Not so long ago Asrock released a new product series based on a range of Mini PCs. To date I have already played with the “Ion 330HT-BD” model which coupled the Intel Dual Core Atom 330 processor with the Nvidia Ion GPU, which was surprisingly capable of full HD 1080p playback without any issues what so ever.

Pricing for this incredible little computer was very reasonable, with the base unit priced at just $350 US, while the more upscale model, with features such as the MCE remote controller, WiFi 802.11n and more, cost $440 US. Finally there was also a version featuring a Blu-ray drive, costing about $500 US, which was starting to get up there.

The Asrock Ion 330 series was announced on November 2nd, 2009, more than half a year ago now. However in that time little has changed in terms of the hardware that can be squeezed into one of these compact 19x19 cm (7x7 in) computers. The Atom 330 is still one of the best embedded dual-core processors available, while the Nvidia Ion remains the best chipset for the job in our opinion.

So then what does the newly released Asrock Core 100HT have to offer? Rather than using Netbook hardware for the Core 100HT, Asrock has employed Laptop hardware instead. By utilizing a motherboard with the mobile Intel HM55 chipset, this Nettop can be equipped with any Intel Core i7/i5/i3 (Arrandale) mobile processor, which really opens up the possibilities for this bite size computer.

The Intel Atom 330 processor of the Asrock Ion 330 could easily be considered gutless, as even the affordable Core i3 330M processor for example, is a power house in comparison. Those looking for serious power in a small foot print will seek out something such as the Core i7 620M, which features four cores operating at 2.66GHz supporting Turbo Mode along with a 4MB L2 cache. Although this is a far cry from the desktop equivalent, it will still hold its own in most showdowns.

Apart from just offering loads more horse power, the Core 100HT has a few other new tricks up its sleeve. For example this is said to be the world’s first HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer) to feature USB 3.0, which is a much welcomed addition. Also supported is HDMI Audio Pass Through (Bitstream) and Native Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD Master Audio for a terrific sound experience. But before we show you more of the Core 100HT, we will go down the memory lane with a brief summary of the Mini-ITX form factor history.

Eventually it became clear that VIA was struggling to get third-party manufacturer support for their chipsets and embedded CPUs. A reworked strategy dictated to employ an in-house motherboard division, aimed to get these products direct to market. VIA's key focus became to standardize low-cost compact computing using their own technology.

The company's first attempt, known as the VT6010 Mini-ITX, and later the EPIA 800 and EPIA 5000 motherboards, failed to make any serious inroads into the market. Having spent years trying to flog off Mini-ITX solutions, VIA was trumped by Intel once all the leg work had been completed.

Many years after the VIA C3 and C7 had been introduced, Intel came up with the Atom CPU, which arrived as a significant leap forward. Call it perfect timing or massive guaranteed partner support, the Atom Z series saw the light on April 2008. Code-named “Silverthorne”, it was a single core processor using a 45nm design process and an impressive thermal envelope of just 2.4w.

Soon after Intel updated the Atom with the “Diamondville” architecture, better known as the Atom N series. The Atom processors became widely used, enabling the widespread use of Netbooks. Asus played a big role with their Eee PC series (originally Celeron based). With the rest of the industry playing a quick game of catch up, it wasn't long before Netbooks loaded with Atom processors flooded the market.

With the introduction of the dual-core Atom 300 series, manufacturers started to look beyond the Netbook, as compact desktop computers became another potential market to tackle.

For years Shuttle pushed their compact XPC computers, with some obvious disadvantages inherent to the times. However, Shuttle XPCs cost more, and even though they can be configured to be powerful smallish PCs, they also consume more power, generate more heat, and as a result make a lot more noise.

The system measures 195mm (W) x 186mm (L) x 70mm (H). It can be mounted either horizontally or vertically, although Asrock only supplies a grip pad for horizontal use. Having been based on the Mini-ITX form factor, it has an internal volume of 2.5L, while weighing 1.7kg fully configured.

The Core 100HT feels very polished on its whole. Asrock has paid attention to the little details while designing their Mini-PC series. The rear I/O panel has been given a coat of black paint, while all the ports have been properly labeled, to make installation easier for the user. The DVD player also received a coat of black gloss paint to match the rest of the system.

Around the back you'll find a significant amount of connectivity options for such a small computer. A total of six USB 2.0 ports, LAN, HDMI, VGA, a powered eSATA port, five audio jacks and an optical S/PDIF output are part of the package. There is also a small DC-in power connection for a Delta Electronics 19v AC/DC adapter.

After some quick research it appears this power pack can be purchased online for as little as $15, so should it die out of warranty, users are not looking at a significant cost to replace it.

Given that this is the "Home Theater" version of the Asrock Core 100, it is only fitting that it comes bundled with a Media Center Edition remote control. This should provide a convenient way of watching movies or listening to music from the comfort of your living room couch, completing the Core 100HT as an ideal HTPC solution.

This drive supports 8x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 6x DVD+R DL and 24x CD read speeds. The drive features a relatively small 2MB buffer with access times of 150ms for DVDs and 130ms for CDs.

At the heart of the Core 100HT is the mobile Intel Core i3 330M processor, featuring two cores with four threads due to the implementation of HyperThreading. The Core i3 330M features a 3MB L3 cache, while it utilizes dual-channel DDR3-1066 memory and operates at 2133MHz without the assistance of Turbo boost technology.

Apart from a dual-core Intel Core i3 330M processor clocked at 2.13GHz and the mobile Intel HM55 chipset, we found a few other interesting components residing in the HM55-HT motherboard.

There's a pair of DDR3 SO-DIMM slots populated with 2GB Elixir DDR3-10600 modules for a total capacity of 4GB. Upgrading the Core 100HT memory will have you doing away with this memory and replacing it with two 4GB modules at a cost of around $140 each.

On the network front the Core 100HT uses the Realtek RTL8111E Gigabit Ethernet controller, along with an AzureWave 802.11 b/g/n Wireless LAN PCI Express Half Mini Card.

Asrock has also gone with VIA for audio, using their tried and true VT2020 8-channel audio codec with THX TruStudio Pro. The TruStudio Surround technology expands your stereo content into surround sound; the TruStudio Crystalizer technology restores the compressed sound source and can let you hear every detail in riveting surround sound.

The Nuvoton NCT6775F IC has helped Asrock achieve the EuP2.0 standard, which indicates that the total AC power consumption of the system is under 0.5W when turned off.

Currently most motherboards are getting their USB 3.0 support from the NEC D720200F1 controller and the HM55-HT is no different. This controller gives the Core 100HT support for two USB 3.0 ports, which are featured on the front I/O panel for quick and easy access. These ports are of course fully backwards compatible with previous USB standards for greater flexibility.

The drive in question must be mounted under the primary drive. However, in order to do so the optical drive and primary hard drive will have to be removed from the mounting bracket first. Asrock also included a cable that connects from a special power connection on the motherboard to the second hard drive.

Ultimately this opens the possibility of purchasing a pair of WD Scorpio Blue 640GB hard drives and getting over a terabyte of fast storage inside the same little box.

The cooling setup is similar to that used in laptops, which is not all that surprising given that the Asrock Core 100HT uses mobile Intel processors. The CPU is cooled via a small silver aluminum heatsink. This heatsink is actively cooled via a tiny 35mm fan, while the mobile Intel HM55 chipset is passively cooled by a much larger heatsink. This combination manages to keep the Core 100HT both quiet and cool.

Both MaxxPI² and EVEREST Ultimate Edition provide similar memory bandwidth results. While the Atom driven systems are limited to a maximum of about 3GB/s of bandwidth, the Asrock Core 100HT boasting its Intel Core i3 330M processor reaches a read bandwidth of 7.4GB/s when testing with EVEREST Ultimate Edition, while the write performance is an equally impressive 7.2GB/s.

Using the MaxxPI² Prime benchmark we can see that the Asrock Core 100HT, when paired with the affordable Intel Core i3 330M processor, is considerably faster than the Intel Atom systems. In fact, when measuring single thread performance, the Core 100HT easily matched the AMD Athlon II X4 600e test system. Even the multi-thread performance was impressive, as the Core i3 330M dual-core processor sports Hyper-Threading and as a result was four times faster than the dual-core Atom 330 processor.

The MaxxPI² CPU Mips/FPU Flops benchmark also shows the Intel Core i3 330M processor of the Asrock Core 100HT easily outperforming the Atom 230 and 330 processors. While still miles behind a basic AMD quad-core desktop processor, and light years behind the Core i5 750 desktop processor, the Core i3 330M delivers an impressive level of performance given its low power consumption.

Although WinRAR is a real-world application, we are using the in-built synthetic benchmark for this test. As you can see, the Asrock Core 100HT with its Intel Core i3 330M processor delivered comparable performance to the AMD Athlon II X4 600e quad-core desktop test system, which is impressive. Although this did mean that the Core i3 330M only provided half the performance of the Intel Core i5 750 desktop system, it was still many times faster than the Atom 330 processor.

SPECviewperf v10 measures 3D rendering performance and as you can see this is not a strong suit of the Asrock Core 100HT. Although the on-die GPU works at between 500-667MHz, the results are dismal, with frame rates half that of the Ion 330HT-BD mini-PC. Clearly the Asrock Core 100HT is going to struggle with any 3D task thrown at it, though thankfully this is not what this product is designed for.

The Asrock Core 100HT does exceptionally well when testing with CINEBENCH R10, especially when compared to other mini-ITX systems. The Intel Core i3 330M processor again delivers more than twice the performance of the Atom 330 processor. Although the Core i3 330M is considerably slower than the AMD Athlon II X4 600e, it also consumes considerably less power as well.

Again the Asrock Core 100HT demonstrates very poor 3D performance. When compared to the Atom systems the performance is nothing out of the ordinary and again the Core 100HT is not designed for gaming.

The Asrock Core 100HT might not be designed for gaming, but it is designed for home theater use. Therefore it is great to find that when watching a 1080p movie the CPU utilization is so low. At less than 3%, the Core 100HT is comparable to our more powerful desktop computers in this test.

The Asrock Core 100HT also fairs quite well in the x264 HD Benchmark 3.0, delivering 35.7fps, making it more than three times faster than the Asrock Ion 330HT-BD featuring the Intel Atom 330 processor.

Using the Asrock windows based overclocking software it is possible to select a front side bus as high as 166MHz, which boosted the operating frequency of the Core i3 330M processor to 2.66GHz. This increased the multi-threading score by 24%, which is an impressive result. However if you head into the BIOS, the FSB can be increased much higher, while the CPU voltage can be increased by 10%. As a result we were able to achieve a stable 3.0GHz overclocked, which boosted performance by another 34%, making the Core i3 330M a staggering 67% faster than the standard configuration.

When testing the power consumption levels of the Asrock Core 100HT we were surprised by the results, particularly when at idle. In fact, at first we did not believe the data, but having checked the results several times we were amazed by the Core 100HT. Armed with the Intel Core i3 330M processor, the Core 100HT consumed just 21 watts when idle at the Windows 7 desktop with Aero enabled. Under full load the Core 100HT consumed just 53 watts, matching the Intel Atom 230 with the old 945GC chipset.

Considering how much faster the Asrock Core 100HT was when compared to the Ion 330HT-BD, the 39% increase in load consumption is more than justified.

The Asrock Core 100HT did however operate a fair bit warmer than the Ion 330HT-BD under full load, though we must point out that it was very quite at all times. Given the tiny heatsink, we were quite amazed with the results really, and with temperatures well within acceptable levels, this is an impressive achievement.

The Asrock Ion 330HT-BD, which was used for comparison purposes, is one of the best attempts we have seen at delivering the ultimate HTPC system. While the Ion 330HT-BD was still powerful enough for day to day tasks, as well as playing 1080p Blu-ray content, the Atom 330 processor was still overwhelmed by more serious tasks.

Although the Atom 330 processor was the only real blemish on the Asrock Ion 330HT-BD’s report card, we also did not like how this compact computer failed to provide any kind of front I/O connectivity. Therefore we are happy to report that the new Asrock Core 100HT addresses both our concerns for processing power and front panel connectivity.

Rather than opting for a low powered embedded processor that cannot be upgraded, this new model features an rPGA socket supporting a range of current Intel mobile processors. Although we tested with the most affordable processor the Asrock Core 100HT supports, it is important to note that a number of Core i5 and Core i7 (Arrandale) mobile processors are also supported.

Therefore, while the Core i3 330M delivered considerably more power than the Atom 330 processor of the Ion 330HT-BD, other options such as the Core i7-620M will be even faster. Still, even the Core i3 330M provided more than enough performance for most tasks, and we have found even heavy multi-tasking does not scare this processor.

Still, those looking to get the most bang for their buck will love the fact that we were able to achieve a 40% overclock with the Core i3 330M, while only increasing the processors voltage by 10%. This overclock saw our CINEBENCH R10 64-bit multi-CPU rendering performance increase by 67%, beating the AMD Athlon II X4 600e processor.

Asrock also addressed our concerns with the lack of front panel I/O on the Ion 330HT-BD, by providing two USB 3.0 ports and dual audio jacks on the front of the Core 100HT, what more could you ask for?

When it comes to playing high definition 1080p Blu-ray content, the Asrock Core 100HT takes on the challenge with ease, and in fact has considerably more power than is required for the job. However despite the excess processing power, the Core 100HT proved to be very light on fuel, consuming almost four times less than our Core i5 750 and Athlon II X4 600e test systems.

Like the original Asrock mini-PC’s, we love the look and feel of the Core 100HT, it is a very well polished product. In terms of features the Core 100HT is extremely well equipped, it offers loads of processing power, plenty of memory for multi-tasking, while today’s 2.5” hard drives offers loads of storage.

There is just one issue we had with the Asrock Core 100HT and it is not something that is going to concern many users, but it does hurt the flexibility of this product. The Core 100HT can only support resolutions as high as 1920x1200, and for most users this is fine, particularly given that this is a HTPC and the 1080p resolution is 1920x1080.

Nevertheless, for users such as myself, that would like to use the Asrock Core 100HT as a desktop PC using a 30” LCD, this resolution limitation becomes an issue. These users will be unable to use their native resolution of 2560x1600 and the reason for this is quite annoying if I am honest. The Core 100HT lacks native DVI support while DisplayPort is off the table all together.

Admittedly DisplayPort is not something a HTPC really needs, but it would allow those with 30” LCD’s to run at their native resolution. The fact that DVI can only be used via a HDMI to DVI dongle is disappointing, particularly given that there is a VGA port onboard. The VGA port should be dumped for a DVI port, as DVI to VGA dongles are readily available and work like a charm.

The only other inherent weakness of the Core 100HT is 3D gaming, which put simply is not possible. Every time we claim that a low powered integrated graphics engine cannot be used for gaming, someone jumps up and down like an angry chimp claiming that we couldn’t be more wrong because they play World of Warcraft at 800x600 using the graphics engine in question.

While it might very well be possible to play World of Warcraft at 800x600 if you swing that way, we do not feel this is gaming, especially as we know it, so I am going to stand by my original statement, gaming is not possible.

Finally there is the question of value, and unfortunately at this point we cannot decisively answer this question. Currently the Core 100 series is yet to go on sale and Asrock has not given us exact pricing. Right now the Asrock Ion 330HT can be had for about $440 US, which is pretty impressive given it includes a dual-core Intel Atom 330 processor along with 2GB of DDR2 memory and a 320GB SATA hard drive.

The more powerful Asrock Core 100HT on the other hand appears as though it could cost around $650 US without any memory or hard drive. Interestingly, while the Core 100HT supports mobile Core i5 and Core i7 processors, Asrock is shipping all Core 100HT systems with the Core i3 330M processor. This is great news as it makes the estimated price tag of $650 US much easier to swallow, but there are some disadvantages as well.

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Those looking to configure the Core 100HT with a more powerful processor must still pay for the Core i3 330M and then discard it once the upgraded processor has been installed. Also, where as the Asrock Ion 330HT included a hard drive and memory, the Core 100HT does not. Therefore users should look to add about another $150 US to the price tag. Of course we are still unsure as to exactly how much the Core 100HT will retail for, so take all this with a grain of salt for now. With that being said, we will update this review as pricing and more information comes in.

Overall we are left very impressed with the Asrock Core 100HT. While we have focused on using the Core 100HT as a HTPC solution, this tiny system could be used for various tasks and is suitable for general usage as well. In fact, anything you could see yourself using a Core i7 laptop for, the Core 100HT can do as well, with the exception of gaming as the GMA HD graphics engine must be used.