My recent HPTC with Zotac Ion

[anilva]

I recently did my 4th HTPC (last week). This time I did with a Zotac Atom/Ion motherboard called IonITX after reading great reviews about it's suitability to HTPC. This motherboard has everything that you want including HDMI port.

Plays Blurays fabulously well. Uses a very low power Atom 330 (dual core) CPU along with nVidia Ion GPU. I have not seen this levels of performance with any of my earlier systems (which had quad core CPUs and dedicated GPU cards). All this at next to negligible power consumption and heat and sound.

The mother board has a Micro ITX foot print and is very small. A regular HTPC casing is too big for this. The MB costs around 10K (including the ATOM CPU) in the Indian market and around $160 on Amazon.

Cheers.
Anil

 

[spirovious]

Thats good.Any specific model No.?

 

[gobble]

I recently did my 4th HTPC (last week). This time I did with a Zotac Atom/Ion motherboard called IonITX after reading great reviews about it's suitability to HTPC. This motherboard has everything that you want including HDMI port.

Plays Blurays fabulously well. Uses a very low power Atom 330 (dual core) CPU along with nVidia Ion GPU. I have not seen this levels of performance with any of my earlier systems (which had quad core CPUs and dedicated GPU cards). All this at next to negligible power consumption and heat and sound.

The mother board has a Micro ITX foot print and is very small. A regular HTPC casing is too big for this. The MB costs around 10K (including the ATOM CPU) in the Indian market and around $160 on Amazon.

Cheers.
Anil

Its the nvidia chipset that makes the difference - even with an underpowered cpu

Great going. How did you come around to making 4? Are you distributing the stuff?

cheers

 

[anilva]

Its the nvidia chipset that makes the difference - even with an underpowered cpu

Great going. How did you come around to making 4? Are you distributing the stuff?

cheers

Not into any production. First one was a Intel Pentium with Hyper Threading, then a Athlon Dual Core, Athlon Black edition dual core and recently Phenom based. Mutliple graphic cards Nvidia, ATI, Nvidia, ATI.... Blew a bit on one thing after another. Always focused on HD.

Cheers.

 

[anilva]

Thats good.Any specific model No.?

Zotac IONITX Synergy Motherboard with Atom N330 CPU. Check Amazon for pricing and specs.

 

[spirovious]

Thanks for info.

 

[Sharat]

Please let me know the address of the shop where you bought the MB
Thanks in advance

 

[reignofchaos]

Does it bitstream HD audio?

 

[anm]

has anyone seen it in delhi/ nehru place, or can it be shipped from somewhere within India?
Anilva - what PSU are you using?
Wondering if this can be used as a good music only computer as well?
I hope RAM can be upgraded on this?

 

[gopib]

Anm,

I too have done the same ION ITX mobo. The memory can be upgraded to
4GB. For me it works fine with 2GB. As Anilva said theCPU utilisation is very low as well as it is pretty cool. The hyperthreading makes the diff, it seems.
Sometime back I saw some on ebay in. The local dealers take orders and get it from the master distributors it seems, from what I got to know from SP Rd. dealers. HTH. Cheers

 

[anm]

^^^^ where did you get it from?

 

[digitalv]

Does it bitstream HD audio?

I don't think it can. At least the old ION's couldn't bitstream DTS HD and Dolby True HD to an AVR.
With software like PowerDVD, it could do multi-channel PCM audio though.

Can any user's confirm?

 

[vaibhavyagnik]

i don't think the ion platform has enough power to run the recent version of PowerDVD with all the bells and whistles

 

[anilva]

i don't think the ion platform has enough power to run the recent version of PowerDVD with all the bells and whistles

Not a correct statement. Runs perfectly well with blu ray software players including total media theater. No problem. It is because of the ion chip.

Cheers.

 

[anilva]

Anant,

I got it from US. Now they are available locally I guess. I saw that on www.tech shop.in

Cheers.

 

[sg3707]

Plays Blurays fabulously well. Uses a very low power Atom 330 (dual core) CPU along with nVidia Ion GPU. I have not seen this levels of performance with any of my earlier systems (which had quad core CPUs and dedicated GPU cards). All this at next to negligible power consumption and heat and sound.


Cheers.
Anil

No Offence Dude. But this is pretty lame.

You are comparing quad core CPU and Atom processor.:indifferent14:

 

[anilva]

No Offence Dude. But this is pretty lame.

You are comparing quad core CPU and Atom processor.:indifferent14:

I don't know what you are trying to say, but trust me, CPU power is not the only thing when it comes to playing things like blurays. You need a great GPU optimised for the task, which is what a ION and a Atom combination do quite well. I am not implying this combo is good for other CPU intensive tasks, which including lot of gaming as well.

 

[GeorgeO]

Hi Anil

I was also looking at a possible HTPC down the line- have the Shuttle in mind.It also has a small footprint. I need to upgrade my home network first-with a new 8 port Trendnet gigabit switch, a Thermaltake USB dock with eSATA, and a gigabit nic card, that I brought I plan to connect up the bits and pieces this weekend to speed up data transfer to my PH. I have a SATA to eSATA bracket that I got from Ebay, will connect that from my motherboard, to use on my dock.

I will discuss this with you in some more detail when we meet up.
Cheers

 

[santhosh]

@anilva: I read George's post somewhere that you you are Alibaba and your listening room is full of goodies. Must tell you that George is no less, after seeing all goodies that he has picked up from the US, I called him Santa Claus. What he has listed here is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[GeorgeO]

Santhosh

Alibaba rules!

I'm waiting for you to take some better pictures of the Shiva( and hopefully not get your arm wrenched off in the process).The pictures you posted don't do justice to the driver.