ASRock Vision HT: Ivy Bridge Carries the SFF HTPC Forward
by Ganesh T S on November 12, 2012 3:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Home Theater
- ASRock
- HTPC
- Ivy Bridge
Before proceeding to the business end of the review, let us take a look at some power consumption numbers. We measured power drawn at the wall when the unit was idle (with the display still being driven over HDMI and without), one hour after subjecting the unit to Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously and when playing back a 1080p24 Blu-ray movie from the optical drive with HD audio bistreaming. In all cases, the Wi-Fi was active (no wired Ethernet). A wireless keyboard and mouse was also connected to the unit.
| ASRock Vision HT 321B Power Consumption | |
| Idle (Display off) | 12.66 W |
| Idle (Display on) | 14.3 W |
| Prime95 + Furmark (Full loading) | 58.68 W |
| 1080p24 Blu-ray Playback using CyberLink PowerDVD 12 | 28.04 W |
The thermal solution used in the Vision HT 321B is very similar to the one used in the CoreHT 252B. We have already covered the thermal performance in detail in the previous reviews of ASRock HTPCs, and I found no discernible difference in the actual performance of the units. Full loading produces less than 35 dB of noise, and this is as good as what one can get with an actively cooled system.
The Vision HT 321B is definitely a good upgrade over the CoreHT 252B. By increasing the hard disk capacity, moving to DDR3-1600 for the DRAM and including dual-band Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, ASRock has put in some thinking before doing an upgrade to the CoreHT lineup. Intel's advancements with Ivy Bridge (particularly, increased GPU capabilities and lower power consumption) also serve ASRock well in the upgrade.
It is almost impossible to avoid a comparison with the Mac mini which comes in with comparable specs for $599 (although it doesn't have a Blu-ray drive and has only a 500 GB HDD). At $680, there is a $80 premium for the ASRock unit, and all said, the PC ecosystem is preferred by more users for HTPC duties compared to the Mac mini. For readers looking to purchase the unit, I would advise a look at the Newegg reviews where there have been reports of internal components getting burnt when power is supplied. Our review unit has had no such issues in the last four months that it has been continuously on. However, such an issue is definitely possible and ASRock indicated that they are looking into it. Quality control and thermal design are aspects that ASRock need to pay more attention to in the future product lines.
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shurik_1 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Could you test the silent data corruption issue I have described in Vision 3D comments? With Vision 3D it is still an issue when 16GB RAM are installed (with 8GB RAM they fixed it via BIOS update that they did not make publicly available) and ASRock although acknowledges its existence refuses to fix it.ganeshts - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
I will follow up on this with ASRock. That said, I have been using the Vision HT / Vision 3D 252B to unpack a number of split archives (around 400 MB each unpacking to ~4.37 GB / ~10 GB) and not found any issues so far.But, definitely an interesting case (if there is some data corruption with a different DRAM, that may point to some issue in the DRAM module itself). Are you aware of any other users with the same issue? I am trying to see if there is something common between all the systems exhibiting this problem...
shurik_1 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
It will not complain at unpack because my thinking is that corruption occur at writing (at some point in my lengthy mail exchange with ASRock support Intel ME was mentioned as the culprit). I discovered the issue because par repair invariably fails on large file sets. That is why I call it silent. Did you try to create checksum of archive content and test after unpack? I have only one set of laptop 16GB modules. But when my 2nd gen Vision 3D had BIOS prior to 1.10c ("c" suffix is important here) it was present with 16GB and two different sets of 8GB modules.klmccaughey - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
I don't understand why manufacturers can't release a cheap HTPC. It is still much more cost effective to build your own.Every time I see one of these reviews I get excited, and every time I get disappointed as I see the outrageous price tag.
EnzoFX - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
I too wish there were cheaper alternatives. I myself have no need for optical (Ew), and am usually eyeing those tiny foxconn's that use E-350's. Though I'd more likely go with something with more performance.Perhaps this segment is too much of a niche (Probably). Intel's NUC looks promising, hope it becomes standardized so that the race to the bottom can start on those chips =P.
lurker22 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Avoid the 350. Yes it will work, but a lot of use end up being slow on it especially when the GPU acceleration isn't available.StealthX32 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
From what I've read on a few Newegg reviews, you can get a Broadcom BCM9700xx hardware decoder card to put into the miniPCI-e slot and achieve <20% CPU utilization on even high bitrate 1080p material.I bought this from them when they had the buy an HTPC get a free SSD combo, but haven't gotten around to buying the Broadcom card yet.
lurker22 - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
As I said, it's doing everything outside of the GPU accelerated videos that ends up being very slow. Web browsing, Netflix, etc is all CPU limited.BuddyRich - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
Netflix via website and silverlight is bad.Youtube HD is GPU accelerated and Netflix Win8 also works nicely.
One of the few pluses of Win8!
Pipperox - Tuesday, November 13, 2012 - link
I have an E-350 based Zotac Nano.It's absolutely silent, can play most media content without a hitch (haven't tried 1080p60 content though, but 24 and 30Hz are not a problem) and with Windows 8 internet browsing and general PC usage is butter smooth.
Sure, i wouldn't do media transcoding or rendering or content creation on such a PC, but for the value and intended use I couldn't be happier.