Stories about: ASRock

The Panasonic TH-P58V10A is a 58in plasma television with a thin chassis and a great display panel. It may be expensive, but this is about the only downside -- it has great image quality, it's super-slim and can be easily wall mounted, and its power consumption isn't particularly bad.

The ASRock Ion 330HT-BD is a 'nettop' desktop PC with Intel's Atom 330 1.6GHz dual-core processor and NVIDIA ION integrated graphics. It has hardware acceleration to play back 1080p Blu-ray video free of any stuttering or buffering, and the integrated graphics are good enough for some limited gaming.

The Pitch: Our ultimate set-top box/high-def DVR is a home theater PC that's quiet and turns on in seconds. (That's not an impossible dream either: Microsoft has thought about it, and ASrock has motherboards that use an advanced standby state to boot Windows in around 4 seconds). A PC-based DVR lets you hand-pick and upgrade hardware, manage codecs, and use add-ons like DVRMSToolbox, ShowAnalyzer or ComSkip to automatically detect and skip commercials. We'd follow the lead of MythTV and make ad-skipping standard...

Microsoft Corp. and Intel Corp.'s attempts to confine netbooks to the low end of the market to protect mainstream notebook PC sales have taken another hit.

When buying a motherboard for an Intel CPU, the most important consideration is the chipset. This will determine whether or not it will support the latest connectivity features, memory technology and, most importantly, the latest-model CPUs. There's a stack of chipsets on the market just for Intel motherboards -- and an even larger stack of motherboards based on different implementations of those chipsets -- ranging from entry-level chipsets with integrated graphics, right up to high-performance chipsets that are ripe for serious overclocking. What follows is a run-down of the top five boards we think are best for a new system or upgrade, but discussed in order of their chipset (from mainstream to high-end performance).

Buying a new motherboard for an Intel-based system can be tough, as there are so many options to choose from. But this particular Gigabyte model seems to have all bases covered thanks to its support for DDR2 and DDR3 memory modules, as well as 45nm-based CPUs, and it's well-under $200. Not only that, it also ships with a utility that will tell you how much power your board -- or more accurately, your CPU -- is consuming, and allow you to customise it in order to save power.

When it comes to motherboards, the most prominent names are ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI, but there are lesser-known players out there who also offer well-featured models at competitive prices. ASRock is one such player, and the company names its products so that you know exactly what you're getting without even having to read the specs.

In this month's issue we show you the tried and true strategies (and some new tricks!) that will keep your network up and running. We also put Vista's new DirectX 10 to the test with seven of GeForce's graphics cards and how they will perform with the latest and hottest games. We also have tutorials, news, reviews and features to keep you up-to-date on everything tech.

The ASRock ALiveXFire-eSATA2 AMD-based board is inexpensive, and while it does have a limited supply of expansion options, it comes with some cool features, namely eSATA and ATI CrossFire support.

Altech's Sputnik X2 is an Intel Core 2 Duo-based system for users on a budget. It's a relatively plain PC, but it includes good core components and plenty of upgrade room for future expansion. It scored well in our tests, considering its price and configuration and will suffice for basic, everyday computing needs.