News Habey launches Ion 2 mini-ITX motherboard

Embedded computing specialist Habey has unveiled a new mini-ITX motherboard featuring Nvidia's Ion 2.

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/10/11/habey-launches-ion-2-mini-itx/1

 

Will you review it?

Available through Amazon directly from Habey for $329.90. If it performs... But I can already see the price translating to £280 and 330 Euros.

 

The first ION had no problems handling 1080P video, I do it all the time as long as your using something that takes advantage of the nvidia gpu, no the real downfall to these little potential HTPC is when you try to use them to rip and encode a movie lol good luck with that, you will be waiting for days lol, best to rip and encode with a beefier rig and then copy it over. Next dedicated HTPC will use a full blown CPU not the atom.

 

does anyone else notice the massive design flaw in this? by itself, its about as thin as some laptops, but i don't think habey realized that they really just wasted their time with making it thin. just about anything you plug into the board, including a hard drive, is going to stick out above it; none of the ports are angled 90 degrees. i'd rather just add another inch or 2 to get a better cooler and more rear ports.

i like the idea of a board as slim as this, but not if you're going to screw up the entire purpose of making it as thin as it is. due to this design, you HAVE to have a fatter case to put it in, which makes the board's slim design pointless.

 

I'm still convinced we need a newer ATX power connector standard that is smaller to claim back some space on mini-ITX motherboards so that can still use a proper power supply and not an external brick. Right now the 24 pin connector is totally out of proportion with the rest of the board.

Even if you had to use an adapter to shink an existing 24 pin down to a smaller sized on it would still free up board space.

 

If they ditch the Atom for a Nano 3000 then I might be interested.

 

agreed, a more compact low profile style connector would be nice to see

 

Sorry, but:
Duh!

If I ever upgrade I might give ION a shot. It's everything I'd need right now as I'm not gaming on my PC at the moment: small, low power, fast enough to watch HD stuff. And with hardware acceleration for Flash the last big hurdle is gone as well. Then again, what are Youtube downloaders there for, eh?

 

Some sort of smaller high density connector would probably do, although I suspect the problem comes down to the required thickness of the wires.

If you make the connector smaller, youd need to make the wires thinner, and as a result, they would get hotter when in use.

Using a 24 way post block, like the USB/firewire/audio headers, might work as it could still be easily keyed and would probably be about half the size.