MeLE Quieter2 Review – Windows 10, Ubuntu 20.04, and eGPU

Mele Quieter2 review

MeLE has recently released a passive mini PC called the Quieter2. What is particularly interesting is that whilst it only has a low-powered Intel Celeron CPU it also supports an M.2 2280 NVMe SSD drive which theoretically makes using an eGPU possible. MeLE provided a 99% discount coupon so that I could purchase one for review and the results from various testing are detailed below. Hardware Overview The Quieter2 physically consists of a 131 x 81 x 18.3mm (5.16 x 3.19 x 0.72 inches) rectangular plastic case with a metal base plate. The top half of the case is finely grooved to mimic the fins of a heat spreader but is made of plastic rather than metal to allow reception to the WiFi antennas as one is directly connected to it. As a passively cooled mini PC, it uses Intel’s 14 nm J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh processor which is a […]

Snapdragon QC710 Developer Kit targets Windows 10 on Arm app development

QC-710 Snapdragon Developer Kit

In order to encourage developers to port their apps to Windows 10 on Arm, Qualcomm and Microsoft have announced the Snapdragon Developer Kit based on a Snapdragon Compute platform and aiming to provide a cost-efficient platform that will be less costly than a laptop. The development kit looks like a mini PC, and while the full specs have not been announced, it could well be powered by the just-announced Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor, itself a cheaper version of Snapdragon 7c. Qualcomm did not share photos of all the ports from the developer kit, but the photos we’ve got come with “QC710” file name, and reveal a power button on the top, an LED on one corner, two USB ports, a MicroSD card slot, and a SIM card socket. I’d assume at least one HDMI or DisplayPort at the back, and possibly an Ethernet port, but we just don’t know […]

TOPTON D3 mini desktop features AMD Ryzen 5 4500U mobile processor

TOPTON D3

TOPTON D3 is an AMD Ryzen 5 4500U mini (desktop) PC that adds to the list of compact computers such as ASRock Mars 4000U or ASRock 4×4 BOX-4800U based on 15W AMD Ryzen 4000-series mobile processors. The mini PC offers two DDR4 SODIMM sockets, NVMe SSD storage, two Gigabit Ethernet ports, WiFI 6, as well as three 4K video outputs through HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB-C ports. TOPTON D3 (tentative) specifications: SoC – AMD Ryzen 5 4500U hexa-core/hexa-thread processor @ 2.3 GHz / 4.0 GHz (Turbo) with 11MB cache, Radeon Vega 6 Graphics ; 15W TDP System Memory – 2x SODIMM DDR4 sockets for up to 32GB RAM Storage – M.2 socket for up to to 1TB M.2 2280 NVMe SSD, 2.5-inch SATA bay for up to 2TB SATA HDD (as per default configuration options) Video Output HDMI 2.0 up to 4Kp60 DisplayPort up to 4Kp60 USB-C up to 4Kp60 using […]

Beelink GKmini Review – An Intel Celeron J4125 mini PC reviewed with Windows 10 Pro, Ubuntu 20.04

Beelink GKmini Review

Beelink have recently released another small form factor (SFF) design similar to the traditional Intel ‘NUC’ called the GKmini which they have provided for review. Available as a fully configured Windows 10 Pro mini PC means it can be up and running straight out of the box. Hardware Overview The Beelink GKmini physically consists of a 115mm x 102mm x 43mm (4.53 x 4.02 x 1.69 inches) rectangular plastic case. It is an actively cooled mini PC and uses Intel’s 14 nm J4125 Gemini Lake Refresh processor which is a quad-core 4-thread 2.00 GHz processor boosting to 2.70 GHz with Intel’s UHD Graphics 600. The front panel has a power button, a headphone jack, two USB 3.0 ports, and a ‘CLR CMOS’ pinhole that leads to a button which when pressed clears the CMOS. The rear panel includes the power jack, dual HDMI ports, a gigabit Ethernet port, a further […]

DSBOX-NX2 – An NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Industrial Fanless PC

Jetson Xavier NX industrial fanless PC

Turkish company Forecr has launched DSBOX-NX2 NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX based industrial fanless PC equipped with the company’s own DSBoard-NX2 carrier board and designed for “multi-stream deep learning edge analytics” and IIoT applications. The compact embedded computer comes with 8GB RAM, up to 2TB SSD storage, as well as HDMI 2.0 output, Gigabit Ethernet, two USB 3.1 ports for high resolution cameras, serial ports, and some GPIOs among other features. Forecr DSBOX-NX2 specifications: System-on-Module – NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX module with hexa-core NVIDIA Carmel ARM v8.2 64-bit processor, NVIDIA Volta GPU with 384 CUDA core & 48 Tensor Cores, 8 GB 128-bit LPDDR4x, 16GB eMMC flash Storage – M.2 Key M SSD slot, MicroSD card slot Video Ouput – 1x HDMI 2.0 up to 3840×2160 at 60 Hz Networking Gigabit Ethernet Wireless – WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G LTE, 5G connectivity by extension sockets USB – 2x USB 3.1 Type-A Expansion 1x […]

GIGABYTE GB-BMCE-4500C fanless mini PC features Celeron N4500 Jasper Lake processor

Gigabyte GB-BMCE-4500C

We’ve previously covered a couple of Jasper Lake mini PC’s with the upcoming actively-cooled Intel Atlas Canyon NUC and AC8 fanless mini PC from Newsmay Technology. If you prefer a fanless model but would rather not purchase a model from a little-known company, there will soon be another option with GIGABYTE GB-BMCE-4500C mini PC equipped 6W dual-core Celeron N4500 Jasper Lake SoC, support for up to 16GB RAM, an NVMe/SATA M.2 drive, one 2.5-inch SATA drive, as well as dual 4K video output via HDMI and miniDP ports. GIGABYTE GB-BMCE-4500C specifications: SoC – Intel Celeron N4500  dual-core processor @ 1.1GHz / 2.8GHz (Burst frequency) with Intel UHD graphics; 6W TDP System Memory – Up to 16GB RAM via 1x SO-DIMM DDR4 slot up to 2933MHz Storage M.2 2280 slot for NVMe (PCI-e x2) or SATA SSD SATA 3 for 2.5-inch HDD/SSD (7.0/9.5mm thick) Video Output 1x HDMI 2.0b support 4Kp60 […]

Crowdfunded “Mi Mini PC” Windows 10 Mobile PC remains undelivered after 3 years

Mi-Mini-PC-Fail

Crowdfunding can be fun, but also risky for backers, especially when backing projects from startups. There are many such examples of projects gone bad, and last year we noted TAIHE Gemini portable display was another crowdfunding campaign gone wrong despite raising over one million dollars. Today, I’d like to reiterate this warning with “Mi Mini PC“, a pocket-size Windows 10 Mobile PC that was introduced on Indiegogo and raised a cool 1.5 million dollars. Note that the “Mi” here is completely unrelated to Xiaomi, and the product was developed by a company with the now-unreachable  mipcworld.com website. There were early red flags shorting after the launch of the campaign with the developer making unrealistic claims about a free upgrade from Atom x7 to Core M3-7Y30, and no pictures of an actual prototype. But somebody just left a comment on the CNX Software article that there was still nothing. So I […]

Intel Atlas Canyon NUC to feature Jasper Lake J-Series processors (Leak)

Intel Atlas Canyon NUC

Intel Jasper Lake N-series low-power processor family was introduced as an update to the Gemini Lake family last January, and the first Jasper Lake mini PC’s have just started to show up with mass production scheduled in mid-May. But now, courtesy of FanlessTech, we have more information about Intel Atlas Canyon NUC that will be offered with a choice of three Jasper Lake processors, namely Pentium Silver J6005, Celeron J5105, and Celeron J4505, all of which are J-series, and have yet to be announced/listed on Intel Ark website. Intel NUC 11 Essential “Atlas Canyon” specifications: SoC NUC11ATKC2 – Intel Celeron J4505 dual-core processor clocked at 2.0 GHz / 2.7 GHz (Burst) with Intel HD Graphics @ 750 MHz NUC11ATKC4 – Intel Celeron J5105 quad-core processor clocked at 2.0 GHz / 2.9 GHz with Intel HD Graphics @ 800 MHz NUC11ATKPE – Intel Pentium Silver J6005 quad-core processor clocked at 2.0 […]

EmbeddedTS embedded systems design