Atom 330 ION build advice please

BlackCat

BlackCat

BlackCat

Associate
Joined
30 Jun 2009
Posts
14
Hi, first time post. Here goes:

I have been looking into building a HTPC to sit under by TV to provide HD content. I have read other posts on this and other forums so I think I’m on the right lines as to what I need but am just looking for reassurance and advice that the parts I have selected will suit my needs. What I aim to do is:
* Play Blu-ray disks
* Store My DVD and CD collection
* Watch and record live TV
* Watch content from the web
* Act as download machine
* Be very energy efficient
* Be as quiet as possible

The hardware I am looking to buy from Overclockers is:
Zotac Ion Intel Atom N330 Mini-ITX DDR2 Motherboard (IONITX-A-B) £172.99
Samsung SpinPoint F2EG 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SI) £59.98
Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Reader Serial-ATA Drive - Retail £53.99
Corsair XMS2 DHX 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX) £24.99

I already have a dual USB TV tuner and have sourced a case from elsewhere. I plan to use Windows 7 RC1.

Oh and can anyone recommend a good MCE remote? Im having real difficulty in finding the Official Microsoft ones.

My concern is will the Atom 330 be able to handle TV recording and watching at the same time – has anyone had any joy at doing this? Will having a download running at the same time or copying content via wifi from a laptop be a step too far for this hardware while recording TV?

Also; Am I right in thinking that a mini-ITX board will fit into a micro-ATX case? I find most of the mini-itx cases too ugly for a living room media centre and I would rather have a more roomier case and use a 3.5” HDD as this will be cheaper.

I understand there is currently an issue with the ION playing flash videos due to flash not supporting GPU acceleration but I have read this is currently being worked on so I can live with not watching web content for the moment.

So basically what I am asking is does anyone have a similar setup to this and will this hardware be able to do what I need?

Cheers.
 
BlackCat said:
Hi, first time post. Here goes:

I have been looking into building a HTPC to sit under by TV to provide HD content. I have read other posts on this and other forums so I think I’m on the right lines as to what I need but am just looking for reassurance and advice that the parts I have selected will suit my needs. What I aim to do is:
* Play Blu-ray disks
* Store My DVD and CD collection
* Watch and record live TV
* Watch content from the web
* Act as download machine
* Be very energy efficient
* Be as quiet as possible

The hardware I am looking to buy from Overclockers is:
Zotac Ion Intel Atom N330 Mini-ITX DDR2 Motherboard (IONITX-A-B) £172.99
Samsung SpinPoint F2EG 1TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (HD103SI) £59.98
Sony BDU-X10S Blu-Ray Reader Serial-ATA Drive - Retail £53.99
Corsair XMS2 DHX 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 PC2-6400C4 TwinX Dual Channel (TWIN2X2048-6400C4DHX) £24.99

I already have a dual USB TV tuner and have sourced a case from elsewhere. I plan to use Windows 7 RC1.

Oh and can anyone recommend a good MCE remote? Im having real difficulty in finding the Official Microsoft ones.

My concern is will the Atom 330 be able to handle TV recording and watching at the same time – has anyone had any joy at doing this? Will having a download running at the same time or copying content via wifi from a laptop be a step too far for this hardware while recording TV?

Also; Am I right in thinking that a mini-ITX board will fit into a micro-ATX case? I find most of the mini-itx cases too ugly for a living room media centre and I would rather have a more roomier case and use a 3.5” HDD as this will be cheaper.

I understand there is currently an issue with the ION playing flash videos due to flash not supporting GPU acceleration but I have read this is currently being worked on so I can live with not watching web content for the moment.

So basically what I am asking is does anyone have a similar setup to this and will this hardware be able to do what I need?

Cheers.
Click to expand...

RE: Case, yes a Mini-itx will fit in a MicroATX case. Not sure where all the screw holes will line up but it shouldn't be a problem.

RE: Atom 330, I'm not sure if this is up to it. I'd recommend googling for some reviews of that board in HTPC situations. PErhaps take a look at the AVforums under the HTPC section and see who might have a similar combo to you.

RE: Remote, I bought a Trust Media Centre Remote and it works great without any software installs or anything. (This is on Vista, not sure about Win 7 but should be ok). It was about £18.

Hardware wise I went for the tried and tested Gigabyte AMD 780G, which has an ATI 3200 series gfx built in. My machine does exactly what yours is intended to do, and on the whole I have been happy with it, except that now I have something going on with it whereby it seems to wake itself up overnight for no logical reason, even if I shut it down! :eek:

Hope this helps

CK

ps...welcome to the forums :)
 
To be honest i found my Zotac N330 a little on the slow side, and it just annoyed me. I only had it running for a few days, but just opening mutliple browser windows would tax this system (running 4GB) if you're not overly concerned with power consumption then maybe consider a microATX board instead with a E5200 or similar, as you're already thinking about getting the bigger case anyway. The other problem with the zotac board is that there is only 3 sata ports leaving only 2 free for HDD, i like to store my music and movie collection on my pc so this was another problem.

I'm much happier with my dfi lan party board, E5200 and SG01 case. plus i case easily overclock the cpu and add a decent gfx card if i decide to go down the gaming route again at some point.
 
Thanks for the advice.

I think I will go down the Gigabyte AMD 780G route. Looks a good board and a great deal cheaper than the Zotac N330 option with plenty more power too.
Its just a shame the AMD 5050e CPUs appear hard to get hold of now.
 
The E5200 is more power efficient at full load than the 5050e, but a 9400 Gigabyte board to pair it up with is a more expensive option.
 
hmm that worries me a bit....i was planning on doing a 330, mainly for download and watching movies. But also doing stock orders which requires a few windows open... is the ion 330 not upto that? i really dont want a m-atx
 
The Atom (especially a 330) can cope with multiple web pages being loaded at the same time, it hurts at around the 8+ range. Secondly yes you can watch video (reasonable quality) and surf like normal (I do it most of the time). No it wont record and playback TV at the same time UNLESS the software used in both instances is GPU accelerated and moreover supports the ION platform (unlikely).

Cheers

Dangertast
 
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