card reader, one for the optical drive, and two for the RAID1. The only Ion-based board that I know to support four drives is the Point of View Ion 330.
I'd really like to hear Anand's take on how these ion things compare with what's possible to build using nano-itx and via, mini-itx and amd or non-atom intel, and even the latest mac mini which appears to be smaller than any of these while with much better video card.
Adobe needs to get GPU-acceleration working on Flash. The next Atom (due Q1/2010) doesn't seem like it'll be terribly faster than the N330. The new D510 looks to be different only in clockspeed @ 1.66 GHz vs the N330's 1.6 GHz. So the choices look like:
1) Wait around for another year waiting for the holy grail of HTPC guts
2) Buy a $500 Mac Mini and put a ~$400 slot loading Blu-Ray drive inside it
3) Adobe can fix Flash
All I want is something I can stick in a TV stand with minimal ventilation (think glass door) that can handle Hulu, Netflix, and Blu-Ray. Sigh.
I'm getting fed up with having half my files not want to play on either my PS3 or 360 (and its a pain to have to "record" them to my TiVo, which is almost always full).
I was looking at getting one of the Popcorn Hours, but this seems like it would be a really good alternative. It may cost a bit more, but then I would have a full computer if I needed it.
I would love to see an article that really covered the different devices for getting our media onto a TV. There's lots of reviews for each box that I've seen, but haven't really come across any good roundups that also compare them with HTPC software.
Obviously, there is no room for an internal dvd/bluray drive but I use this box strictly for pulling media off of my Windows Home Server. It streams 1080p files (m2ts with AC3 or DTS) with no hiccups what-so-ever. The only downside is that XBMC doesn't support the HD audio codecs so any blu-ray rips need to have the audio down-converted.
While I have never had an xbox360, or have used one. A friend of mine tells me he uses his as a media extender.
My understanding of this is that he just uses it to feed media to his different TVs throughout his house. So, in other words, the xbox360 is not doing any decoding, just displaying the networked media on the different TVs. The streaming sever of course is a PC located in a different room.
Is this what you're currently doing ? I do agree though XBMC looks really nice for a Linux media player ( distribution? ).
it was very thorough except on one aspect that I can think of;
While I do understand that it could be difficult to procure a good low power power supply in the ATX form factor, I feel that you guys did not pursue the matter as well as you could have. First, I am not sure if you understand that any power supply is best loaded at 50% for optimal efficiency, and that there is at least the Sparkle 220W 80Plus PSU available on the market. Provantage sells them . . . With that said however, while it would most likely drop the power consumption of the Asus platform, it would likely not be low enough for optimal efficiency. Which brings me to my next point.
There are not very many low power power supplies on the market. At least not in the context of extremely low powered systems. There are a few external "brick" based PICO power supplies around, a few "low powered" ATX supplies, and probably several OEM specific specialty supplies as well. This is not enough for people who build their own system, and you would think the Power supply industry would be keen to pick up on this.
As it stands, your Asus ION system does not do any better than the System ZDNets tech writer George Ou tested a while back when he was still writing for ZDNet. He used standard off the shelf parts with an Intel Core 2 E2140 ( I believe ) that used 49W under full load *INCLUDING* a LCD monitor. The power supply he used was the Sparkle 220W 80 Plus PSU I mentioned above. His conclusion as I recall was that *if* he could have found a better, lower powered 80 Plus PSU, that this system could have achieved even better power consumption numbers. He did try a PICO supply in another article, but found it unacceptable for one reason or another. Of course this was back in 2007, and things *could* have changed by then, but nothing that I am personally aware of.
I think that we all are well aware of the fact that the E2140 system would blow the doors off of any ION system. Except obviously for the Intel GMA 3100 graphics.
Anyways, it is my hope that user like myself bringing this information to you is that somehow you could relay this information to the OEMs/ODMs so "we" can actually get what we need. Someday.
If you browse through his write ups, you will find the article where he tested this system ( or was it another ? ) with a PCIO supply, and found it unacceptable for his needs.
The ASRock would be a perfect HD HTPC setup, *IF* they had included an IR receiver. Yes, I could add a USB IR receiver, but then there's another box and cord involved.
The minute that I found an ION-based product in a case the size of the ASRock that has built-in IR, I'll buy three.
While SSDs obviously offer a speed increase, you can't store that many movies on them. And, if you have a small ITX case, there might not be room for two drives. Are the ION systems fast enough to play HD movies over ethernet, or would the two drives need to be in the same case?
Right now you can get Zotac's LGA775 Mini-ITX GF9300 for 119 AR. Couple that with a $50 E1500, and you've got a $169 system that will destroy these ION platforms for the exact same price. Similar options exist on the AMD side as well (think GF8200 + X2 240 Regor for ~$160.)
Given that those options exist, a comparison with Atom would be awesome, especially one covering noise, power consumption, and case choices - i.e. could you build an LGA775 Mini-ITX in a similar form factor as the ASRock with comparable acoustics, or do you really need the ultra-low power consumption and TDP of an Atom CPU?
Great, but are you sure the GF 9300 on that board has the same core with the same features (like playing Full HD 1080p video completely hardware-accelerated in Linux) as the GF9300 core on the ION platform? ;)
That Zotac board doesn't support wake on USB quite yet, as far as I can tell. That's a pretty huge deal breaker for HTPC duty.
Personally, I want something only powerful enough to handle streaming HD. If Adobe/nVidia get their act together and offload Flash scaling to the GPU, the Atom gets my vote for the reduced TDP. For a system that will be sitting in an enclosed TV stand (glass door style), a low TDP is absolutely necessary.
If the Zotac board doesn't work for you, you can pick up an Intel G45 board for ~$5-10 less. As to the TDP, the idle power of a 5050e/780G system can be as low as 35-40W, or about the same as the Asus ION board - which leads me to believe that they're also producing comparable amounts of heat at idle or when doing IGP accelerated video playback.
Obviously the 5050e is going to be more efficient than the examples I listed (which I couldn't find reputable and relevant numbers for) and will consume much more power than the Atom under full CPU load, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm not quite convinced that ION is necessary or even the best option unless you're going with ultra-slim designs such as the Aspire Revo.
That's an excellent point. I actually just built a micro-ATX Athlon X2+Radeon 4550 based system as my HTPC because I wanted a system that could play Hulu and other streaming internet videos, something that the ION would limit.
Plus, one beef I have about most ITX cases (at least that don't come with a DC adapter for their power supply) is that they are TALL. Taller than a nice micro-ATX case, which fits much better amongst my HT gear.
Intel did a nice job with the processor, but we're stuck with either getting the miserable 945, or buying something from a crap company (NVIDIA) that is at least somewhat modern.
What a terrible choice. I'd love to own an Atom based file server, but what kind of choice is this? I'm not stupid enough to buy NVIDIA, but then, what kind of choice is the grotesquely obsolete 945 chipset?
It has taken Intel far too long to come out with a reasonable solution to this problem. You could overlook it for a few months, or even half a year, but it's gone on far too long. It's a pity ATI didn't enter this market. You'd have nice performance, and it wouldn't be so frightening to buy a product from them.
Anand, why put the Pentium 4 in the power tests? They kind of came out of nowhere, and, actually used less power than I thought they would. You really seem to have a weird fascination with the Netburst processors; probably because they were so bad, they are interesting. I will say this though, if they had been built on 45nm, with the much better power characteristics of this process, they'd probably hit 6 GHz in their sleep. Meaning, they'd perform roughly like the 2.0 GHz Core 2 :-P.
For Linux users (like me), NVIDIA is the ONLY quality option to play back hardware-accelerated video. AMD does not even get close to build stable graphics drivers for Linux, let alone hardware-accelerated HD video. I think NVIDIA ION is the only platforum that gives the Atom a right to exist....
Intel does have a more modern chipset for Atom (the US15) but almost no one is using it. Whether this is due to cost or another stupid Intel limitation I do not know.
What was WOW like after you OC CPU and GPU? Also, if someone someday decided to actually cool these things with something bigger than a 40mm fan, can you hit 2.2 ghz etc.
A pitty, no network interface benchmarks. Despite the overkill of the nVidia GPU, these boards would make the ideal start of a limited home server, and transferring files at gigabit speeds is no small feat for such a small processor ...
Do you have data to support this? Between DMA both to the drive and the NIC and TCP checksum offloading, the CPU overhead of disk transfers should be minimal with an operating system and drivers that support all of the above. Assuming a single drive configuration, you should mostly be limited by transfer rate of the drive for large files. For smaller files, you should be limited by the drive's seek latency.
I'm not so sure it's the HDD CPU overhead so much as network drivers. I'd imaging these Atom CPUs could use a good 30-50% of the CPU for doing Gb transfers. However, as you are limited by the HDD to a maximum ~50MBps (unless you go SSD or at least a 7200RPM drive), you should probably only need 15-25% of the CPU. Would be interesting to see the results though. At least the Ion systems give you GbE, unlike all the netbooks I've tested.
I am interested in seeing the performance of a mini-itx board that can support a quad core system. You can build a modern system for $500 instead of paying $350 for an atom system.
Considering those use any one of the regular LGA775 (atm - maybe we'll see some LGA1156 mITX boards) chipsets unless the board is just done poorly the performance would be the same as a full system with the same chipset and CPU. You'd just have the obvious tradeoff of expansion and possibly overclocking/enthusiast features.
You mention the Acer Aspire Revo on the last page. Any word when and if Acer will release this box in the US? A single-core 230 is plenty of CPU horsepower for XBMC or MythTV when using Nvidia's binary drivers. Thanks!
Hey, finally an Atom board with analog connections for more channels. Maybe I'll eventually replace the LF2 board in my carputer with this (and just keep the Scythe fan I already have).
Why in the world can't people just use bigger fixtures and bigger fans?
It's like the xbox 360. Who cares if it's smaller than my receiver, it's A FREAKING JET ENGINE. Why can't they just bump the size up a bit and throw in a 120mm fan?
With these, what's wrong with bumping up the chasis to xbox1 size and going with a slower 80mm fan which will probably deliver more air flow at 800rpm than these 40mm fans at 6500rpm.
I can't believe that project leaders haven't caught on to this issue yet. They must have their quality assurance guys working in different rooms than the products they're testing, or they're testing them in the middle of the factory.
ASUS is messed up in this respect the last a8n-e board I used had the same stupid issue a small fan that was loud and broke down easily on the south bridge. It must be a cost issue but it causes more problems then its worth. I replaced it with a passive heatsink rather then getting a free one from asus cause I knew the free replacement would not be much better.
Put the bluray drive all the way at the top, make the case 1 to 2 cm deeper and or higher and put a row of low rpm 60mm fans in the front. You could get two to three times the airflow and it would be quieter. Also, why have the restrictive punchouts in the back for the rear fan, seems you could open that up much more. Punch more holes all along the sides or in the blank area in the back.
I agree with this. These smaller devices are meant to be placed on the desk and are pretty close for the user. I wouldn't mind having them at a bigger size if that's what it takes to bring the noise level down.
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shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
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shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
thank you!
shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
thank you!
shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
thank you!
shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
thank you!
shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
thank you!
shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
thank you!
shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
We are the trading and manufacturing company,Our main productions are:Nike,Jordan,Air Max,NIKE SHOX,AIR FORCE ONE,DUNK,TiMBERLAND ADIDAS ETC. high quality,best prices and fine workmanship.And most products displayed on my website.We insist that " Customer the highest, Quality first ".With high-standard quality,fastest delivery and satisfied service and reasonable price for you. Welcome to visit our website:www.shoes-un.com or send email interest in ourProducts,please don't hesitate to contact us.
Low sales Jordan, Nike brand sneakers, and horses, leather bags, ugg boot.sunglass, hat
http://www.shoes-un.com/">http://www.shoes-un.com/
thank you!
eversteegt - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Hello Anandtech,First of all: Great article! Based on this article (and a similar one on Legit reviews) I bought the Asus AT3N7A board.
Unfortunately, I am very disappointed with it. Despite their statement to you, it still has the faulty and whining fan, so the wrong one DID make it to the retail versions. To make things more nasty: Their "valued customer" tech support is utterly refusing to help me out. They state that a new fan DOES NOT exist and I should stop complaining (apparently, the think Anandtech and Legit reviews are telling lies).
I can't help hoping this is just a miscommunication/misunderstanding between your contacts and the info not making it to the tech support. But for now, I have had it with Asus and their beautiful lies.
Otherwise, the board performance very good, but the Fan and lousy tech support just spoil all the fun :(
gnif - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link
When the XBMC tests were done you said you used the Live CD... is is possible to have some performance tests done on the latest SVN version...I patched a major bug in XBMC about 4 months ago that caused huge slowdowns on all systems, that especially affected embedded systems such as the ION.
See: http://xbmc.org/trac/ticket/6761">http://xbmc.org/trac/ticket/6761
I would love to have an ION to test on, but I just cant afford it.
jwinckelmann - Sunday, September 13, 2009 - link
Hi,at least here in Germany the AT3N7A-I is officially sold with the noisy 6000 RPM fan. Totally unacceptable...
Bye,
Jan
nachtgeist - Sunday, September 6, 2009 - link
Very usefull rewiev, but i don't understand where is diffenrent between Asus and Zotac board for the 20% power consum diffenrent.Asus Express gate looks very good. But the power consum and noise fan is terrible.
When is poblem? Same CPU, same Chipsets and Asus takes 19W(?) more.
Abby - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
A thousand Thaanks on effort writing this article and all the troubleshooting and also all the great help on sending bck faulty reports on behalf of us.Your enthusiasm on technology and service were greatly appreciated.
Thanks again.
best regards,
Abby
THG S**Ks hard~!
Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Why not just use a celeron E1400 for $40, and maybe even overclock it?And yes, I would still trust my $50 ebay P4 865g system over one of these things. 166MHz FSB isnt just stupid, its like a sick joke.
deegee - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
> Why not just use a celeron E1400The Atom CPU's lower power is the point of these.
You can also purchase the ITX boards with socket LGA775 or AM2 if you want a faster processor, but at a major increase in power use.
> I would still trust my $50 ebay P4
Trust? These are the same components as found on ATX boards, just a smaller form factor at 17cm x 17cm. ITX is designed for smaller size and lower power. Compare it to like buying a Mac Mini.
> 166MHz FSB
The Atom units are 533 FSB. Look at the "Rated FSB" value on CPUZ. The Bus Speed will be 1/2 for a two-way and 1/4 for a 4-way interleaved memory system. The regular ATX systems are the same for their FSB. You may wish to dl a copy of CPUZ and run it on your own system to see what the numbers mean.
deegee - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
Sorry, fingers working faster than brain and no post edit... :-)DDR = double data rate, so 133 clock = 266 DDR freq, 2x interleave = 533 FSB, if I recall.
deegee - Tuesday, September 1, 2009 - link
I've been using an Atom PC for my surfing system for quite some time now. It has the Intel 945GCLF2D, 2GB RAM, Kingston 64GB SSDnow, in an Apex MI-008 case. On sale all the parts cost me about $300CDN. The case is 8.5"W x 12.5"D x 5"H (just slightly larger than an APC ES750W brick UPS), supports 2x 3.5" and 1x 5.25", and includes a 250W internal PS. It would work for a HS or HTPC since you could fit an SSD OS drive, a 1-2TB HD, and a DVD.I pulled the noisy fan off of the mobo and put a Noctua 80mm fan with the silencer connector (970RPM) blowing across the board from case vent-to-vent. It's so quiet you can hardly tell the system is on (it's half as loud as just a 3.5" HD's noise). The CPU runs at 25C, mobo at 40C. Temps go up by only ~5C under full load in Everest etc.
I'm running Windows 7RC and Kubuntu on it. Ubuntu (Gnome) is just too slow on the video. KDE performs not bad. But W7RC in Aero performs well, even on the GMA950. It is not as fast as my C2D or C2Q workstations of course, but it does ok for surfing. I also have a HS and HTPC but both of those are using C2D ATX, I personally wouldn't use an Atom for those since I prefer more performance, but for general surfing and a low-power system that I can leave on for downloading I don't care.
I'll probably upgrade the mobo sometime in the future to get the better video. I really recommend the small size and low noise of the Atom.
lordmetroid - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
I want to build a server/HTPC combo, thing is it will have to be in my home and I can't get proper rest with a fan humming in the background.I was thinking, would it be possible to build a completely fanless system using the IONITX-C-U? Using an SSD and the external power brick would give me a system without any moving parts. But what kind of temperatures would such a system generate?
snarfies - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Asus and Asrock have repeated the exact same mistake that prevented me from considering the Zotac - Only three drive connectors. My MiniITX file server requires four: One for the SD Card reader, one for the optical drive, and two for the RAID1. The only Ion-based board that I know to support four drives is the Point of View Ion 330.strikeback03 - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
There are USB headers that can be used for a card readerVisual - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
I'd really like to hear Anand's take on how these ion things compare with what's possible to build using nano-itx and via, mini-itx and amd or non-atom intel, and even the latest mac mini which appears to be smaller than any of these while with much better video card.Pandamonium - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Adobe needs to get GPU-acceleration working on Flash. The next Atom (due Q1/2010) doesn't seem like it'll be terribly faster than the N330. The new D510 looks to be different only in clockspeed @ 1.66 GHz vs the N330's 1.6 GHz. So the choices look like:1) Wait around for another year waiting for the holy grail of HTPC guts
2) Buy a $500 Mac Mini and put a ~$400 slot loading Blu-Ray drive inside it
3) Adobe can fix Flash
All I want is something I can stick in a TV stand with minimal ventilation (think glass door) that can handle Hulu, Netflix, and Blu-Ray. Sigh.
ekerazha - Saturday, August 29, 2009 - link
What's the exact model of the ASRock rear fan? And its max speed? Thank you.dawp - Saturday, August 29, 2009 - link
I just curious as to how the nano compares to the atom preformance wise.QChronoD - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
I'm getting fed up with having half my files not want to play on either my PS3 or 360 (and its a pain to have to "record" them to my TiVo, which is almost always full).I was looking at getting one of the Popcorn Hours, but this seems like it would be a really good alternative. It may cost a bit more, but then I would have a full computer if I needed it.
I would love to see an article that really covered the different devices for getting our media onto a TV. There's lots of reviews for each box that I've seen, but haven't really come across any good roundups that also compare them with HTPC software.
Smeezy101 - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
I can say that XBMC Live works great on the Zotac board. FYI, I'm using my build with the following case:http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-en...">http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-en...
Obviously, there is no room for an internal dvd/bluray drive but I use this box strictly for pulling media off of my Windows Home Server. It streams 1080p files (m2ts with AC3 or DTS) with no hiccups what-so-ever. The only downside is that XBMC doesn't support the HD audio codecs so any blu-ray rips need to have the audio down-converted.
yyrkoon - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
While I have never had an xbox360, or have used one. A friend of mine tells me he uses his as a media extender.My understanding of this is that he just uses it to feed media to his different TVs throughout his house. So, in other words, the xbox360 is not doing any decoding, just displaying the networked media on the different TVs. The streaming sever of course is a PC located in a different room.
Is this what you're currently doing ? I do agree though XBMC looks really nice for a Linux media player ( distribution? ).
yyrkoon - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
it was very thorough except on one aspect that I can think of;While I do understand that it could be difficult to procure a good low power power supply in the ATX form factor, I feel that you guys did not pursue the matter as well as you could have. First, I am not sure if you understand that any power supply is best loaded at 50% for optimal efficiency, and that there is at least the Sparkle 220W 80Plus PSU available on the market. Provantage sells them . . . With that said however, while it would most likely drop the power consumption of the Asus platform, it would likely not be low enough for optimal efficiency. Which brings me to my next point.
There are not very many low power power supplies on the market. At least not in the context of extremely low powered systems. There are a few external "brick" based PICO power supplies around, a few "low powered" ATX supplies, and probably several OEM specific specialty supplies as well. This is not enough for people who build their own system, and you would think the Power supply industry would be keen to pick up on this.
As it stands, your Asus ION system does not do any better than the System ZDNets tech writer George Ou tested a while back when he was still writing for ZDNet. He used standard off the shelf parts with an Intel Core 2 E2140 ( I believe ) that used 49W under full load *INCLUDING* a LCD monitor. The power supply he used was the Sparkle 220W 80 Plus PSU I mentioned above. His conclusion as I recall was that *if* he could have found a better, lower powered 80 Plus PSU, that this system could have achieved even better power consumption numbers. He did try a PICO supply in another article, but found it unacceptable for one reason or another. Of course this was back in 2007, and things *could* have changed by then, but nothing that I am personally aware of.
I think that we all are well aware of the fact that the E2140 system would blow the doors off of any ION system. Except obviously for the Intel GMA 3100 graphics.
Anyways, it is my hope that user like myself bringing this information to you is that somehow you could relay this information to the OEMs/ODMs so "we" can actually get what we need. Someday.
yyrkoon - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Sorry . . . link below to this short write up for those interested.http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=934">http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=934
If you browse through his write ups, you will find the article where he tested this system ( or was it another ? ) with a PCIO supply, and found it unacceptable for his needs.
pantherman007 - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
The ASRock would be a perfect HD HTPC setup, *IF* they had included an IR receiver. Yes, I could add a USB IR receiver, but then there's another box and cord involved.The minute that I found an ION-based product in a case the size of the ASRock that has built-in IR, I'll buy three.
cghebert - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Anand,While SSDs obviously offer a speed increase, you can't store that many movies on them. And, if you have a small ITX case, there might not be room for two drives. Are the ION systems fast enough to play HD movies over ethernet, or would the two drives need to be in the same case?
Thanks for the review btw!
GeorgeH - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Right now you can get Zotac's LGA775 Mini-ITX GF9300 for 119 AR. Couple that with a $50 E1500, and you've got a $169 system that will destroy these ION platforms for the exact same price. Similar options exist on the AMD side as well (think GF8200 + X2 240 Regor for ~$160.)Given that those options exist, a comparison with Atom would be awesome, especially one covering noise, power consumption, and case choices - i.e. could you build an LGA775 Mini-ITX in a similar form factor as the ASRock with comparable acoustics, or do you really need the ultra-low power consumption and TDP of an Atom CPU?
eversteegt - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Great, but are you sure the GF 9300 on that board has the same core with the same features (like playing Full HD 1080p video completely hardware-accelerated in Linux) as the GF9300 core on the ION platform? ;)Pandamonium - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
That Zotac board doesn't support wake on USB quite yet, as far as I can tell. That's a pretty huge deal breaker for HTPC duty.Personally, I want something only powerful enough to handle streaming HD. If Adobe/nVidia get their act together and offload Flash scaling to the GPU, the Atom gets my vote for the reduced TDP. For a system that will be sitting in an enclosed TV stand (glass door style), a low TDP is absolutely necessary.
GeorgeH - Saturday, August 29, 2009 - link
If the Zotac board doesn't work for you, you can pick up an Intel G45 board for ~$5-10 less. As to the TDP, the idle power of a 5050e/780G system can be as low as 35-40W, or about the same as the Asus ION board - which leads me to believe that they're also producing comparable amounts of heat at idle or when doing IGP accelerated video playback.Obviously the 5050e is going to be more efficient than the examples I listed (which I couldn't find reputable and relevant numbers for) and will consume much more power than the Atom under full CPU load, but that's not the point. The point is that I'm not quite convinced that ION is necessary or even the best option unless you're going with ultra-slim designs such as the Aspire Revo.
cghebert - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
That's an excellent point. I actually just built a micro-ATX Athlon X2+Radeon 4550 based system as my HTPC because I wanted a system that could play Hulu and other streaming internet videos, something that the ION would limit.Plus, one beef I have about most ITX cases (at least that don't come with a DC adapter for their power supply) is that they are TALL. Taller than a nice micro-ATX case, which fits much better amongst my HT gear.
One case that I didn't look at that is worth mention for the ION is this one http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-en...">http://www.mini-box.com/M350-universal-mini-itx-en...
from the same people that make the PICO psu.
I'd also like to see a comparison between ION systems and low power ITX systems built with Intel or AMD desktop chips.
TA152H - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Intel did a nice job with the processor, but we're stuck with either getting the miserable 945, or buying something from a crap company (NVIDIA) that is at least somewhat modern.What a terrible choice. I'd love to own an Atom based file server, but what kind of choice is this? I'm not stupid enough to buy NVIDIA, but then, what kind of choice is the grotesquely obsolete 945 chipset?
It has taken Intel far too long to come out with a reasonable solution to this problem. You could overlook it for a few months, or even half a year, but it's gone on far too long. It's a pity ATI didn't enter this market. You'd have nice performance, and it wouldn't be so frightening to buy a product from them.
Anand, why put the Pentium 4 in the power tests? They kind of came out of nowhere, and, actually used less power than I thought they would. You really seem to have a weird fascination with the Netburst processors; probably because they were so bad, they are interesting. I will say this though, if they had been built on 45nm, with the much better power characteristics of this process, they'd probably hit 6 GHz in their sleep. Meaning, they'd perform roughly like the 2.0 GHz Core 2 :-P.
eversteegt - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link
Why this "steep" comment about NVIDIA being crap?For Linux users (like me), NVIDIA is the ONLY quality option to play back hardware-accelerated video. AMD does not even get close to build stable graphics drivers for Linux, let alone hardware-accelerated HD video. I think NVIDIA ION is the only platforum that gives the Atom a right to exist....
strikeback03 - Monday, August 31, 2009 - link
Intel does have a more modern chipset for Atom (the US15) but almost no one is using it. Whether this is due to cost or another stupid Intel limitation I do not know.bh192012 - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
What was WOW like after you OC CPU and GPU? Also, if someone someday decided to actually cool these things with something bigger than a 40mm fan, can you hit 2.2 ghz etc.Titanius - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
"While Acer offers the Aspire Revo, it only comes with a single-core Atom 230, a far less desirable option."What about the Acer Aspire Revo R3600? It has an Intel Atom 330, a 160GB HD and 2 GB of Dual-Channel RAM. Check it out: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=41924&a...">http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?...&man...
Fietsventje - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
A pitty, no network interface benchmarks. Despite the overkill of the nVidia GPU, these boards would make the ideal start of a limited home server, and transferring files at gigabit speeds is no small feat for such a small processor ...mgrier - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Do you have data to support this? Between DMA both to the drive and the NIC and TCP checksum offloading, the CPU overhead of disk transfers should be minimal with an operating system and drivers that support all of the above. Assuming a single drive configuration, you should mostly be limited by transfer rate of the drive for large files. For smaller files, you should be limited by the drive's seek latency.JarredWalton - Saturday, August 29, 2009 - link
I'm not so sure it's the HDD CPU overhead so much as network drivers. I'd imaging these Atom CPUs could use a good 30-50% of the CPU for doing Gb transfers. However, as you are limited by the HDD to a maximum ~50MBps (unless you go SSD or at least a 7200RPM drive), you should probably only need 15-25% of the CPU. Would be interesting to see the results though. At least the Ion systems give you GbE, unlike all the netbooks I've tested.cliffman - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
I am interested in seeing the performance of a mini-itx board that can support a quad core system. You can build a modern system for $500 instead of paying $350 for an atom system.MadMan007 - Sunday, August 30, 2009 - link
Considering those use any one of the regular LGA775 (atm - maybe we'll see some LGA1156 mITX boards) chipsets unless the board is just done poorly the performance would be the same as a full system with the same chipset and CPU. You'd just have the obvious tradeoff of expansion and possibly overclocking/enthusiast features.plext0r - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
You mention the Acer Aspire Revo on the last page. Any word when and if Acer will release this box in the US? A single-core 230 is plenty of CPU horsepower for XBMC or MythTV when using Nvidia's binary drivers. Thanks!strikeback03 - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Hey, finally an Atom board with analog connections for more channels. Maybe I'll eventually replace the LF2 board in my carputer with this (and just keep the Scythe fan I already have).gipper - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Why in the world can't people just use bigger fixtures and bigger fans?It's like the xbox 360. Who cares if it's smaller than my receiver, it's A FREAKING JET ENGINE. Why can't they just bump the size up a bit and throw in a 120mm fan?
With these, what's wrong with bumping up the chasis to xbox1 size and going with a slower 80mm fan which will probably deliver more air flow at 800rpm than these 40mm fans at 6500rpm.
I can't believe that project leaders haven't caught on to this issue yet. They must have their quality assurance guys working in different rooms than the products they're testing, or they're testing them in the middle of the factory.
Abby - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link
For Manufacturing, Transportation and profits wise, small is da key.rudy - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
ASUS is messed up in this respect the last a8n-e board I used had the same stupid issue a small fan that was loud and broke down easily on the south bridge. It must be a cost issue but it causes more problems then its worth. I replaced it with a passive heatsink rather then getting a free one from asus cause I knew the free replacement would not be much better.bh192012 - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Put the bluray drive all the way at the top, make the case 1 to 2 cm deeper and or higher and put a row of low rpm 60mm fans in the front. You could get two to three times the airflow and it would be quieter. Also, why have the restrictive punchouts in the back for the rear fan, seems you could open that up much more. Punch more holes all along the sides or in the blank area in the back.yuchai - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
I agree with this. These smaller devices are meant to be placed on the desk and are pretty close for the user. I wouldn't mind having them at a bigger size if that's what it takes to bring the noise level down.Das Capitolin - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
The hard drive beside the ASRock ION 330 is not what comes with the unit. It ships with a 320GB notebook drive, and not a 3.5" desktop drive.Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
The hard drive was just included to show the small size of the machine, I'll clarify in a caption :)Take care,
Anand
yehuda - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
I don't think this was mentioned, but Asus has also introduced an Ion-based EeeBox, which is a complete system.http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=wH1q2VTqyLXa...">http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=wH1q2VTqyLXa...
Anand, you think you could request a sample?
elivebuy - Tuesday, December 8, 2009 - link
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millerduck - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
That unit looks sweet. I stumbled on it over the last two days and am planning a Windows Home Server based on it.Looks to be fanless, 330 w/ION, eSATA for additional storage, gigabit Ethernet. A perfect WHS "appliance" for my house.
MD
Anand Lal Shimpi - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Just requested it :) Waiting to hear back from ASUS on their plans for this thing in North America.Take care,
Anand
yehuda - Saturday, August 29, 2009 - link
Thanks, please keep us posted.millerduck - Friday, August 28, 2009 - link
Thanks Anand. Looking forward to any news.MD