ASRock Core HT HTPC (Sandybridge) Review

1. Introduction2. ASRock Core HT HTPC (Bundle)3. ASRock Core HT HTPC (External)4. ASRock Core HT HTPC (Internal)5. Installing Software, Hardware Configuration and Testing Methodology6. Synthetic: PCmark 77. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage8. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit9. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra10. Synthetic: CrystalDiskMark11. Synthetic: HDTach 3.0.4.0.12. Synthetic: ATTO Disk Benchmark13. Real World: BluRay Playback Performance14. Real World: Flash HD Performance15. Real World: Video Encoding16. Real World: 3D Studio Max 201117. Gaming: Left4Dead218. Gaming: Total War Shogun 219. Gaming: Resident Evil 520. Gaming: Dirt 321. Technical: Thermal Dynamics22. Technical: Acoustics Performance23. Technical: Power Consumption24. Closing Thoughts25. View All Pages

ASrock have been active in the last 12 months, releasing a high quality range of motherboards and small form factor computers. Today we are looking at their latest range of media centers – the Core HT HTPC, which is based around the Intel Sandybridge platform.

The Home Theater computer we are reviewing today is based around a Core i5 processor, with 4GB of DDR3 memory, 500GB storage and onboard Intel HD graphics. The only thing that is not included is the operating system.

Specifications:

• Intel® Mobile Sandy Bridge Processor
• Mobile Intel® HM65 Express chipset
• Playback of Blu-ray disc S3D content via HDMI 1.4a
• HDMI audio pass through (Dolby TrueHD & DTS-HD Master Audio)
• THX TruStudio PRO™
• 4 x USB3.0
• 1 x eSATA3

The Core HT media pc is supplied in a rather plain looking white box with an image of the product on the front and some specifications along the edge.

The computer is well protected between thick, soft Styrofoam pieces. There is a peripherals box at the side.

Inside, the bundle is relatively extensive. With a power adapter, instructions, software disc, mounting screws, adapter and power cables, and a mat. The unit itself is wrapped with a protective cover to reduce the chances of cosmetic damage during shipping.

ASRock also include a rather nice looking silver media remote for use with Windows.

The ASRock Core HT system is covered with adhesive, protective wrap to further protect the piano black finish from damage during shipping.

At the front of the chassis, there is a vent at the side for air flow. Our review unit was supplied with a bluray player. Underneath the drive are two USB 3.0 ports, a microphone and headphone jack and a power on and off button. It measures 195 mm x 70 mm x 186 mm (WxHxL).

The rear connectivity is surprisingly good. There is a power connector to the far left, an optical S/PDIF out port, 5 audio jacks for 7:1 surround sound (THX TruStudio Pro), a RJ45 LAN port (Gigabit), 2 more USB 3.0 ports (blue), 4 USB 2.0 ports (black), HDMI and VGA out and a eSATA 3 port. There is a cooling fan at the far right. The ASRock Core HT is fully connected and covers almost every eventuality. The only thing missing is a DVI connector, but there are HDMI converters and cables available for very low cost online.

ASRock include an anti movement mat in the package, a useful addition to the bundle. It ensures that the ASRock Core HT PC won't move at all, even when placed on a shiny wooden surface.

The top of the ASRock Core HT can be unscrewed, giving access to the internals. The Bluray drive, situated at the top of the case, blocks access to everything else, but it can also be easily removed.

The optical drive and hard drive are mounted into the same metal enclosure, ensuring a clean and tidy system build.

These are both connected directly to headers on the motherboard via proprietary connectors.

ASRock are using two quality drives, the Liteon BD Combo Drive, Model DS-4E1S and a 500GB 2.5 inch Western Digital Scorpio hard drive. No Solid State drive in this system, but it would raise the price considerably.

When the drive chamber is removed, full access is given to the motherboard. There is a flat style horizontal oriented cooler mounted on the Core i5 processor and ASRock are using 4GB (2+2GB) of SO-DIMM 1333mhz DDR3 memory – they claim the board will accept up to 16GB in total. The motherboard also supports 1066mhz and 1600mhz memory, but we will look at this in the bios later as sometimes listed specifications can vary.

There is room for expansion with another SATA port available on the board. This particular board also has wireless capabilities, via the 802.11 b/g/n (2T2R) module. This supports up to 300Mbps within a capable network. The board is supported by the Intel HD Graphics 3000.

The ASRock Core HT Bios is one of the newer UEFI driven configurations, which immediately earns it bonus points. While there are options to tweak and tune, it would be important to remain at reference speeds and voltages as this system is built into such a confined space.

The bios allows for plenty of adjustment with many settings on hand … it is well laid out and easy to follow. Many users will never need to touch it as by default it is configured to boot from a CD initially, aiding the initial install process. We noticed that the bios memory options went up to 2133mhz, although finding SO-DIMMS to handle this speed would be difficult.

You will need your own operating system disc to get the system up and running. We used Windows 7 64 bit Enterprise Edition.

This particular system is built around the Intel Core i5 2520M processor which is clocked at 2.5ghz and features 3MB of Level 3 cache – it can turbo up to 3.2ghz. The memory is set to timings of 9-9-9-24 1T at 1333mhz.

The main disc that ASRock supply contains various drivers, software and tools. They can all be installed automatically by the ‘install all' button. Unfortunately there is no button just to install all the drivers, and you will end up with Adobe Reader and a trial version of Norton's Internet Security. The full procedure takes about 15 minutes to complete and the system will restart automatically multiple times.

This screenshot was taken when all the ASrock drivers and bundled software were installed. Norton software would have to be immediately deinstalled on our system, but opinions on this will vary.

ASRock include software which adds functionality to the operating system and supported software. They also bundle tools to allow for fast charging of USB powered devices, such as the iPhone or iPad.

We don't really value the Windows Experience Index tool built into Windows 7, but we like to include it initially as a topic of interest. The mechanical hard drive and memory performance limit the overall score to 5.9.

Software:
3DMark Vantage
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
HD Tach
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
Resident Evil 5
Total War Shogun 2
Dead Space 2
Dirt 3
Left4Dead2

Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Kill A Watt Meter
Nikon D300S SLR with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes)
Panasonic Lumix TZ10

PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.

Considering this system is created for media playback and general ‘light duties', the overall score is very healthy, indicating good CPU performance from the Core i5 Intel processor.

Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7.  This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.

The Intel HD Graphics 3000 are never going to break any performance records, but for a media center the result seems promising. We will also test it later with some of the less demanding game engines on the market.

CINEBENCH is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.

The Core i5 2520M processor is certainly never going to replace a powerful desktop processor for rendering duties, but the score indicates that for light rendering duties, it would be acceptable.

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.

Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.

Native ports for all major operating systems are available:

• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
• Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
• Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
• Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
• Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)

All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:

• SMP – Multi-Processor
• MC – Multi-Core
• SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
• MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
• GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
• NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
• AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
• IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit

The Core i5 delivers solid performance in all areas, not as powerful as a desktop Core i5, but respectable.

A very important part of overall system responsiveness is down to hard drive performance. We use two of our favourite benchmark utilities Crystalmark X64 Edition and HD Tach to rate the SSD and HDD.

The 2.5 inch WD Scorpio is a good performance mechanical drive, delivering around 100 MB/s in both the read and write sequential tests.

I have been using HDTach for many years now and always find it is an invaluable benchmark to ascertain potential levels of performance. HD Tach is a low level hardware benchmark for random access read/write storage devices such as hard drives, removable drives (ZIP/JAZZ), flash devices, and RAID arrays. HD Tach uses custom device drivers and other low level Windows interfaces to bypass as many layers of software as possible and get close to the physical performance of the device.

HD Tach 3.0.4.0. tends to underscore drives, so a rating of just over 77 MB/s is fairly healthy for a 2.5 inch mechanical drive.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

Both read and write scores peak just over 100MB/s which is what we would expect from the 2.5 inch Scorpio product. It is one of the higher performing mechanical drives.

Our good friends at Cyberlink kindly supplied the software for our BluRay and conversion tests.

Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new Bluray Disc of TRON LEGACY.

An overall average CPU utilization figure of 12% means there is plenty of CPU time free for multitasking and handling other duties in the background.

Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online.

The performance from the system is great, averaging around 14 percent usage when viewing HD content.

CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.

Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4.

Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.

A final time of 16 minutes and 16 seconds is impressive, and thanks to hardware acceleration this machine could be easily used for daily video encoding duties.

V2011 is the first release of 3DStudio Max to fully support the Windows 7 operating system. This is a professional level tool that many people use for work purposes and our test will show any possible differences between board design today.

Autodesk 3ds Max Design 2011 software offers compelling new techniques to help bring designs to life by aggregating data, iterating ideas, and presenting the results.

Streamlined, more intelligent data exchange workflows and innovative new modeling and visualization tools help significantly increase designers’ creativity and productivity, enabling them to better explore, validate, and communicate the stories behind their designs.

Major new features:

• Slate: A node based material editor.
• Quicksilver: Hardware renderer with multithreaded rendering engine that utilizes both CPU and GPU.
• Extended Graphite Modeling Toolset
• 3ds Max Composite: A HDRI-capable compositor based on Autodesk Toxik.
• Viewport Canvas toolset for 3D and 2D texture painting directly in the viewport
• Object Painting: use 3D geometry as ‘brushes’ on other geometry
• Character Animation Toolkit (CAT): now integrated as part of the base package
• Autodesk Material Library: Over 1200 new photometrically accurate shaders
• Additional file format support: includes native support for Sketchup, Inventor
• FBX file linking
• Save to Previous Release (2010)

We render a KitGuru custom created scene at 1920×1080 and record the time taken, lower is better.

A final time of 2 minutes and 45 seconds is a good score, and significantly faster than the low power ATOM processors, which take over 13 minutes to complete the same task.

Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead.

Like the original, Left 4 Dead 2 is set during the aftermath of an apocalyptic pandemic, and focuses on four survivors fighting against hordes of the infected. The survivors must fight their way through levels, interspersed with safe houses that act as checkpoints, with the goal of reaching a rescue vehicle at the campaign’s finale. The gameplay is procedurally altered by an artificial intelligence engine dubbed the “Director” that monitors the players’ performance and adjust the scenario to provide a dynamic challenge. Several new features have been introduced: new types of infected, melee weapons, and a story-arc that connects the game’s five campaigns together.

At these settings, the game runs smoothly, never dropping below 30 fps, even when the environment is heavily populated with the undead. Pushing the settings any higher however and the frame rate can drop quickly during more intensive sections.

Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.

We used the built in Shogun 2 benchmark, and set it to ‘balanced' in Direct X 9. We can see that this intensive engine just proves too much for the Intel HD onboard graphics solution. We tried playing the game at very low image quality settings, and the frame rate rarely crept into double figures.

Resident Evil 5, known in Japan as Biohazard 5, is a survival horror third-person shooter video game developed and published by Capcom. The game is the seventh installment in the Resident Evil survival horror series, and was released on March 5, 2009 in Japan and on March 13, 2009 in North America and Europe for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. A Windows version of the game was released on September 15, 2009 in North America, September 17 in Japan and September 18 in Europe. Resident Evil 5 revolves around Chris Redfield and Sheva Alomar as they investigate a terrorist threat in Kijuju, a fictional town in Africa.

Within its first three weeks of release, the game sold over 2 million units worldwide and became the best-selling game of the franchise in the United Kingdom. As of December, 2009, Resident Evil 5 has sold 5.3 million copies worldwide since launch, becoming the best selling Resident Evil game ever made.

At these settings, the game is perfectly playable, dropping to 27 fps on a few instances when there are a lot of undead onscreen. Pushing the settings any higher can result in stuttering and sub standard frame rates.

Dirt 3 is a rallying videogame and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters, although the “Colin McRae” tag has been completely removed from this iteration (having been previously been removed from American versions of previous games in the series).

We spent a long time tuning the settings to get the game playable at 720p and the screenshots above highlight that the Intel HD graphics need many of the settings toggled to ‘medium' with the crowd set to ‘low'. The engine was generally playable, hovering between 28 and 35 fps and dropping to 24 fps a few times on a snow level.

The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 25c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this.

Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes. Load measurements were acquired by rendering a scene in Cinema 4D for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. All fan settings were left on automatic.

Due to the confined space and the small profile cooler, the CPU temperatures peak at 84C under extended load, much as we would expect.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.

KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet take off/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The ASRock Core HT system is, for the most part basically inaudible. When watching a BluRay movie for instance, the noise emissions hover between 31 and 32.5 dBa. Under full load the system emits around 34.4dBa, although this is achieved under purely synthetic conditions (Prime stress while gaming).

To test power consumption today we are using a Kill A Watt meter and measuring the load at the wall. Monitors and peripherals are not fed through the same socket. All power saving features are enabled in the bios.

Power consumption is very good indeed, averaging around 45 watts when watching high definition movies. We recorded a peak around 65 watts.

Many people have been discouraged from buying a small form factor PC in the last year as many of them have been based around Intel's low performance ATOM platform. Thankfully, a handful of manufacturers have been aiming higher up the food chain in recent months, basing new systems around Intel's excellent Sandybridge platform.

The ASRock Core HT HTPC is a fantastic system which is generally very responsive, thanks to the capable Core i5 2520M processor which is clocked at 2.5ghz. While the Intel HD 3000 graphics is certainly not going to win any performance awards, it does offer video/media hardware acceleration and it can cope with non demanding gaming engines at 720p resolution, ideal for casual gaming in a living room environment. As long as there are no expectations that it will power demanding games such as Total War Shogun 2 at 1080p, then we think a wide audience will appreciate the overall balance.

ASRock have avoided a potential pitfall, by not compromising with the inclusion of a slow 5,400 rpm 2.5 inch hard drive. While the Core HT system doesn't come equipped with a Solid State Drive, the inclusion of a nippy 500GB Western Digital 7,200 rpm hard drive ensures high storage, combined with reasonable performance. Performance freaks can easily slot in a Solid State Drive later and use the 500GB Scorpio for file storage and backup.

Aesthetically, we have no problems with the Core HT, the piano black finish will appease enthusiast users who want to house this system next to a plasma or LCD HDTV. The only downside is that the shiny surface attracts fingerprints and dust, really quickly.

Additionally, there is a stunning level of connectivity on offer which will cater to the widest possible audience, such as USB 3.0 (both at front and rear) and even eSATA3 for fast access to external storage. With this system you will never struggle to find an unused port to connect a new device.

ASRock have managed to keep noise levels to a minimum, and while CPU temperatures can get a little high under load, we placed the system under an intense prime stress for several hours and didn't experience any instability.

UK pricing is competitive, with the version we tested today on sale at £599.99 inc vat.

DABS are offering a £20 reduction to Kitguru readers, bringing the price down to £579.99.

Pros:

• very small footprint
• quiet
• connectivity is fantastic
• HDMI out
• Core i5 is fast
• video hardware acceleration support for HD media
  

Cons:

• gets covered in fingerprints quickly
• not ideal for gaming

Kitguru says: A good value, quiet system, that will look great in a living room.

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