Reviews - Scan 3XS NVIDIA ION system: Atom in a £700 system?

[this_is_gav]

How is something so mismatched awarded with such a high score? A potentially tiny and relatively feature-filled system is almost entirely ruined by a case which is 1/3 unused. Surely a company of Scan's stature can source a better suited case?

I can see the case for the RAM, especially if/when paired with Win7 or even Vista (SuperFetch goodness), and obviously all the media gubbins make a case for themselves, and it's nice to have something different in the nettop-race, but you'd have to be off your rocker to spend £6-700 on such a machine... unless you're rolling in it, in which case you'd be better off buying a more power-hungry system anyway.

It's got a lot of potential, but £6-700 (whether it's the components or not) for a system without a monitor or TV is nuts.

It just seems that Scan have made a system with what they have in their warehouse already, rather than actually going and sourcing the most efficient bits for this particular job, things they might not otherwise stock.

[onestep]

Scan scores a winner!!!

Asrock NetTop ION 330 System, Black, Intel Atom 330, 2GB, DDR2, 320GB HDD, HDMI -
£266.80 Inc VAT

That's about 1/3rd the cost (athough no blu ray) & the best deal I've seen by quite some margin.

+1 for me in 2 weeks time.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Asroc...320GB-HDD-HDMI

[Tarinder]

How is something so mismatched awarded with such a high score? A potentially tiny and relatively feature-filled system is almost entirely ruined by a case which is 1/3 unused. Surely a company of Scan's stature can source a better suited case?

I can see the case for the RAM, especially if/when paired with Win7 or even Vista (SuperFetch goodness), and obviously all the media gubbins make a case for themselves, and it's nice to have something different in the nettop-race, but you'd have to be off your rocker to spend £6-700 on such a machine... unless you're rolling in it, in which case you'd be better off buying a more power-hungry system anyway.

It's got a lot of potential, but £6-700 (whether it's the components or not) for a system without a monitor or TV is nuts.

It just seems that Scan have made a system with what they have in their warehouse already, rather than actually going and sourcing the most efficient bits for this particular job, things they might not otherwise stock.

The reason that it score relatively highly, if you can call 67 per cent high, is that it's evaluated with respect to our high-end criterion, where value plays a small part in the overall metric. Had it been a low-end PC then the value segment would have been higher.

The conclusion says it all, I hope:

"As good as Scan's integration and attention to detail is, we find it hard to justify an ION-based system that costs over £700."

"Ultimately, we see the Scan 3XS ION as a case of Marmite: you will either love it or consider it pointlessly expensive."

[jimbouk]

As good as Scan's integration and attention to detail is, we find it hard to justify an ION-based system that costs over £700.

We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy.

And 67%?!?!?!? So it's a safe, unjustifiable buy?

[scaryjim]

And 67%?!?!?!? So it's a safe, unjustifiable buy?

Missing the point slightly. Safe != Good. It does what it says on the tin, performs reasonably and if you buy it you certainly won't be disappointed - these factors make it a safe buy. Value / price has nothing to do with the "safety" of the buy. A lot of people pay extra for certain brands (Sony Vaio springs to mind) because they are considered "safe". So this is a safe buy if you want a reasonable HTPC with a lowish power draw (a similarly specced mATX desktop will draw 2 - 3 times as much power), but there are better value options if you shop around.

Anyway, what I really came here to say was that the idle power-draw figure really shows the weak spot of the Atom 230 and 330 - no speedstep. I'd say Intel desperately needed to get an N370 / N380 dual-core Atom with speedstep out, but since the N400-series are meant to be just round the corner perhaps they've got it covered after all...

[MrP]

can anyone confirm weather this thing operates with single channel or dual channel memory with 2 sticks in

[Tarinder]

can anyone confirm weather this thing operates with single channel or dual channel memory with 2 sticks in

Yup, it was showing as dual-channel in CPU-Z.

[Tarinder]

Most of the 'disgust', if I can call it that, centres around the price of the system.

Scan sent in a top-of-the-line ION box with practically all the available features/options tacked on, pushing up the etail price to £700-plus. Does that make sense for most of us? The answer has to be no, but it's a useful demonstration of technology.

Little things and attention to detail make it good, such as pre-installing MPC-HC for GPU-accelerated playback, along with a lean OS build.

Could the money be better spent on some other components for an HTPC? Yes, sure. Is it a bad system if you happen to earn £50K-plus and want something cool for the living room? No.

[kalniel]

Most of the 'disgust', if I can call it that, centres around the price of the system.

I haven't commented yet, but in my case I am also surprised at the score but not for price reasons.

I don't believe the system really takes advantages of the whole point of ION, especially putting it in that case. No matter the cost I would not be happy owning that system. Instead, IMHO, ION based computers should be small, sexy devices that you'd be happy to put next to your TV or in your audio cabinet.

[this_is_gav]

And Tarinder himself stated that "the steel-and-plastic affair look reasonable enough but the slimline Optiarc drive's dark-grey colour somewhat clashes against the all-black plastic front of the chassis."

So it doesn't look especially aesthetically pleasing (even by low-end cheap chassis in my opinion), makes little use of the space available (surely a better case could be found?!), and is mismatched given the pricepoint. If there's a rising scale of components available for choice, then the last point is somewhat moot I guess (depending on what the base price is), but otherwise as I said earlier, it just looks like it's a collection of pieces you already stock. That's fine for your excellent enthusiast, performance and 'standard' 3XS PCs as that's generally your bread and butter, but not in the case of MiniITX or PicoITX.

[scaryjim]

... ION based computers should be small, sexy devices that you'd be happy to put next to your TV or in your audio cabinet.

And there's a nice big picture in the review of it sitting in someone's TV cabinet, and not particularly standing out as out-of-place...

[mayhem]

there are better deals to be had than scan's



ION Bundle (2): Zotac ION-ITX-A Dual Core Atom N330 Motherboard; M350 Universal Mini-ITX Case; 4GB DDR2 800 Memory (2x 2GB DIMMs); Optional HDD/SSD

£239

throw in what ever you like but still messing around and you could easy drop there price buy far more than £250

The Zotac ion is retail at £182.59 (inc Vat)

p.s Its Linux compatible - initial tests show that VDPAU x264 acceleration is possible (Ubuntu, Mplayer recompile, 5% CPU 720p, 30% CPU 1080p playback on the single core ION-ITX-B)