The Temperature and Noise Showdown

Under load (playing Quantum of Solace, full screen) the temperatures between the systems varied by a large margin. As expected, the Zotac board with a fan was the coolest. The ASRock in its silent mode ran the hottest and the ASUS with its noisy fan was a bit warmer than the Zotac.

GPU Temperatures Under Load

The Zotac fan is optional although removing it sent temperatures up above 70C. While the system never crashed or dropped frames without a fan directly on the heatsink, I would recommend having a case fan moving air over the heatsink to preserve the system’s lifespan.

System Noise While Watching Blu-ray

I measured sound 7” above the motherboards. Without any fan, ambient noise in the room gave us a floor of 41 dBA. The quietest solution was the ASRock at 43.5 dB, followed by the Zotac at 44 dB and finally the ASUS at just over 50 dB. While the ASRock system was technically quieter than the Zotac, the noise it did emit was more noticeable. The rear case fan in the ASRock Ion had a repeating drone to it, whereas the Zotac fan just sounded like it was moving air. Honestly, I’d say Zotac wins it here.

The Ion Performance Showdown Power Consumption
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  • shoes666unm - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link

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  • eversteegt - Tuesday, November 3, 2009 - link

    Hello Anandtech,

    First of all: Great article! Based on this article (and a similar one on Legit reviews) I bought the Asus AT3N7A board.

    Unfortunately, I am very disappointed with it. Despite their statement to you, it still has the faulty and whining fan, so the wrong one DID make it to the retail versions. To make things more nasty: Their "valued customer" tech support is utterly refusing to help me out. They state that a new fan DOES NOT exist and I should stop complaining (apparently, the think Anandtech and Legit reviews are telling lies).

    I can't help hoping this is just a miscommunication/misunderstanding between your contacts and the info not making it to the tech support. But for now, I have had it with Asus and their beautiful lies.

    Otherwise, the board performance very good, but the Fan and lousy tech support just spoil all the fun :(
  • gnif - Tuesday, September 29, 2009 - link

    When the XBMC tests were done you said you used the Live CD... is is possible to have some performance tests done on the latest SVN version...

    I patched a major bug in XBMC about 4 months ago that caused huge slowdowns on all systems, that especially affected embedded systems such as the ION.

    See: http://xbmc.org/trac/ticket/6761">http://xbmc.org/trac/ticket/6761

    I would love to have an ION to test on, but I just cant afford it.

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