ASRock CoreHT-252B HTPC Review

Testing:

ScienceMark:

ScienceMark measures system performance with benchmarks that are designed not to cater to any one particular CPU architecture, and thus more accurately convey real world performance. A higher score is better.

Cinebench:

Cinebench measures processor performance by rendering a high quality 3D scene with all available threads. A higher score is better.

HD Tune:

HD Tune measures the HDDs performance in MB/s. Higher read speed, lower access time, and lower CPU utilisation are better.

Top performance again. Unfortunately, however, Western Digital's Scorpio Black HDD didn't perform so much better than the 5400RPM drive used in the Sapphire Edge. The only real advantage it offers over it is an approximate fourteen megabyte higher average read speed, which still doesn't take performance into the 'Blazing!' category. It gets hot enough with an i5 inside the little case, and the 7200RPM HDD only adds an unnecessary amount more of it. A 5400RPM HDD or even an SSD would be a better choice.