The Asrock Mini PC line has featured some exciting products over the past few years, with the most exciting to date being the Vision 3D. Originally armed with a power efficient Intel Core i3 or Core i5 mobile processor, along with the Nvidia GeForce GT 425M graphics card, the Vision 3D made for the ultimate small form factor HTPC.

Asrock revisited the Vision 3D last year, updating it to support the Intel Sandy Bridge processors along with the Nvidia GeForce GT 540M graphics card.

By including a mobile graphics card the Vision 3D didn’t have to rely on the embedded Intel HD graphics, which provides very poor performance. Although the gaming performance of the GeForce GT 425M didn’t blow us away, it was more often than not considerably faster than the Intel HD Graphics 3000 graphics engine utilized by the newer Intel Core i5-2520M processor.

Then along came the second generation Vision 3D with its GeForce GT 540M, and that did impress us, offering up to 90% more gaming performance when compared to the previous model. Now with enough GPU power to play the latest games using respectable visual settings, the second generation Vision 3D was the most well rounded mini PC we had ever seen.

That was until Asrock announced the VisionX series featuring a new Intel Ivy Bridge processor, 8GB of DDR3-1600 memory and the AMD Radeon HD 7850M graphics card. The VisionX 321B is the first ever model to be released in this new series and at $900 it isn’t exactly cheap. Still when we reviewed the Vision 3D 252B last year that was fetching $1000, so the VisionX 321B price tag isn’t all that surprising. So what do you get for your $900 exactly? Read on to find out...

The compact design and attractive exterior helps it blend into any home theater setup, while its small footprint also allows it to fit just about anywhere.

The system measures 200mm (W) x 200mm (L) x 70mm (H) making it a fraction wider and longer than previous models. It can be mounted either horizontally or vertically, although rubber feet are only on the bottom of the case. Based on the Mini-ITX form factor, it has an internal volume of 2.8L while weighing 1.8kg fully configured.

The VisionX 321B feels very polished and it's obvious that Asrock has paid attention to minor details when 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 Blu-ray player is a slot-loading model, so it's recessed into the case allowing it to blend in with the rest of the body.

Around back you'll find a significant amount of connectivity options for such a small computer, including a total of four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, LAN, HDMI, DVI, a powered eSATA 6Gb/s port, five audio jacks and an optical S/PDIF output. There is also a small DC-in power connection for a Delta Electronics 19v AC/DC adapter.

The front of the VisionX is identical to the Vision 3D models featuring a headphone and microphone jack along with a pair of USB 3.0 ports, 4-in-1 card reader and embedded slot loading optical drive. There is also a power button which is worked into the design nicely and emits a blue light when active.

By default, all VisionX comes bundled with a Media Center Edition remote control to provide a convenient way to watch movies or listen to music from the comfort of your living room couch, completing the VisionX as an ideal HTPC solution.

This drive supports read speeds of 24x CD, 8x DVD, 4x BD, 3x BD-DL, 2x BD‐R SL/DL and write speeds of 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 250ms Blu-ray, 180ms for DVDs and 180ms for CDs.

At the heart of the VisionX 321B is the mobile Intel Core i5-3210M processor which is based on the Ivy Bridge architecture. This processor works at 2.5GHz and boasts two cores (HyperThreading is supported) and a 3MB L3 cache. However it also features Turbo Boost, which can boost the frequency of each core to 3.10GHz when needed.

Moving on we have a pair of DDR3 SO-DIMM slots populated with ASint DDR3-1600 4GB modules for a total of 8GB. Upgrading the VisionX memory will have you doing away with this memory and replacing it with two 8GB modules at a cost of around $40 US each should you require to do so.

On the network front the VisionX 321B uses the Broadcom BCM57781 Gigabit Ethernet controller which has been a popular choice for Asrock recently. Also included is an Atheros AR9287 wireless-N PCI Express Half Mini Card.

Asrock has also used a Realtek chip for audio, using their tried and true ALC898 8-channel audio codec with THX TruStudio Pro. The TruStudio Surround technology expands your stereo content into surround sound and the TruStudio Crystalizer technology restores the compressed sound source, letting 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.

Previous Asrock Mini-PCs that have included USB 3.0 support have employed third party controllers such as the NEC D720200F1. However when Intel released their Ivy Bridge architecture they also introduced the 7-series chipset family which for the first time from Intel included native USB 3.0 support. The VisionX 321B uses the HM77 chipset and therefore supports four USB 3.0 ports natively.

Moving onto storage the VisionX 321B comes with a single 2.5" 750GB hard drive a second 2.5" drive can be mounted under the primary. Previous designs used by the Vision 3D series have required users to remove the optical drive and primary hard drive before the optional secondary drive can be installed.

This was an inefficient design that Asrock has now corrected, making it possible to quickly install a second hard drive without having to remove any other hardware. In an effort to improve cooling Asrock has also added a tiny 30mm fan at the front of the 2.5” drive bay. Asrock also include a cable that connects from a special power connection on the motherboard to the second hard drive.

This opens the possibility of purchasing a second hard drive for more than a terabyte of storage in this tiny PC. Alternatively an affordable low capacity boot SSD drive would be a nice option here.

The cooling setup is similar to that used in laptops, which is not all that surprising as the Asrock VisionX 321B uses mobile Intel processors. The CPU and HM77 chipset are cooled via a large silver aluminum heatsink with a copper base. This heatsink is actively cooled via a small 65mm blower fan, while the AMD Radeon HD 7850M graphics card also shares this airflow using a small array of aluminum fins which are connected to a large copper base. This combination keeps the VisionX 321B both quiet and cool.

There is little to no difference between the Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors when measuring memory bandwidth and as a result the Asrock Vision 3D and VisionX mini PCs delivered similar results.

This time we see that the L2 cache performance of the Core i5-3210M processor featured in the VisionX is very similar to the Core i5-2520M on the Vision 3D.

The Core i5-3210M coupled with the Radeon HD 7850M graphics card made the VisionX significantly faster than any other Asrock mini PC we have tested to date. The VisionX rendered 23.6fps in the Maya test and 13.4fps in the SolidWorks test opposed to just 7.5fps and 4.3fps by the Vision 3D.

The Asrock VisionX performed well in the Povray benchmark and again delivered the best performance we have seen from a mini PC. The Biscuit test was completed in just 15.18 seconds which was notably faster than the 16.05 seconds it took the Vision 3D.

CINEBENCH R11.5 is used to measure both CPU and GPU performance. Here we see that the CPU performance is very similar to the Vision 3D which uses the Core i5-2520M processor. However the Vision 3D is equipped with the GeForce GT 540M which scored just 24.38fps, whereas the VisionX managed a far more impressive 59.40fps.

The VisionX and its Core i5-3210M took 13.07 seconds to complete the Excel 2010 workload, which is roughly the same time it took the Vision 3D 252B and CoreHT 252B.

The Asrock VisionX was surprisingly slow in our WinRAR 700MB compression test taking 188 seconds. The CoreHT 252B and Vision 3D 252B were both much faster here and the only real difference in hardware is these models feature faster 7200-RPM hard drives.

The Asrock VisionX completed the Photoshop CS5 test in 49.7 seconds, which is roughly the same time it took the CoreHT 252B and Vision 3D 252B.

The Asrock VisionX 321B was faster than both the Vision 3D 252B and CoreHT 252B in the HandBrake test, rendering up to 3fps more. Surprisingly this still meant that the VisionX was slower than our AMD A8-3850 test system.

Here we see that the Asrock VisionX fell behind the CoreHT 252B and Vision 3D 252B by around 3fps in the x264 HD Benchmark, which is surprising given what we saw in HandBrake.

Again the VisionX 321B was found to be slightly slower than the Vision 3D 252B and CoreHT 252B, this time in the TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress benchmark.

This is where the Asrock VisionX shines, 3D performance. Here it rendered an impressive 46.5fps at 1680x1050 which is more than twice that seen from our AMD A8-3850 test system, as well as the Vision 3D 252B.

This time when testing with Far Cry 2 the Asrock VisionX 321B rendered 79.1fps at 1680x1050, making it 72% faster than the Vision3D 252B in a game that typically favored Nvidia based graphics cards.

Finally when testing with Company of Heroes the Asrock VisionX 321B averaged 56.8fps, making it 18% faster than the Vision 3D 252B as well as our AMD A8-3850 test system.

Not only was the VisionX 321B significantly faster than previous Asrock mini PC’s when it came to 3D performance, but it also consumes the least amount of power when under load. For stress testing we run Prime95 and FurMark simultaneously and when doing so the VisionX 321B consumed less power than the CoreHT 252B and Vision 3D 252B.

This makes the VisionX a real all-rounder capable of everything from watching movies to playing games, as well as some serious work as well. For desktop users the VisionX allows for both work and play, while as a HTPC it not only replaces all your optical devices, such as the Blu-ray player, but you can also throw away your old gaming console.

Of course being able to do it all comes at a price as the VisionX 321B costs $900, which includes the 750GB hard drive and 8GB of memory. Although this does seem like a steep price for a system that doesn’t include a monitor, keyboard/mouse or an operating system, the VisionX is a unique product with no real competition.

There are no real alternatives, the once popular Shuttle XPC’s are much larger and once fully configured cost roughly the same as the VisionX anyway. Other slim PC’s from Lenovo, Dell and HP all cost around $900 with a similar hardware configuration to that of the VisionX without the powerful mobile Radeon graphics card.

When compared to the older Vision 3D series the VisionX doesn’t really offer anything new in the processing department, delivering virtually the same CPU performance despite being based on the new Ivy Bridge architecture.

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The significant difference between the Vision 3D 252B that we reviewed last year and the VisionX 321B is the AMD Mobility Radeon HD 7850M, which provided up to 2x the gaming performance. Other than that the VisionX is very similar to the Vision 3D series in physical design and features. That said the graphics upgrade has made the VisionX a far more capable device.

Those uninterested by the gaming potential of the VisionX will be better served by the VisionHT range which removes the Radeon graphics card and uses Intel HD Graphics 4000 solution instead, while also halving the amount of memory included. The end result is a 25% reduction in price to just $680, making the VisionHT a bargain when compared to competing products from major brands such as Lenovo, Dell and HP.