ASRock ION 330HT-BD Net-top Review

Final Thoughts

In this industry it's important to keep an open mind. It's rare that hardware that has traditionally been, to put it bluntly, crap, can suddenly turn around and take a big bite out of the WIN cake. It can happen though, and the combination of Ion, Windows 7 and other software updates really boosts what the Atom is capable of.

In particular, we were massively impressed with the speed boost provided by Ion and the 10.1 Flash update, as it results in so many computing tasks becoming possible on lowly machines. 1080p playback is now smooth whether you're playing a h.264 file or Blu-ray disc, or streaming via a Flash based service such as Hulu or BBC iPlayer.

Great as Flash 10.1 is, it's still in beta (with an official release slated for 2010), and you do have to go out of your way to get it - coupled with the fact there's no OS pre-installed, this doesn't do wonders for the ASRock as an easy-to-use product. Aside from that, the major fault is the cooling. In our experience, the 30mm fan does not shift enough air to keep the CPU comfortably cool. With the fan speed set to auto in the BIOS the fan emits a high pitched whine which in a quiet room is clearly noticeable and annoying, and reducing it to normal speed doesn't get close to resolving the issue. The fact that the CPU temperature increased just 3°C in the BIOS when we disconnected it proves our point really, and when we did so the ASRock was whisper quiet.

Prospective purchasers should also be aware of the usual limitations of Atom - even dual-core Atoms aren't capable of excelling at strenuous tasks such as photo editing, TV recording/transcoding and media creation. Ion is a GeForce 9400 and so it's only capable of powering simple, or older games.


Given that the ASRock comes with a desk mat and has a Blu-ray drive, it's clearly intended to sit next to your monitor or TV. At this range, the noise it makes will be unacceptable to many people. Unless you intend to play movies on it, and kick back on a sofa on the other side of the room with it buried in a cabinet, it's annoying. It's a shame, as Ion, with Windows 7, really helps HD playback, and as the ASRock comes with a remote control and HDMI port, its designers are clearly eyeing up the HTPC market. Sadly, as much as software improvements have helped the Ion, we still feel the ASRock is too noisy for most people's lounges.

• Build Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Ease of Use
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

Score Guide