ASRock Vision 3D HTPC... interesting. - Page 6

Nice job! Next time can you leave a little on the table for other reviewers

Nice article.

The 90W power adapter is surprising considering your article measured 82W peak consumption.

There is not a lot of power reserve if you take line brownouts and loss
of power conversion efficiency as the adapter ages.

The pricing comparison in your article looks like it is comparing a similar
build. Are you using retail prices?

Asrock's pricing is very strange. I ran the numbers using the prices in your article below.

The choice of MXM and a Mobile CPU ($420) is responsible for nearly half the cost ($990).
Delete those and replace it with desktop equivalents and the BOM can come down by as much as $300.

Asrock seem to be skimping on the PSU, I expect to see a 120W for the asking price.
It would have been better if they had gone with a known
vendor like NEC for the USB3 rather that for a fabless startup like Fresco,
as they are asking for a premium price.

Th exclusion of the OS is very odd as is the inclusion of the Cyberlink software and 3D glasses.

The offering is already expensive. The OS should be included as part of the
price, alternatively the software bundle and associated fluff could have been
deleted to return $50-100 back to the buyer.

I have to wonder if USB 3.0 an important feature for most users. Certainly a nice-to-have checkbox to hit, but there aren't many compelling devices that make it really useful. Personally, I would have preferred that they left USB 3.0 off the BOM.

I don't expect the full load to happen anytime in the HTPC. It uses Furmark which stresses the GPU beyond reasonable limits and also all the 4 threads are fully loaded. Probably, the unit will spend more time near the idle power consumption figure rather than the 82W figure.


Yes, retail prices. But, for many laptop components, it is not possible to get retail prices. That is why I compare heavily with notebooks using similar components.


That is true, but the power rating of the build would also go up. I see the least power hungry 'equivalent' dissipates 65W for the CPU itself. Add another 40W for the GPU. From the cost viewpoint, you are correct


I will pass on your suggestion to ASRock. Seems a very reasonable demand.


The unit has 2 NEC USB3 ports and 1 Frseco port. NEC doesn't have 1 port USB3 chips AFAIK. The Fresco chip is cheaper than the NEC one. Also, the appearance of competition from Fresco has forced NEC to lower the sale price of its USB 3 chips. So, it is a win-win for consumers


The 3D glasses aren't part of the kit, but the 3DTV Play software is. Yes, exclusion of OS being odd has been pointed out to ASRock. They expect distributors to have combo deals for the OS and also good discounts on the MSRP of $999.

For the high-end, one USB 3 port would have been enough. (I really enjoyed the feature for enabling fast file transfers between the Core 100 and Vision 3D review units). As pointed out in the review, 3 ports is an overkill. One port with the PLX bridge chip to enable 'Full and True USB 3' would have been ideal.

My issue with ASRock is that they are enabling USB3 in their upcoming entry level HTPC also with the same limitations but that is a story for another day and another review.

This requires 2 device drivers and NEC has a userland app in addition to that.
Overall it adds cost and complexity and I hope they will not push off
the burden of tech support that this will cause.


ASRock should step up and say they will support self installed OSes
when there is trouble.

Distributors having to do tech support is a non starter
all most of them will do is to point the finger at someone else usually
the buyer or manufacturer.

I would like to see ASrock offer a barebones unit without RAM, ODD or HDD
and perhaps without CPU for around $500.
This neatly bypasses this partial bundling mess.

It would seem that ASRock is trying too hard and in case of USB3 overbuilt
the box.

The concept of a small HTPC box with a discrete GPU is very appealing
to me. Its nearest competitor is the AOPEN MP57/55 and it sells for about
$300 less ($800 vs $1100 if you include Win7) but suffers the curse of the
Intel iGPU

I have no interest in the additional software as the OS is not included.
If they manage to offer a box without all that baggage, I would buy one.

Assuming 82W is AC draw from the wall, the DC power draw of the system is ~70W or below. IMO a 90W PSU is enough. Prime95 + Furmark is an extreme case that a user usually won't see anyway.

That would depend on the power factor of the adaptor. On a PF of 0.9
(Active PFC) this is borderline.

A 0.9 PF adapter draws 91VA from the wall for a measured load of 82W
Assuming a conversion efficiency of 85% this yields 77VA at the load end.

This means there is 13VA of headroom left for things like brownouts and
losses due to temperature rise and ageing.

This might be acceptable on a $300 netbook but I don't think it is on a
$1100 machine.

Picture gets worse if it is passive PFC. A quick way to tell if if the adapter
is universal voltage. Active PFC ones usually are universal voltage without a
switch.

I wonder how those discounts are going to be converted into buyer discounts.
Unless there is a compelling reason (as in price competition between multiple retailers), I dont see it happening in any near future. So either you need to wait for cost reduction, or look elsewhere for different product.

I also wonder when the V3D actually will be available for sale. The count down is over, but 'where to buy' is still under construction (TBD).

... oh and btw: Great review.
I was especially happy to see that noice is not such a big issue.
If only that darn OS had been included for the price ...

Can you check the actual real temperature in a real consumer environment (76-78F)?

Temperatures under normal usage varied between 45 and 55 degrees C. For the Prime95 + FurMark, it never went past 90 degrees C. Cooling solution is pretty effective, IMHO.

Yes, but what was your testing environment's ambient temperature when you recorded those temps?

It was a non air conditioned room. Temperatures around 25 degrees C.

The jump to external adapters that output >90w often comes with annoying things like high-frequency ringing or miniature (and irritating) fans. They could probably have sourced a really good 120w external power supply/adapter, but not very inexpensively.

Hi Jakmal

Great review, really detailed and covered all the little things (such as remote and S3 mode) which are much more important to me when deciding on a purchase rather than seeing page after page of benchmark tables!

Could you just give me some more thoughts on the noise levels. I don't have a Core100 to compare against but I do have the ION330. Is it similar in levels?

I'm very sensitive to noise (the ION330 is borderline acceptable for me) so I'm concerned when you say:

"Noise for HTPC purpose is quieter than Core 100 (like when playing movies or BDs), but gaming or any activity which gets the CPU up at more than 50% kickstarts the fan."

I wont be gaming but I will be using it as an WMC7 PVR with dual tuners and playback of some AVI's with subtitles turned on (which deactivates hardware acceleration in Win7). Do you think this will cause the fan to ramp up?

Can the fan be controlled with the ASRock software like the ION330 can? Just some more info on noise would be much appreciated as it's a deal breaker for what sounds like an awesome bit of kit.


Any idea when these are being shipped? Can't see anything listed in the UK yet.

Thanks in advance.

I am sold, where do I buy this perfect unit to replace my SFF Dell Optiplex 960?

Whow, it takes long before the box is available in the shops!
Is this because its so small, Asrock lost them somewhere in
the storage?

Yes it would be nice to have at least an inkling on when this will surface.
Come on ASRock ... show and tell

We are waiting.........

Something is happening!! One shop says they can deliver in 3 to 5 days. We will see! Alternate.nl


Price 749 Euro.

Did you order? Looks like if this price is inclusive of VAT, it is unlikely that US price will be $999. Overall, good news I guess.

I did not yet order, but I will if also a second company announces a price.
The pricing is inclusive VAT.

Can you check whether the case is made of plastic?
Also, can you confirm if there is ANY kind of frequency noise by the motherboard/cpu and integrated components?

The top part of the chassis is made of plastic. The casing on the sides is made of metal.

No noise other than the blower / fan in operation.

In the anand article, it stated that the Core i3 370m has it's IGP disabled. Is it disabled through bios or firmware?

Also, I have a hard time believing that a MOBILE Core i3 processor does not have some sort of frequency noise.

It is disabled by board design. The video output is only driven from the MXM card (both DVI and HDMI).

What do you mean by frequency noise? Can you be more specific? (Some links would be helpful). If you are talking about the product interfering with other electronic items, I can say that there is no such effect in my usage location, but it may depend on what electronic items you are using.

If the IGP is disabled by board design, isn't it still "powered" because it is onboard the Core i3 processor?

By frequency noise, I'm talking about the annoying high pitched frequency whine generated by the motherboard/processor especially in mobile systems (usually when they are idle and the processor downclocks from speedstep). Open the case and boot into windows and put your ear near the motherboard (probably stop the fan also) and you should be able to hear frequency noise.

Also what about the power brick? I've tested 5 different power bricks, all of them generate frequency noise...one of them was a EDAC which was actually tested by a review site but they never mentioned the high pitched whining.

I don't think the IGP is powered by the board. It is in a separate die on the same package as the Core i3, and has a separate graphics clock. If the board decides to feed electrical ground to the graphics clock, I am sure the internal logic in the IGP would power it down.

I didn't notice any high frequency whines, but obviously I didn't open up the system while it was powered. The whine, if any, was pretty much muted by the chassis. I didn't find the power supply to have any defects of the sort you mention. All said, everyone has different tolerance to noise levels. We have pictures of noise level measurements under various scenarios in our review. Hopefully those are of help to you.