Specifications, Availability and Pricing

Above we get a good look at the full product specifications of the ASRock ION system. The only thing we need to mention is that we are actually testing the ION 330-BD model, which is exactly the same as the ION 330 (listed above), except it replaces the standard DVD Super Multi drive with a Sony BC-5500S SATA Blu-ray slim type reader drive.

As far as availability goes, it is still a brand new system and we couldn't find it listed online at this stage. The only place we saw it listed was on eBay and selling for $439 CAD, which works out to be $390 USD at the time of writing.

We asked ASRock for the RRP and it is listed at $399 USD, for the non Blu-ray model. The Sony BC-5500S SATA Blu-ray drive lists for $260 USD on Newegg, so it will obviously increase the price if you want Blu-ray playback ability on this system to roughly $650 USD.

ASRock also has a cut-down version of its nettop, the S330, without the NVIDIA ION chipset, and it has its RRP set at $329 USD. This means that you're only paying $70 USD for the ION chipset, which right now we would say is easily worth the extra price for what it brings to the table.

It is also worth noting that ASRock does not bundle an operating system. You'll need to buy a copy of Windows Vista or install a copy of Windows 7 RC1 as we did. You could also install a free Linux OS, too.