Legit Mods and Ends Reviews

NVIDIA Ion mini-ITX System Build Guide

Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Product: NVIDIA Ion mini-ITX System
Date: Fri, Sep 04, 2009 - 12:00 AM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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DIY NVIDIA Ion mini-ITX Build

Building a mini-ITX computer system is a popular topic these days and for good reason. The form factor is very small, a wide selection of platforms is available, and the component pricing is fairly decent. This build guide will quickly go through the steps of building a mini-ITX build from out of the box to completion. Once the build is completed, I will install Windows 7 RTM and run a slew of benchmarks to see how the system performs doing some tasks that you might actually do with a mini-ITX system.  The goal of this article is to show how to build a mini-ITX HTPC system capable of playing Blu-Rays for under $600 in hardware.  Can it be done?  Easily!

NVIDIA Ion mini-ITX DIY System Build Guide

The Mini-ITX System Build Parts List:

  • ASUS AT3N7A-I Motherboard - $159.00
  • Western Digital Scorpio Black 250GB 7200 RPM HDD WD2500BEKT - $70.91
  • Kingston 2GB DDR2 800MHz ValueRam KVR800D2N5K2/2G - $36.19
  • Panasonic UJ-135-A SATA Slimline Slot-Loading Blu-ray Player - $199.99 
  • Travla Mini-ITX Case C287 - $111.00
That brings the grand total for the system to $577.09 before the operating system and software, which isn't that bad for what this system will be capable of doing. Once it is built and loaded up with Windows 7 RTM 64-bit for a trial run, it should be a fairly beefy system thanks to the dual-core Intel Atom Processor 330 (1M Cache, 1.60GHz, 533MHz FSB) and the NVIDIA Ion GPU.

NVIDIA Ion

Many people might not understand just how small mini-ITX systems are, so here is the system that I will be showing you how to build sitting next to an early 1990's IBM 70MB ESDI hard drive. The mini-ITX system is actually just slightly larger when it comes to length and width, but is not as tall as the 70MB hard drive. The fact that the mini-ITX system on the left is loaded with a 250GB hard drive, motherboard, processor, 2GB of memory and a Blu-Ray player and is roughly the same size as hard drive from just a couple decades ago just goes to show how quickly computer components have advanced and shrunk in size.  

NVIDIA Ion mini-ITX DIY System Build Help

The Travla Mini-ITX Case C287 also dwarfs my current HTPC that was built using the Moneual LAB Black Aluminum 972B ATX media center case. This case alone still costs $499.99, so the new mini-ITX system will basically cost as much as my chassis did from a couple years ago. Other than a massive space savings, this system should also use much less power.  My current HTPC uses an AMD 690G platform with a Radeon HD 4830 graphics card and consumes ~110W at idle.  The new build that I am reviewing today should idle under 25W, which is nearly an 80% reduction in power consumption. 

Let's take a closer look at the Travla Mini-ITX Case C287 and ASUS AT3N7A-I Motherboard before we get to the system building and benchmarking.


Next Page - Travla C287 Mini ITX Chassis


Review Index
Page 1 - DIY NVIDIA Ion mini-ITX Build
Page 2 - Travla C287 Mini ITX Chassis
Page 3 - The ASUS AT3N7A-I Motherboard
Page 4 - Building The Mini-ITX HTPC Part 1
Page 5 - Building The Mini-ITX HTPC Part 2
Page 6 - Youtube HD and Hulu HD Video Playback
Page 7 - Matroska (MKV) Video Playback
Page 8 - Blu-Ray Video Playback
Page 9 - PCMark Vantage and 3DMark Vantage
Page 10 - Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood
Page 11 - NVIDIA CUDA Applications
Page 12 - Power Consumption and Conclusion