Zotac Upgrades ZBOX Mini-PC with Haswell

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Kevin Parrish
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Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.

  • heffeque
    Wow... these things are "a bit" faster than my Zotac AD04...
    Reply
  • antilycus
    or you can get a PICO compatible Mini ITX case and get a real processor and a real gpu by packing it with an AMD A series APU. Full desktop power, small small space.
    Reply
  • heffeque
    12042780 said:
    or you can get a PICO compatible Mini ITX case and get a real processor and a real gpu by packing it with an AMD A series APU. Full desktop power, small small space.

    I prefer to give my money to AMD than to Intel, but I doubt that an A series APU can beat a Hashwell CPU.
    Reply
  • TeKEffect
    I'm tired of cinavia on my ps3 stopping my audio. I was looking at one of these to run xbmc. Anyone have a better idea?
    Reply
  • rwinches
    ^^
    Tons of Android TV/PC Sticks that run XBMC for much less.
    Go to Freaktab TV/PC section and you will get up to speed on what is offered and how to get the most performance out of these affordable kits
    Plenty of Custom ROMs that get rid of bloat and recommendations for addons like remotes, game controlers and keyboards/trackpads.
    Reply
  • heffeque
    12043040 said:
    I'm tired of cinavia on my ps3 stopping my audio. I was looking at one of these to run xbmc. Anyone have a better idea?
    OpenElec is what you need, and it works perfectly even on underpowered hardware like the Zbox AD04, so it'll probably work even better on these puppies (saving driver problems with newer hardware).

    Cheers!
    Reply
  • techguy911
    I have a lenovo Q190 with Multimedia remote that is backlit sure you can buy a stick,set top box for much less but none of them come with a hard drive and a real OS you can use this as a desktop PC powerful enough to play games.
    I use it for XBMC it is very quick for such a computer win8 boots in less than 3 secs and you can load any other OS if you want as well.
    I had a boxee but now there is no more support and it is very limited compared to XBMC best thing is i can load anything XBMC,openelec,linux any distro,windows media center,Plex,boxee,mythtv,hulu desktop, and much more.
    The multimedia remote is best i have seen so far the optical thumb mouse is nice and keyboard much easier to type on than boxee remote.
    Trying running office on a roku not going to happen sad thing is lenovo discontinued the series it was best seller for small pc's they had there are still some stock around you have to really look around though.
    One really neat feature the remote has a 3 mode power switch on with no back light,on with back light and off to save battery life.
    Reply