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The Novatech Ion Intel Atom 230 Home PC

The Novatech Ion comes included with two legs so that it can be stood upright. When standing it measures just 282mm in height, 95mm in width and 315mm in depth. This small size makes it a perfect choice as an Internet Browsing HTPC or Office Computer.

The front of the Novatech’s computer case has a large round power button with a translucent ring surrounding it which glows blue when the system is powered on. There is also a small reset switch and a red HDD LED which are located to the left of the power button.

In terms of ports you will find:

• 2x USB 2.0
• 1x Mic Jack
• 1x Headphone Jack

Most ITX Computer Systems come with laptop style (slim line) optical drives. These are often rather noisy and usually perform much worse than conventional desktop optical drives. The optical drive included with the Novatech Ion system is thankfully of the desktop type and is a LG 22x DVD +/- Dual Layer DVD-RAM drive. This should be more than suitable for most people but can of course be replaced with a Blu-Ray drive should you wish.

The right side or top (depending on how you position the PC) of the Novatech Atom 230 computer has two perforated grills. The first grill simply provides cool air to the optical drive and hard drive whereas the grill located towards the rear of the chassis has an 80mm fan mounted behind for providing cool air to the main system components (motherboard, memory, and processor). As far as cooling goes, this is the only fan installed within the Novatech Ion (bar the PSU fan) – there isn’t even a CPU Fan! As mad as it sounds, Intel’s Atom CPU can honestly be cooled effectively passively due to producing very little heat at all.

The rear of the Novatech Ion Home PC boasts many ports. These include:

• 1x PS/2 keyboard port
• 1x PS/2 mouse port
• 1x Serial port
• 1x Parallel port
• 1x Audio jack supports 3 jacks
• 4x USB 2.0 ports
• 1x RJ45 LAN port
• 1x VGA

Sadly though there’s no eSATA ports for faster external hard drive connectivity and no built in WiFI. This is a slight shame as many other Intel Atom motherboards and complete systems on the market are wireless ready. To add WiFi support you’ll need to either purchase a USB WiFi adapter or a PCI Wireless Card.

Related posts:

1. Novatech readies i5 system
2. Zotac ION A-Series ITX Motherboard