I'm also in a similar position. I even went a stage further and ordered the parts for the 5050e & 780g combination. Unfortunately or maybe not, time will only tell, the motherboard was DOA and had to be retruned to the supplier. They did not have any more ITX 780g in stock and could not get a forecast for resupply, so I got my money back. On the same day supplies of the Zotac ION board were announced for pre-order. I'm intending to use the Zotac ION as a HTPC client. The freeview recordings being done on another box running Mediaportal TV server and 4TR and piped over the network.
Damn thing only has 3 sata ports. Was very excited for a little bit there. No pata or pci, so no means of adding another. I don't want a 3 disk nas, I want a four disk one. Damn,
Dual core atom I'd expect to do fine recording freeview. Its hyperthreaded for what that's worth, but with one core running os and the other recording I can't believe it would struggle.
Dual core atom I'd expect to do fine recording freeview. Its hyperthreaded for what that's worth, but with one core running os and the other recording I can't believe it would struggle.
My Atom 330 on the Intel D945GCLF2 board is capable of playing back 1080 content with Media player classic - WMP is a bit choppy. 720P is perfectly fine. So for recording freeview at SD quality i cannot see you having any problems. I guess the advantage my board has is the fact it can take a PCI tuner card so recording more than 1 channel is an option 
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Point of View do an Atom 330/ION board with 4 Sata ports and a PCIe x16 slot. Pricing is expected to be around the £125 mark too! As with all mITX systems though there is a downside, SODIMM memory. Not the end of the world, but worth mentioning. It also lacks the built in PSU of the Zotac board, but i guess if you're using a case that takes 4 HDDs then you should be able to find room for a Pico
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You are very a good man, that's made my day. 4 sata ports, gigabit ethernet, dual core atom and fanless. Excellent. No sign of anyone selling it in England mind, but that's a minor issue when I don't have any of the components yet. Sodimm memory is an excellent thing for this, as lies flat against the board so doesn't block airflow to the heat sinks.
The entire board is astonishingly low profile if you don't use the pci slot. Hmm
edit:Yep, definitely makes for a smaller box than the intel 330 board. Anyone familiar with point of view? Trustworthy? A nas with an unreliable motherboard would be unfortunate
The entire board is astonishingly low profile if you don't use the pci slot. Hmm
edit:Yep, definitely makes for a smaller box than the intel 330 board. Anyone familiar with point of view? Trustworthy? A nas with an unreliable motherboard would be unfortunate
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Soldato
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ion should have no problem recording freeview lol
I can't see Atom struggling with this really, it's probably not miles behind the 4850e for performance!
I could be wrong but I'd expect it to be considerably slower. My single core Atom 1.6GHz is just a little quicker than the Pentium M 1.5GHz CPU in my old laptop. Clock for clock, the 4850e is quicker and has a 900MHz clockspeed advantage to boot! Of course however, whatever he'll lose in performance, he'll gain in low power consumption and heat
Something tells me that these Ion Mini ITX boards just won't be worth the money. I've spotted the Zotac nVidia ION ITX board with single core Atom 1.6GHz for about £120 and the dual core version for a shocking £175! For that sort of money, you must have to be very keen on the Atom's low power consumption and heat output as otherwise I just don't see much value for money in it as far as performance is concerned.
Baring in mind the board has the CPU, GPU and PSU on-board i don't think it's too bad. Around the £150 mark would be more like it, but £175 doesn't seem too ridiculous. Concidering picking one up, will wait for prices to settle a little first though.
Ah, I was under the impression that the Power Supply Unit was an optional extra as listed by most news websites. The websites listing these boards at the prices mentioned didn't mention the PSU. If it is indeed included as standard, then I'll retract my argument with regards to the price of these boards