ASRock Core 100HT-BD Home Theater PC

ASRock delivers a Wii-sized home theater PC (HTPC) with a powerful Core i3 CPU, Intel HD Graphics, and a Blu-ray drive. We put the Core 100HT-BD system through a number of tasks to see how its performance compares to a desktop-based home theater PC.

When I want to gauge whether new computing gear is ready for mainstream adoption, I ask whether or not my mother could handle it. If the device is something I could give to my mom without terrifying her or getting a phone call every 10 minutes with questions about how to use it, then it has serious potential.

Certainly, the home theater PC (HTPC) continues to gain traction in this respect, but it really hasn't broken into the mainstream with any force. This is because HTPCs are still PCs. As much as they look like components that belong next to the amplifier in your living room, there are aspects of the personal computer that simply intimidate and confuse people who aren't comfortable with them in the first place.

But as personal video recorders (PVRs) become more prolific, as the line between a PC monitor and a living room-based TV blurs, and as Mom begins to rely on email and the Internet as much as I do, the HTPC becomes increasingly viable as an appliance. It’s inevitable that the future will see TVs and computing devices intertwined. But before that happens, we need user-friendly HTPCs, ready-made for public consumption. We need home theater systems that are powerful enough to handle any high-definition video and audio format we throw at them, yet simple enough for my mom to use, and in a comfortable package that is not the least bit intimidating.

PC vendors know this, too. They are working to make a mainstream-friendly HTPC real. Today, we're looking at ASRock’s latest HTPC offering, a cute (Ed.: I can't believe you used the word cute) and powerful little box its calls the Core 100HT-BD.

The first thing you notice about the ASRock Core 100HT-BD is that it is very small. Think Wii-sized small. At about 7.5” wide, 2.75” tall, and 7.25” long, the Wii is actually about an inch longer, but the Core 100HT-BD is an inch taller and wider.

On the front of this tiny HTPC there is a slim Blu-ray drive, two USB 3.0 ports, audio output and input jacks, and a power button.

On the back of the unit there is much more to see: six USB 2.0 ports, five audio jacks, an S/PDIF audio port, a gigabit network port, an eSATA II port, an HDMI 1.3a output, and a VGA output. There is also a small DC power input jack on the bottom left and the 35 mm exhaust fan on the right.

The bundle includes a number of important accessories, such as the AC power converter, a Windows Media Center Remote control with the necessary batteries, an HDMI-to-DVI cable adapter, a driver/software CD, an anti-slip pad for the Core 100HT-BD to rest on, and cables and screws to accommodate the addition of a second internal hard disk.

The included Windows Media Center remote is an important piece of equipment to make an HTPC accessible to folks who aren’t particularly tech-savvy. The remote that ASRock includes in the bundle is a model TSGV-IR01, a functional unit with all of the necessary buttons and a few more.

All in all, the Core 100HT-BD is an attractive little HTPC with a good measure of connectivity and a handy remote.

The Core 100HT-BD boasts a surprisingly robust BIOS, considering it’s based on a mobile chipset. We’re not used to being able to tweak low-level laptop settings, so this BIOS offers a refreshing degree of control.

The next page contains ASRock overclocking options, the first being Turbo 30, which can be used as a quick way to boost system performance by 25% or 30% depending on the selected option. After this, we see EZ OC settings that can modify specific components like the CPU, memory, or GPU clocks to pre-selected levels. After the EZ OC settings, there are more specific low-level controls for individual frequencies and ratios. All of these are really nice to have, but obviously, if your primary goal is overclocking, you should consider a desktop system with a lot of airflow and a capable CPU cooler. Having said that, a power user looking for a slight performance tweak has the option to alter the Core 100HT-BD’s options.

The Advanced page offers the usual access to detailed CPU, chipset, ACPI, storage, and USB menus. A BIOS flash option is also available. Additionally, there is a setting to disable the extremely bright LED power and standby lights, something you will appreciate if the Core 100HD-BD is used in the bedroom.

The rest of the BIOS includes standard hardware monitoring, boot, and security selections that we won’t spend a lot of time on. Instead, we'll fire up one of the Core 100HT-BD’s niftier options: ASRock’s AIWI software.

The AIWI utility allows your PC to use an iPod Touch or iPhone as a game controller. We couldn't seem to get the iPod Touch to connect using the Core 100HT-BR as an ad-hoc network host, but it works fine when we used a wireless router to host both the iPod Touch and the Core 100HT-BD.

For the feature to work, the game needs to be supported by AIWI, and there aren’t a lot of games that feature this yet. We don’t have any of the higher-end compatible titles like Street Fighter IV on hand, so we tested the feature using some free-to-play Flash games. It works well enough--while it probably is not quite as responsive as the Wii-mote, the feature lives up to its promise as a fun value-add. Just don’t throw your Wii away until you try it.

Aside from the specifics, how does the ASRock Core 100HT-BD stand up as an HTPC? With the unit set to automatically launch Windows Media Center on startup, no keyboard is necessary--the included remote does all that you need for HTPC duty. Sometimes a mouse and virtual keyboard come in handy, but we have no qualms recommending the Core 100HT-BD for less tech-savvy folks, assuming it’s set up properly. The system does everything asked of it in a simple and speedy fashion and doesn’t leave the user waiting. But enough with the generalizations--let’s see how the Core 100HT-BD’s concrete benchmark results compare to those of a desktop Core i3 system.

First off, let’s have a look at the PCMark Vantage total system score to get an idea of how the ASRock Core 100HT-BD compares to a desktop Core i3-530 system:

PCMark suggests that the Core 100HT-BD is about 33% slower than a desktop Core i3-530-equipped counterpart. This is not bad for such a tiny PC, and the difference is essentially undetectable when the system is used for HTPC duties like media playback.

The PCMark hard drive benchmark shows that the Core 100HT-BD system sacrifices a lot of performance due to its mobile hard disk. The 500 GB Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM drive is quite quick for a mobile part, but is no match for a desktop-class Western Digital Black 640 GB. Of course, users could upgrade the Core 100HT-BD’s drive to something like the Seagate Momentus XT, which is a hybrid solid-state model that would improve performance considerably.

The benchmark is called Memories, but it doesn’t test the RAM--this benchmark targets image editing and video-encoding tasks. In this respect, the Core 100HT-BD maintains the spread we’ve come to expect compared to its desktop counterpart.

The communications benchmark uses common data encryption, compression, and scanning algorithms to come up with an aggregate score. As you can see, the Core 100HT-BD performs as expected based on the previous benchmarks.

This benchmark checks performance using a combination of word processing, email, and Internet tasks. The difference appears to be notable on paper, but I’m not sure a user would be able to notice a difference in a real-world scenario.

The Core 100HT-BD uses the Realtek RTL8111E chipset for gigabit Ethernet and the Atheros AR9287-BL1A card for wireless connectivity. The Core i3-530 system we put together uses the Realtek RTL8111D chipset for Gigabit Ethernet and a D-link WDA-2320 card for wireless networking. Let’s see how network bandwidth compares using SiSoft Sandra’s Network benchmarks:

The gigabit Ethernet results are tied at 13.8 MB/s, which makes sense because both motherboards use virtually identical Realtek chipsets (and are likely bottlenecked by their storage subsystems, as well).

However, the ASRock Core 100HT-BD shows strong wireless performance compared to the desktop D-link WDA-2320 card, which is somewhat surprising, since we are testing with a wireless router running the 802.11g standard. The Core 100HT-BD boasts excellent relative performance that is very noticeable during Internet use. This demonstrates how the ASRock system’s Atheros AR9287-BL1A wireless card/dual-antennae combo is a good mix.

The network latency is slightly better on the desktop system, but the Core 100HT-BD demonstrates much better wireless latency.

As we’ve said, the Core 100HT-BD is not a hardcore overclocker’s platform for a number of reasons, due in particular to thermal limitations. However, there is a user-friendly overclocking setting in the BIOS that suggests we can get a 30% performance increase simply by asking for it, which is a moderate increase that shouldn’t stress the components too much. With the feature enabled, we find that this option results in a mild CPU overclock to 2.463 GHz with a 154 MHz base clock and a memory overclock to 616 MHz at 8-8-8-22-60-1T timings. Here is the resulting performance:

The mild overclock certainly brings us closer to desktop Core i3-530 performance and really speeds up the gaming benchmark. The 30% overclock option is a nice tweak for users who want to boast they’ve overclocked their system without pushing it too hard or requiring a thorough understanding of hardware settings.

During active idle and maximum CPU/GPU load, the Core i3-530 system uses twice the power of ASRock's Core 100HT-BD. However, when performing realistic tasks like Blu-ray playback, there is only a 20 W difference between the systems.

The aftermarket Cooler Master Hyper TX3 CPU cooler really keeps the desktop system’s temperatures low, while the ASRock Core 100HT-BD’s temperatures are consistently high. Having said that, the Core 100HT-BD system’s load temperatures never reach alarming heights.

The ASRock Core100HT-BD comes into its own when acoustics are a factor. At idle, the noise is practically imperceptible and almost below the range that our measuring equipment can detect at a mere 3” from the back of the unit. At maximum load, the fan speeds up, but the noise is similar to the desktop system at idle. It should be noted that the Core i3-530 system we put together for this comparison is relatively quiet compared to most of the performance-oriented machines we test.

The Core 100HT-BD is a fully-functional HTPC with ample power to accomplish what it needs to do, including media playback, productivity tasks, or even light gaming. When equipped with the Core i3-330M mobile CPU, the benchmarks show it to be about a third slower than its Core i3-530 desktop counterpart, but a real-world user would never realize that difference unless they’re spending a lot of time performing CPU-intensive tasks like media encoding. And if you’re buying a PC for media-encoding tasks, why would you consider an HTPC like the Core 100HT-BD in the first place?

That’s not to say that the Core 100HT-BD isn’t a viable multi-purpose PC. Frankly, it has more power than it needs for strict HTPC media-playback duty, as the CPU-utilization benchmarks show. I see the Core 100HT-BD as an ideal solution for people with very limited space who are looking for a multipurpose computing/entertainment platform. A student in a dorm who wants a multi-purpose PC and entertainment center could probably make good use of this box. It’s the tiny little machine that can do almost anything.

When it comes to core functionality, the ASRock Core 100 HT-BD can play back Blu-ray content and bitstream full HD audio via HDMI. Perhaps the only limitation that will bother true videophiles is the lack of native 23.976 FPS video support, which is an Intel HD Graphics flaw--Intel HD Graphic chipsets support 24 FPS but not 23.976 FPS, so playing back 23.967 FPS Blu-ray disks will result in an occasional frame stutter. We continue to wait for Intel to properly address this issue, but that’s not the Core 100HT-BD’s fault. In any case, the problem can be minimized by setting the display’s refresh rate to 60 Hz.

As a full-service HTPC, the Core 100HT-BD is only missing one obvious component: TV and PVR functionality. Happily, this can be remedied with a $50 to $100 USB TV Tuner/PVR dongle, but USB is the only option because the system cannot accommodate an add-in card.

This brings us to the one thing that irritates me the most about the Core 100HT-BD, yet it’s one of the reasons that the system is so attractive: its size. The Core 100HT-BD is so tiny that you can’t help but admire it, yet at the same time is it really necessary to make an HTPC this small? From what I can understand, this isn’t designed for portability, so why couldn’t it be twice as high to accommodate full-sized Blu-ray and hard drives, and some extra breathing room for expansion? The system doesn’t even offer the limited scalability options that laptop users expect, such as ExpressCard or PCMCIA slots. At twice the size, the Core 100HT-BD would still be tiny and would not look out of place with other components in a home entertainment system, but it would have a much more flexible form factor.

On a final note, let’s consider the price. Newegg has the ASRock Core 100HT-BD available for $750, and if you’re happy with the standard DVD drive, you can save some money and opt for the Core 100HT for $600. You’ll have to add an operating system on top of that, so with Windows 7 Home Premium OEM, you’re realistically looking at $700-$850 for a sleek little system. While you could probably put together something small for less money than the Core 100HT, it probably would be a lot larger and wouldn’t be pre-assembled.

If small size is your priority and you need a pre-built HTPC that can deliver more than bare minimum performance, it’s hard not to recommend ASRock’s Core 100HT-BD. With a true Core i3 CPU capable of handling four simultaneous threads, this machine has a lot more potential than a single-core single-threaded Atom CPU. The Core 100HT-BD is the little HTPC that could.

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