Asus AT3N7A-I Intel Atom 330/Nvidia ION/FSB 533/2DDR2-800/GbE/HDMI/7.1-CH/BlueTooth Mini ITX Motherboard

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Product Feature

• Battery Rechargeable - Yes
• Battery Size - Proprietary
• Number of Cells - 6

Product Description

Asus AT3N7A-I Intel Atom 330/Nvidia ION/FSB 533/2DDR2-800/GbE/HDMI/7.1-CH/BlueTooth Mini ITX Motherboard

Asus AT3N7A-I Intel Atom 330/Nvidia ION/FSB 533/2DDR2-800/GbE/HDMI/7.1-CH/BlueTooth Mini ITX Motherboard Review

I decided to build myself a low-power Media Center PC to act as a media file server, torrent server, and a DVR replacement. It works quite nicely for the most part, as the GPU can accelerate most of the more difficult movies. There are still some files it can't quite handle (i.e. big mkv's). It fits nicely in the Apex MI-100. I'll summarize the good and the bad below:

The good:
-Low power (around 35W idle, 45W peak, or so the reviews say)
-PCI slot (this depends on your application, obviously, but I wanted to pair this with an HTC Claro sound card, and those are PCI-only)
-Overclocking (I currently have it at a modest 2.0 GHz, but I've heard of some getting as high as 2.2 GHz)
-720p/1080p playback
-Atom 330 is dual-core and has 64-bit support
-Integrated bluetooth
-Tons of USB ports
-ION boards are inexpensive
-Assembly is simple (no CPU or CPU cooler to mount)
-Very low profile, if space is especially cramped

The bad:
-Higher idling power than other ION boards (Zotac's to be specific)
-Atom 330 is not much more powerful than the 270 (EDIT: the 330 is almost twice as fast as the 270, but it still pales in comparison to Core 2 based system)
-No integrated wifi (may or may not matter, mine is hard-wired, so I don't care)
-The price of this board is a little higher than other ION products (although probably justified by Atom 330 and Bluetooth)
-Cannot play some videos as well as I would like (EDIT: this is only an issue when I play MKV files in VLC media player, as apparently VLC does not use the GPU for playing MKVs. I don't mind though, as I now just avoid MKVs altogether, and Windows 7's Media Player and Media Center play everything beautifully.)

EDIT: Regarding MKV videos, apparently there is a solution out there for having the GPU do the work. Another review of this product (by Adam Vankirk) recommended CoreAVC, which utilizes Nvidia CUDA, for those pesky MKVs (and other h264 content). Apparently it works quite smoothly for this and netbooks. It does seem to cost $12.95 though. I could not find any open source or free solutions that would provide the same functionality (please correct me if I am wrong, and, even better, link it if it exists!). For basically $13, you solve that CPU-bottlenecked issue, and this little board can then control any video type I can think of.

Basically, it is one of the faster ION platforms available, but I am still disappointed that it can't crank out all the video formats I often play (EDIT: without purchasing CoreAVC). Check the video formats you play and make sure the ION is sufficient. I really wasn't well-versed in the low-power options available when I bought this. Since then, I have discovered the 9300 chipsets with the 775 socket. The total system cost will be a bit more ($20 more for a Pentium E5200, $70 more for a Core 2 Duo E7400), but you will have a system that isn't so CPU limited. The idling power is only a few watts more, so to me it is worthwhile to not hit that nasty CPU threshold. I purchased a Zotac 9300 board as well for my car PC after doing more research, and it, paired with a Core 2 E7400, absolutely demolishes anything I throw at it.

Basically, purchase this board if you are sure the Atom will not limit you in any way. Otherwise, like I said, only $20 more will get you a more powerful system with slightly higher power requirements (but a higher performance/wattage ratio).

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