Sapphire Unveils AMD E450-Powered Edge-HD3 Mini PC
Sapphire Unveils AMD E450-Powered Edge-HD3 Mini PC
Posted 02/21/2012 at 11:14am
| by Brad Chacos
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Not too long ago, Sapphire rolled out the diminutive Edge-HD Mini PC, which was hailed as the teeny-tiniest PC in all the land. (The company also oddly claimed the PC's "less than half a liter in volume!" You know, in case you wanted to fill it with Kool-Aid or something.) Despite its small size, the Atom-based Edge-HD packed a decent punch and racked up a lot of fans. Now, Sapphire's pulled the curtain off the Mini PC's follow-up. The aptly named Edge-HD3 ditches Intel for a 1.6GHz AMD E450 APU that gives the PC a performance boost over its predecessors.
The other major components received a boost, too; while the Atom-powered original includes just 2GB of RAM and a 250GB HDD, the Edge-HD3 packs 4GB of RAM and a 320GB HDD into the same small frame. There's an HDMI port onboard for 1920x1080 output and even better yet, you'll find both an HDMI and an HDMI-DVI converter cable in the box. The one thing missing: a baked-in operating system.
So yeah, it'll handle Microsoft Office, but Sapphire also says the setup "takes most mainstream games in its stride" and claims that "even the more hardcore LAN party visitors will find the easily portable EDGE-HD3 a useful weapon in their armoury." To that end the PC sports 2 USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet port and built in Wi-Fi. And despite the claims, we'd casually suggest that hardcore LAN party visitors steer away from playing BF3 on the thing.
No word yet on pricing or availability, but there's a full list of Edge-HD3 specs up on the Sapphire website.
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doggitydogs
February 21, 2012 at 4:55pm
Though this is very cool, the title "the teeny-tiniest PC in all the land" should really go to something based on the Pico-ITX form factor, assuming that the definition of "PC" is something along the lines of "thing that will run 64-bit Windows 7 and play 1080p video."
Not that I particularly want my PC to be as tiny as possible... I might lose it between my couch cushions. I am proud to be writing this from a PC that I am not entirely comfortable with the concept of lifting.
SleepyCatChris
February 21, 2012 at 12:19pm
Jeez, I know taste is subjective, but why in the world do people think that ridiculous "vertical tilt on a base stand" design is the least bit appealing?! It doesn't appear to have the option to simply lay flat and fit in along with every other device in media cabinet (except for the equally stupidly designed Wii).
OCFRED
February 21, 2012 at 12:17pm
OEM disc? into what optical drive? ; the linux graffiti moved from the alleys to an "occupy" level of visibility in the last year and could just as well run from a thumb drive making physical footprints redundant. One could even leave the 320gb volume un partitioned as a swap from a larger external root using this for just visual/hub output. Either way like it, no noisy fans or bulky cases to clutter up Media presentation with minimal power consumption, far better than this wheezy dinosaur in the living room.
Brad Chacos
February 21, 2012 at 12:23pm
Touche! Great point. I think I'll go ahead and edit that line out now...
Supall
February 21, 2012 at 11:45am
That would be nice for an HTPC, even though it doesn't have a tuner and it doesn't appear to have a dvd tray. :\
Raswan
February 21, 2012 at 12:03pm
That's what I thought too. Get an external dvd drive for 30$ and a dongle tuner for another 40$, and it would work fine though. Wonder how much it will run.
dgrmouse
February 21, 2012 at 7:15pm
320GB is great for a XBMC box or a HTPC front-end, but it's way too small for a machine armed with one or more TV tuners. A single ATSC/QAM card can potentially grab three SD shows and one HD stream at the same time, and this machine is waaaaay too slow to do any meaningful transcoding or even basic stuff like marking commercials. By the time you add USB optical and hard drives, tuners, power supplies for said attachments, and so forth you've lost the elegance that the machine initially promises. It's not without value, but neither is it the "ultimate" home theater PC.
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