A small-form-factor PC featuring the Chinese-made Zhaoxin KX-6640MA processor, a reminder that AMD and Intel aren’t the only game in town any more, has appeared for sale (and is sold out) on Shopee Indonesia, where it was spotted by CNX Software.
The KX-6640MA is a quad-core X86 processor that runs at 2.1 GHz base clock and 2.6 GHz boost clock with a 4MB cache, a 25W TDP and C-960 integrated graphics that support 4K output. Alongside this sits 8GB of DDR4, upgradable to 64GB, a pair of NVMe M.2 slots, one with a 256GB SSD already in it, and a 1TB HDD.
Video is handled by a pair of HDMI 2.0 ports, and there are two gigabit ethernet sockets too, along with WI-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 4. There are six USB 3.0 ports, all of them type-A, plus headphones and mic ports and a power brick. Compatible operating systems aren’t discussed, but there’s something that looks a lot like Windows 10 in the shopping site's images. The price converts to around $270.
Zhaoxin processors haven't been able to compete with the best CPUs, sitting below i3s and Pentiums in our testing. This doesn’t mean it’s not good enough, if the price is right, to carve out a niche for itself. And of course, it was probably made with the home market in mind.
And while it’s interesting to see something like this for sale outside the Chinese market, if you’re thinking about ordering one when they come back into stock you might want to pause: CNX reports that requests for a review sample were rebuffed by Beelink as “they had stopped production due to a lack of supply for the CPU”. However, we found this Zhaoxin KX-6640MA-based mini PC for sale for $260, and apparently in stock, on Newegg, for anyone wanting to break out of the Intel / AMD hegemony.
