Taking Apart the CoreHT

As nice atomic number 3 the CoreHT's outside is, we were itchiness to peek inside. Like the exterior, everything was very tidy under the hood. Asrock designed a neat cable length organization for delivering power and information cables to the physical science and hard drives.

Mounted above the motherboard we found a Western Digital Scorpio Covert 2.5" 500GB hard labour, along with the Philips & Lite-On Bureau of Diplomatic Security-4E1S Blu-ray jazz group repel, which feature a combined retail value of $160.

The sense modality effort supports 4.8x Blu-ray read speeds, 8x DVD read speeds and 24x CD read speeds, 8x for DVD+/-R, 4x for DVD+/-R DL and DVD+/-RW media, 16x for CD-R and 10x for CD-RW media. The drive features a 4MB buffer with access times of 200ms for Blu-Ray, 160ms for DVDs and 160ms for CDs.

The crown jewel is Intel's Core i5 2520M processor, which features deuce cores and four duds thanks to Hyper-Threading. Based on the "Sandy Bridge deck" (32nm) architecture, the processor operates at 2.5GHz, has 3MB of L3 hoard and sports the HD Graphics 3000 locomotive engine, which operates at 650 to 1300MHz.

This processor currently retails for $250, which means the CoreHT 252B should cost considerably more than the 231B and 231D models which use the Core i3 2310M. Although the 2310M is an OEM-only part (i.e. it has no more retail price), it's featured in sub-$500 laptops, suggesting it costs less than the i5 2520M.

The Core i3 2310M operates at just 2.1GHz and doesn't feature Turbo Boost technology, but is otherwise the one CPU as the Kernel i5 2520M.

All three models feature a pair of DDR3 SO-DIMM slots that are populated with ASint "SSZ3128M8-EDJ1F" 2GB DDR3-1333 modules for a tot up mental ability of 4GB. To upgrade the CoreHT's memory, you'll hold to replace this with two 4GB modules, which are astonishingly cheap every bit quality Corsair, G.Skill and Kingston kits can be had for Eastern Samoa little as $60.

Happening the network nominal head, the CoreHT uses the Realtek RTL8211E Gigabit Ethernet controller on with an Atheros 802.11 b/g/n Radio receiver LAN PCI Express Half Miniskirt Card. Although the old uses the auld PCI double-decker, throughput won't be severely specific as thither are few devices sharing IT.

Asrock has also stuck with Realtek for audio, using their tried and true ALC890B 8-channel audio codec. By adopting the Nuvoton NCT6775F Intelligence Community, Asrock has achieved the EuP2.0 standard, indicating that the tote up AC power consumption of the system is under 0.5W when powered off.

The CoreHT besides supports RAID 0 and RAID1 when installing a secondary 2.5" disc drive, which is an impressive feature for such a flyspeck device. While Asrock didn't provide much guidance connected how to go most installing a second drive, we were healthy to work IT out with a slim effort.

The driving force in question must be mounted under the direct driveway. To do so, the optical crusade and primary hard drive will sustain to Be removed from the climb square bracket archetypical. Asrock also included a cable television that connects from a special power connection on the motherboard to the second hard drive.

Ultimately, this opens the possibility of purchasing a dyad of Western Digital Scorpio the Scorpion Black 2.5" 500GB hard drives, configuring them for RAID0, and getting a TB of truehearted memory board inside this little boxful.

The thermal setup is typical of what you would find opposite with a laptop-reverberate Heart and soul i5 Mobile chip. The CPU has a small aluminum heatsink that is actively cooled past a little 35mm fan, while the Intel HM65 chipset is passively cooled by a much smaller heatsink. This combination manages to keep the CoreHT comparatively cool and quiet.