Nettop Round-Up: Four Tiny PCs, Benchmarked And Reviewed

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We're testing four nettops: Arctic Cooling’s MC001-BD, ASRock’s CoreHT 252B, Giada’s i50, and Zotac’s Zbox AD03BR-PLUS. All of these tiny, quiet systems take a very different approach to compact computing, and we fill you in on what makes them unique.

Benchmark Results: Productivity

Now we can dig into the individual productivity-oriented PCMark 7 benchmarks, including Web browsing, data encryption, image manipulation, and video transcoding performance.

When it comes to Web browsing, the ASRock nettop maintains its first-place position. The Core i3-430UM in Giada’s i50 has little trouble muscling its way past the more anemic E-350 and Atom D525 processors. Really though, any of these competitors is sufficient for general usability.

The Giada i50 and Zotac Zbox run close together, while the Arctic Cooling MC001-BD falls behind. The CoreHT takes its now-familiar first-place finish way up in front of the pack.

Photoshop users should be interested in the results of PCMark 7's image manipulation test. The Giada i50 demonstrates a big improvement over the i50 and Zbox. By now, though, there's no questioning which one of these boxes is fastest.

When it comes to video transcoding, cores and clock rate are king, and ASRock leads by a mile. Arctic’s MC001-BD is held back most severely by the low-power Atom processor.

Don Woligroski
Contributor

Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.