Arctic Releases New XBMC Barebones & HTPCs
Arctic has released a complete HTPC and a pair of barebones.
The HTPC, the MC001-XBMC Limited Edition is a fully passively cooled system. It measures at 161 by 65 by 275 mm and weighs just 3.1 Kg. The system comes packed with a dual core Intel Atom D525, which runs at 1.8 GHz, along with an AMD Radeon HD5430M graphics card with 512 MB integrated GDDR3. The system also sports 2 GB of RAM and has a 1 TB 2.5" 5400RPM hard drive. It also has an external power adapter rated at 60 W. It also has a built in DVB tuner.
Moreover, the MC001-XBMC comes with every port you'll ever need; 6 3.5 mm audio jacks, an Optical SPDIF port, a VGA port, the expected HDMI port, Gigabit Ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0 ports on the front of the device, a card reader and 802.11n WiFi support.
For the tweakers among us, there are also two barebone versions, the MC001-E and the MC001-N. The first comes with a DVD drive and the second skips on optical storage all-together. The specifications of these two barebones are the same as the MC001-XBMC, except that they will ship without any storage or memory. The user will have to pick a HDD or SSD and RAM and assemble this themselves. All units also come with Arctic's remote control.
Pricing for the MC001-XBMC is currently at $229. The MC001-E (With DVD drive) costs $149.95, and the MC001-N barebone without a DVD drive costs $129.95. All three units are already available.
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Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.
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spentshells pbrigidoWould be a great little unit if it had something greater than an Atom.Reply
why all video is offloaded to the GPU, the extremely light atoms retains x86 as apposed to using some rinky dink mobile processor. -
curiosul spentshellswhy all video is offloaded to the GPU, the extremely light atoms retains x86 as apposed to using some rinky dink mobile processor.Reply
I guess/hope he meant something like AMD APU (apparently the only department where AMD still matters). -
randomstar This is quite simply an awesome price for a basic office PC- and it would work well. what more can you need?Reply
I know that is not how they are marketing it, but it will work wonders. think about this as a dual boot system, with RDP on a slim O/S load. -
ojas pbrigidoWould be a great little unit if it had something greater than an Atom.Or maybe a newer SoC Atom...Reply -
Rafterman414 I have always thought about using something like this for video game console emulation. I am sure it could handle NES/SNES/Genesis and whatnot, maybe even N64 and PSX. Not too sure about PS2 or Gamecube.Reply
I usually just hook my desktop or my laptop up to my TV with an HDMI cable but it would be nice to have a dedicated little media PC there for movies, Netflix, light gaming, etc. I know I could always just use my monitor or laptop for the emulators but I like the nostalgic feeling of playing old games on the TV. -
cRACKmONKEY421 I would imagine it's been tested well with XBMC. Doesn't look like it's supposed to be a general use PC. For the price, I'd definitely consider one. Seems like a reasonable price. My trickled-down-from-upgrades HTPC uses way more than 60 watts, more ugly, and probably does a crappier job in some other aspects.Reply -
richard0403 This is great news, especially with the idea "along with an AMD Radeon HD5430M graphics card with 512 MB integrated GDDR3". Yes, it seems like it's a reasonably priced as well. I was browsing for the best htpc grapics card, but this seems like a good buy for a PC unit. Thanks for the details.Reply