ASRock A330ION Mini-ITX Motherboard Review

The Packaged Bundle

The ASRock comes well-packed in an unassuming blue box. I like blue, they like blue, who doesn’t like blue? Still, the good thing about small motherboards is that they make fascinating puzzles. Exactly how will they pack all of the bundle into that little box? Well, for the ASRock, there were not very many items bundled in, but as you’ll see below, they hit the important stuff. As a side note, it would be interesting to compare the cost-savings in motherboard boxes for ATX versus Mini-ITX. We’l probably never know, but maybe the box should have been green.

Here we see the motherboard straight from the box, even though we can’t really tell except by the anti-static bag. When I first saw it, I felt as if the sun were breaking through the clouds to watch as I pulled back the covers of this fresh from the factory A330ION. Really, it looked like a baby swaddled in the most anti-static blanket the world had ever seen, and I was glad for this. I mean, it really built the excitement for me, but no words can do justice to the event, so I guess people will simply need to see for themselves.

The other provisions in the box were slightly less exciting. The ASRock manual was also blue, like the box, and included a dozen translations of the information. Nonetheless, it included everything needed to properly situate the motherboard and get it up and running. Also included was a 4-pin Molex to SATA power adapter, two locking SATA cables, the installation disk, and the back panel. Another side note: I also found all of the motherboard’s most current drivers listed on ASRock’s support site for the A330ION.

Well, enough about the box and it’s contents, let’s get out the motherboard and see what we can see, shall we?