The Nvidia Ion is a cool little piece of tech, giving wings to the humble but lovable Intel Atom CPU.
Acer was the first out of the gate (at least with an official announcement and reveal) with its AspireRevo. Acer’s offering is still the only nettop known so far, but it looks like those who wish to roll their own could have an alternative from Zotac.
Respected Japanese tech site PC Watch details two mini-ITX boards from Zotac based off the Nvidia Ion design: the IONITX-A-U and IONITX-B-E which differ only in their attached CPU offerings.
The “A-U” model will come with the dual-core Atom N330 while the “B-E” will have the single-core N230. CPU inclusions aside, the rest of the specifications are typical Ion with the GeForce 9400M providing the multimedia muscle.
Prices listed for the two motherboard and CPU combinations are around $300 for the dual core and $200 for the single core, after conversion from the Japanese yen.
Zotac refused to provide comment to Tom’s Hardware regarding the North American release of these Nvidia Ion-based products.
HTPC users will be pleased to know that the images of the motherboard clearly show both HDMI and digital audio output options. Imagine putting one of these inside a Wall•E case.