Want a low power, small form factor PC, but want to build one yourself instead of paying Asus, Acer, MSI, Shuttle, or another company to do it for you? Asus has just released the AT3N7A-I motherboard which comes with a 1.6GHz dual core Intel Atom 330 processor and NVIDIA ION graphics.
The motherboard supports dual channel DDR2-800 memory, 8-channel audio, eSATA and SATA connections, and Bluetooth. There’s also a single PCI slot, and an HDMI jack.
French site Blogeee has a detailed hands-on with the motherboard. You can find a bunch of pictures plus a detailed video which I’ve embedded below. Even if you don’t speak French, it should give you a pretty good idea of just how small this mainboard is.
You can pick up the Asus AT3N7A-1 for $155.99 from SuperBiiz.
I’ve built lots of Ion computers so far, and based on the fact that you are going to need an ATX power lead for this one, the best case for this motherboard is going to be the Morex ITX 3822. It’s a very small case, plus it has a slim-line drive bay in case you want to add a DVD/BluRay player.
This is pretty cool- I’ve been waiting for more companies to come out with Ion boards. However, this Asus one seems inferior to the Zotac IONITX-A-U, which has built-in 802.11n wireless and doesn’t require an external ATX power supply.
I agree. Also, the Zotac board has DVI, VGA, and HDMI outputs. But it doesn’t have a PCI slot like this one.
Interesting: Take the chassis from an older netbook, strip out the older motherboard/cpu, insert new mobo, add all the ram you want, and finish reassembly. I would like to see the video of that process.
Cool board. Too bad I don’t have a use for one of these right now. Wonder what the case manufacturers will come up with for this board.
shame it has ATX power connector, would be better if used a DC jack like a laptop powersuply.
Any cases available for this that don’t include a drive bay (i.e., like the Eee Box)?
That would make a slick set top box.
How well does the Ion run games, anyway? Can you run new releases ok?
It’s better for HD video playback than games. It should have plenty of
oomph for older games, but newer titles might be a bit slower. Netbook
News has a video of the Samsung N510 with NVIDIA ION playing Doom 3
and it looks a bit slow:
https://www.netbooknews.de/8638/samsung-n510-unboxing-vergleich-mit-nc10/
OK, that makes sense. Thanks.
BUT…this Samsung don´t have Atom 330…
It´s a good mobo but don´t to play games