Three Slim Atom/Ion 2-Based Nettop PCs Compared

Features
By Don Woligroski
published

We put Giada’s Slim-N20, Jetway’s Mini-TOP, and Zotac’s ZBOX to the test. Does Intel's Atom D500-series offer smooth performance in these nettops when it's paired with Nvidia’s ION 2 graphics, or does the platform fall short of entertainment excellence?

Power, Temperature, And Noise Benchmarks

The ASRock Core 100HT-BD might show twice the CPU performance as the Atom solutions, but it shows twice the power usage in many scenarios, too.

With its GPU integrated in the CPU packaging, ASRock's Core 10HT-BD demonstrates lower temperatures in GPU-specific tasks, but CPU temperatures are higher than the Atom-equipped nettops. The Zotac ZBOX seems to have higher temperatures than its contemporaries, which is surprising when you consider its cooler appears beefier than the rest of the Atom/Ion 2 competitors.

In the CPU noise tests ASRock's Core 100HT-BD is relatively quiet at idle, but the Intel Core i3-330M CPU demands a lot from its cooling fan under load. All of the Atom/Ion 2 solutions remain quiet under CPU load, but get louder when the GPU cranks up.

Don Woligroski
26 Comments Comment from the forums
  • reprotected
    Nettops fail.
    Reply
  • DjEaZy
    ... it may be a good mac mini hackentosch...
    Reply
  • hmp_goose
    Retest the N20's playback with a RAM drive for the temp files; I suspect the drive system is the issue . . .
    Reply
  • dEAne
    Overall it is good. The benchmark is fair enough - And it is presentable too.
    Reply
  • cushgod
    SHould test results with a SSD complared to a "mechanical" HDD to see how much that can help an Atom move along :)
    Reply
  • fullcircle_bflo
    So if I wanted a computer simply to stream internet videos to a television via HDMI(such as Hulu or CBS website), would any of these be a good candidate?
    Reply
  • kriminal
    ^^ guess so.. fullcircle
    Reply
  • mchuf
    For $150 - $200, you can buy a used Pentium D or C2D pc off of craigslist. Add a $50 HD5450 gpu and a $40 wireless KB/M combo and your all set. That would be a more capable box than one of these things and at a lower price (even if you upgrade to Win 7 HP). Hell, even a used Mac Mini (old model) might be a more cost effective solution. Unless you're extremely tight for space, I don't see the appeal for an overpriced "net" device.
    Reply
  • nonameworks
    ^^ Only if you ignore the cost of electricity
    Reply
  • tipoo
    Zino HD review, please! At close to the cost of many of these nettops, it blows them away in performance and is almost as small and consumes almost as little power.
    Reply