ASRock Core 100HT Home Theater PC Review

Final Thoughts on the ASRock Core 100HT HTPC

The ASRock Core 100HT HTPC offers a well rounded home theater experience for those who do not need or want a beast of a PC running 24/7. Many users run their HTPC non-stop and having low power consumption keeps money in the bank. The ASRock Core 100HT uses less power at idle than two 13W CFL energy efficient light bulbs!

As far as performance goes, the Core 100HT has a much safer platform for playing HD content than most nettop platforms such as the Intel Atom platform or the AMD Fusion APU platform if you plan on running any tasks in the background like ripping DVDs or Blu-Rays or even re-encoding video content. This may or may not matter if you never plan on doing anything with your HTPC other than content playback.

The ASRock Core 100HT system can be had for $605 over at Superbiiz.com. However, with a little searching, it seems the price on the Blu-Ray version, the ASRock Core 100HT/BD, was just dropped at some e-Tailers and can be had for $580 with Newegg.com. We would obviously recommend that one, but the performance benchmarks would roughly be identical. Add on the cost of Windows 7 Home Premium ($99), and the total bill to get the ASRock Core 100HT up and running ends up around $670 which is not a cheap HTPC, but the platform is capable of much more than a $238 Nettop.

Overall, the size of the ASRock Core 100HT and the performance per watt are its major selling points. While the Intel Core i3 CPU is not the enthusiast-grade processor you might be used to, it will get the job done without the worry of playback quality during your favorite show. Many people use their HTPCs for multiple applications and each of those applications may have background processes that require some amount of CPU usage 24/7. The ASRock Core 100HT will do the trick.

Legit Bottom Line: The ASRock Core 100HT has a sleek footprint that allows you to put it anywhere in your home theater and will deliver the performance you need without the power demand of a traditional desktop PC.