Two New Ions: ASUS AT3N7A-I and ASRock Ion 330

The Price Showdown

ASUS was very clever with the pricing of the A3TB7A-I. These days a Zotac Ion with an Atom 330 will set you back $169.99 without a power supply or $189.99 with the external DC power adapter. ASUS decided to undercut Zotac by $10 and is coming in at $159.99:

The third option, the ASRock Ion, is more difficult to compare as you get a lot more in the bundle. To see what the most affordable way into an Ion would be (assuming you don’t already have any components) I priced out barebones systems using the ASRock, ASUS and Zotac routes:

Curious. The Zotac would win the price comparison if it weren’t for one thing: even the cheapest mini-ITX case at Newegg comes with a power supply. So the $189.99 Zotac board with power supply doesn’t save you any money, you just end up with an extra mini-ITX PSU after you’re done with your build. Naturally you could opt for the PSU-less $169.99 model, but then ASUS has already got you beat on price by $10. The one thing I didn’t include is the cost of a WiFi dongle, because you do get WiFi with Zotac but not with ASUS.

Depending on how much you spend on a mini-ITX case, the ASUS AT3N7A-I will get you into an Ion system for around $40 less than the ASRock Ion 330. That’s not an insignificant amount of money, and something you could use to beef up some of the components. Ahem, SSD.

Who wins the price comparison? The newcomer ASUS, unless you want WiFi in which case the $169.99 Zotac IONITX-D-E is a better deal. The cheapest USB 802.11n dongle will set you back around $20, making the ASUS solution $10 more expensive.