ASRock CoreHT Server Edition Review
by Vivek Gowri on February 16, 2012 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- Intel
- ASRock
- Media Streamer
- HTPC
Take a Look Inside
As with the CoreHT 252B, the Server is built around notebook internals. Let’s break it down.
CPU/GPU: Intel Core i5-2410M/HD 3000
The i5-2410M is a 32nm mobile Sandy Bridge part, clocked at 2.3GHz with a maximum turbo frequency of 2.9GHz. It’s a dual-core, 4-thread part that has a 35W TDP and a maximum clock of 1.2GHz for the on-die HD 3000 graphics core.
Chipset: Intel HM67
Interestingly, the motherboard has HM65 printed on it and the chipset even has a sticker on it identifying itself as an HM65 part. This would make any kind of RAID problematic, because the HM65 chipset doesn’t have an onboard RAID controller. This appears, however, to be a simple problem of mislabeling, because the chip is pretty clearly based on the Cougar Point HM67 platform (as identified in CPU-Z), with the two hard drives set up in RAID 0. Functionally, the only difference between HM65 and HM67 is the inclusion of the onboard RAID controller. Otherwise, the board is basically the same as the the one found in the CoreHT-252B.
Storage: 2 x 500GB 7200RPM, RAID 0
The star of the show here, the hard drive array, is made up of two 2.5” 500GB 7200RPM SATA hard drives arranged in a RAID 0 configuration to form a single 1TB volume. The two drives aren’t matched, with one being a Hitachi HTS7250 and the other being a Western Digital WD5000, but the specs are very similar. We will cover performance shortly, but it’s quite good.
Beyond the main features, there are two SoDIMMs of 2GB DDR3 1333 for a total of 4GB system memory, along with an Atheros AR9287 wireless card and the same Phillips Lite-On DS-4E1S Blu-ray combo drive as the 252B.
A special mention for the media center remote—it’s the same one as the CoreHT 252B, but I didn’t dislike it as much as Ganesh did. It feels light in hand, but not of poor build quality, and it’s relatively compact given the number of buttons on it. This leads to rather small buttons, but it’s something you can adjust to unless you have huge hands. Personally, I prefer remotes closer in form and function to the Boxee remote and such, but I found the CoreHT remote to be decent.
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Death666Angel - Friday, February 17, 2012 - link
So, everyone has to have the same taste in your world? :-)zyrmpg - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
your link is 404'd and now I'm curious what this case is. Reup or model #?Raider1284 - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
hi Zyrmpg. This is the enclosure DeathAngel was trying to link to: http://www.jcp-tech.de/fileadmin/images/Products/M...Raider1284 - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
and the link to the product page: http://www.jcp-tech.de/en/produkte/mini_itx/jcp_mi...Is there not a way to edit your own posts?!
Death666Angel - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
Sorry about the broken link, the parenthesis at the end messed up the link. Thanks for posting the right one, Raider.Unfortunately, I think they are only selling in Europe.
Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.de are selling them and the process of buying Amazon from abroad is pretty painless in my experience (I'm in Germany and regularly buy from UK and USA).
The German Amazon website has some more pictures of my mod:
http://www.amazon.de/JCP-Mini-ITX-Geh%C3%A4use-ext...
:-)
Bejusek - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
Server edition and only one RJ-45?! I would buy it if it had two.JKoltner - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
I'm curious... what do you want the two Ethernet ports for? So that the PC can also serve as a router/firewall?(I'm just thinking... I have a a small file server machine like this I built a couple of years ago, and while it does have tow Ethernet ports, I've only ever used one...)
Bejusek - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
Yes, I would use is as a combined router / media center / home file server, low power machine.I'm currently about to build something for this purpose. It either will be based on intel g620 or amd a6-3500 with some mini-itx mainboard.
However a pre-built pc like this one could be an interesting option, if only it had two ethernet interfaces; I'm not going to use a usb network card etc. 'Server edition' caught my eye and my first thought was finally something with dual network cards, thus my disappointment and comment.
mcnabney - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
You would use a box with a net storage capacity of 1TB as a storage server?I guess my 18TB server makes everything look puny...
Death666Angel - Thursday, February 16, 2012 - link
He could add several large HDDs via eSata (RAID) enclosures. :-)