ASRock's High-End Vision 3D 252B HTPC Review

Before proceeding to the business end of the review, let us take a look at some power consumption numbers. We measured power drawn at the wall when the unit was idle, one hour after subjecting the unit to Prime95 and Furmark simultaneously and when playing back a 1080p24 Blu-ray movie from the optical drive with HD audio bistreaming. In all cases, the Wi-Fi was active (no wired Ethernet). A wireless keyboard and mouse was also connected to the unit.

We are a little worried about the full loading power consumption being more than what the power supply is rated for, as this was not something we observed in the review of the first generation Vision 3D. [Update: Many readers have pointed out that the efficiency of the PSU has to be taken into account. If the efficiency is lower than 82.4%, then, the observed consumption numbers are fine]. That said, it is highly unlikely that users will stress the unit to that extent in day-to-day usage.

The thermal solution used in the Vision 3D 252B is the same as the one used in the Vision 3D 137B. We had already covered the thermal performance in detail in the previous review, and I found no discernible difference in the actual performance of the two units. Full loading produces less than 35 dB of noise, and this is as good as what one can get with an actively cooled system.

We have had the Vision 3D 252B review unit in-house for more than five months, and it has actually served as a testbed in a number of our reviews. ASRock's units have always been reliable in my experience, and the Vision 3D 252B has been used as the primary HTPC in my setup ever since it came in. From this standpoint, the Vision 3D 252B deserves our recommendation as much as the original Vision 3D 137B.

So, why did we have this inordinate delay in publishing the review of the Vision 3D 252B? Simply put, ASRock had made us set our expectations quite high after the Vision 3D 137B. Instead of delivering on the same scale, what we have with the Vision 3D 252B is just an evolutionary update. This is further weakened by the fact that the GT 540M and the first generation's GT 425M belong to the same family, with the former just being an overclocked version. The memory type and bus width are also the same, as is the number of shaders. Increasing the primary disk drive size (from 500 to 750 GB) and the amount of RAM (from 4 to 8 GB) was just keeping up with the latest industry standards. In addition, to really get excited about the Vision 3D 252B, SSDs as primary disk drives or at least as a caching drive should have been utilized. When Zotac can introduce a mSATA SSD in their low-end offering (ZBOX Nano XS), it is not clear why ASRock didn't go in for something similar.

In conclusion, the ASRock Vision 3D 252B is an ideal alternative to the Vision 3D 137B, but the updates are not revolutionary enough for us to give it the same plaudits as what we gave to the first generation version. That said, if ASRock can get the pricing down on this to somewhere around the $750 - $850 range, the system would definitely win in the price-performance aspect. We hope ASRock builds upon its solid foundation to deliver a more attractive system down the line. With Ivy Bridge and Kepler, things are looking good. Now, it is just up to ASRock to design a HTPC oriented motherboard for the next generation version later this year.