ASRock ION 330HT-BD 1080P Blu-Ray HTPC System Review

Inside the system and bundle

With the top cover removed we can see inside the system. Everything is neatly and tightly packed. At the top of the system we see the Sony Optiarc BC-5500S Blu-Ray combo drive and the bracket holding it in. The Sony Optiarc BC-5500S can be found on eBay for $149 alone, so you can see that nearly 30% of the cost of this system is due to the thin bezel Blu-Ray drive!

On the underside of this bracket is the system’s Seagate Momentus 5400.6 2.5″ 320GB hard drive. There is a provision in the bracket for adding another 2.5 hard drive.

With the drive bracket out we can see the rest of the system. The system has two slots of DDR2 SO-DIMMS which you would normally find in a laptop. Our system shipped with 2x1GB of Elixir DDR2-800 memory and has a maximum of 4GB, plenty to run even the most demanding HTPC.

Under the small heat sink is the ATOM processor. The small fan is really very quiet at the default settings. The larger heat sink is cooling the ION chipset. Most of the cooling is provided by the larger fan at the back of the case. With the system only drawing 50w at the wall under load there really isnt much heat to move out of the case. Overall, noise is much less than a Jasper model XBOX 360 Elite.

You can also see the Wireless B/G/N adapter with the antenna running to the front of the case for best reception.

All told, this Mini-ITX is packing some great hardware that is just about perfect for a HTPC.

Box and Bundle

The box the ION 330HT-BD comes in is rather small itself. There is no fancy artwork, just a picture of both a white and a black system with some of the specs of the system off to the side. It’s very simple and clean, I like it! Note that since we there are different systems available, the Blu-ray ROM drive sticker is present on ours.

The bundle includes a glossy black MCE remote, a SATA and power cable for attaching a second hard drive, a HDMI to DVI adapter, an anti-slip mat for the system to rest on, and a driver and software disc. The power supply is external to keep the system itself as small as possible. It uses a brick similar to a laptop/netbook.