It’s always possible to connect a USB hard drive to a mini PC, but it’s not quite as neat as having an internal drive, and it may not pass the wife test. NEXBOX T11 mini PC powered by Intel Atom x5-Z8300 processor addresses this issue by including a 2.5″ SATA bay on the bottom for the case of a SSD or HDD with up to 2 TB capacity. NEXBOX T11 specifications: SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8300 “Cherry Trail” quad core processor @ 1.44 GHz/1.84 GHz (turbo) with Intel Gen8 HD graphics System Memory – 2 GB DDR3 Storage – 32 GB flash, 2.5″ SATA drive support, and micro SD slot Video Output – HDMI and VGA Audio Output – HDMI and 3.5mm audio jack Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet port, 802.11 b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0 USB – 3x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x micro USB OTG […]
Intel Launches $15 Quark D2000 Arduino Compatible Board
Intel introduces three new Quark Micro-controllers last year, and I already experimented with Intel System Studio tools, quite similar to the Arduino IDE, and designed for hardware such as Intel Quark D1000 Customer Reference Board. So far the company had not released any boards available to the general public, but this has now changed since they’ve launched the “Intel Quark Microcontroller Developer Kit D2000”. Intel Quark D2000 development board specifications: MCU – Intel Quark D2000 32-bit processor Intel Pentium x86-compatible without x87 FPU @ 32 MHz with 8 KB SRAM, 32 KB instruction flash, 8 KB OTP flash and 4 KB OTP data flash USB – 1x micro USB (JTAG) for power and programming/debugging Sensors – 6-axis Accelerometer / magnetometer with temperature sensor (Bosch Sensortec BCM150) Expansion options: Arduino Uno compatible SIL sockets (3.3V IO only) Booster pack compatible SIL headers (3.3V IO only) Misc – Reset and user buttons, jumpers, […]
Windows Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu Bash on Windows) Benchmarked Against Native Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.04
Microsoft recently announced that they brought Ubuntu userspace to Windows, and that this features will be officially released in Windows 10’s Anniversary Update and called Windows Subsystem for Linux. But people part of the company’s insider program can already try the beta version of “Bash on Windows”, and Phoronix ran some benchmarks in bash in Windows 10, and repeated the tests in Ubuntu 16.04, Ubuntu 14.04, and Clear Linux. The test machine was based on an Intel Xeon E3-1280 v5 Skylake CPUwith 16GB of RAM and 120GB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. Many of the results show Windows Subsystem for Linux (I’ll just call it Windows 10 in the rest of the post) just performing a little slower than on the Linux distributions, but there are also some outliers, which I’m going to cover here. The most surprising results is when Windows 10 clearly outperforms Linux at its own game which […]
Intel Core m3 Skylake Compute Stick Benchmarked, Tested with Ubuntu 16.04 and Chromium OS
Intel unveiled five new Compute Sticks for 2016, with two Cherry Trail models, and three Skylake Core M models namely STK2M3W64CC and STK2MV64CC based on Intel Core m3-6Y30 processor, as well as STK2MV64CC with a more powerful Core m5-6Y57 vPRO processor. Ian Morrison (Linuxium) managed to get an early sample of STK2M3W64CC running Windows 10 on 4GB RAM and 64GB storage, and posted some benchmarks, as well as results of his experimentations with Ubuntu and Chrome OS in the Intel section of G+ MINI PCs community and his own website. He started by running some standard benchmarks in Windows 10 including CrystalDiskMark (storage performance), Passmark8, and 3DMark, and while the storage performance is underwhelming, the processor is clearly and noticeably faster than Braswell, and Cherry Trail processors in terms of CPU and GPU performance based on comparisons with Tronsmart Ara X5 (x5-Z8300), Kangaroo Mobile Desktop (x5-Z8500), Voyo V3 (x7-Z8700), and […]
K3 Wintel Windows 10 Keyboard PC Review
GeekBuying sent me K3 Wintel keyboard computer since I was interesting in testing a device in this form factor, and at the time I listed the specifications, and took a few pictures of the device and its internals. I’ve now completed the review, and found it to perform very well for a Bay Trail computer. K3 Wintel Key Computer Setup & System Info But the initial part of the review did not start so well, as I was asked for a license key for the device as went through the initial setup right after selecting my languages and regional settings. GeekBuying clearly states the mini computer comes with a “Licensed Windows 10”, and I could not find any on the device or the user’s guide, which appears to be a near-exact copy of a Windows 10 Lenovo tablet PC user’s guide… So I contacted GeekBuying, and after a few days, […]
Axiomtek ICO310 Din-rail Industrial IoT Gateway Supports Power over Ethernet (PoE)
Axiomtek ICO310 is a din-rail IIoT (Industrial IoT) embedded platform powered by Intel Celeron Braswell processors supporting up to 8GB RAM, PoE, and featuring two Gigabit LAN ports, RS-232/422/485 ports, USB 2.0 & USB 3.0 ports, one VGA port, and one DIO interface. It also support mSATA and SATA drives, and wireless module via mPCIe interfaces. Target applications include smart energy, smart factory automation, facility monitoring systems and more. Axiomtek ICO310 Specifications: SoC Intel Celeron N3060 dual core processor @ 1.6GHz / 2.48 GHz (Turbo) with Intel HD graphics 400 with 12EU @ 320/600 MHz OR Intel Celeron N3160 quad core processor @ 1.6GHz / 2.24 GHz (Turbo) with Intel HD graphics 400 with 12EU @ 320/640 MHz System Memory – 204-pin SO-DIMM DDR3L-1600 socket up to 8 GB Storage – 1 x mSATA, 1x SATA SSD (or HDD) Video Output – VGA Connectivity 2x 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet, including 1x PoE PD […]
Wintel Pro CX-W8 Cherry Trail mini PC Sells for $85
I reviewed Wintel W8 mini PC powered by an Intel Atom Z3735F last year, although since the model could dual boot Windows 8.1 and Android 4.4 I mostly focused my review on the Android part. There’s now an upgraded model running Windows 10 only, based on Intel Atom x5-Z8300 quad core Cherry Trail processor, and very much the same interfaces except one of the USB 2.0 ports has been upgraded to USB 3.0. Wintel Pro CX-W8 has very similar same specifications to other Cherry Trail mini PCs available on the market: SoC – Intel Atom x5-Z8300 “Cherry Trail” quad core processor @ 1.44 GHz (Bust freq: 1.84 GHz) with Intel Gen8 HD graphics (2W SDP) System Memory – 2 GB Storage – 32 GB eMMC + micro SD slot Video Output – HDMI Audio I/O – HDMI, 3.5mm microphone jack Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0 […]
Raspberry Pi 3 Board is Powered by Broadcom BCM2837 Cortex A53 Processor, Sells for $35
Raspberry Pi 3 board was first found on the FCC website, and thanks to various other leaks we had a pretty good idea of the board specifications including a Broadcom 64-bit ARM processor coupled with 1GB RAM, WiFi and Bluetooth, as well as basically the same features and ports as Raspberry Pi 2 Model B. But with the fourth anniversary of the Raspberry Pi Model 1 board, Raspberry Pi 3 has now officially been launched, and you can now purchase the board for $35. Raspberry Pi 3 specifications: SoC – Broadcom BCM2837 64bit ARMv8 quad core Cortex A53 processor @ 1.2GHz with dual core VideoCore IV GPU @ 400 MHz supporting OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG, and 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode. Capable of 1Gpixel/s, 1.5Gtexel/s or 24GFLOPs with texture filtering and DMA infrastructure System Memory – 1GB LPDDR2 Storage – micro SD slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 1.4 […]