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With the growing popularity of the tablet I hear more people say that the PC is dead or dying, but I care to disagree. If anything the PC is expanding its reach in different guises. Many people still want a big monitor at home, but without the big, noisy PC box that accompanies it, so instead they opt for a tiny mini-ITX PC. The same is true of those wanting a HTPC–they want the performance without the size and noise. Often, you can even attach to the case to the back of a monitor hiding it from view completely.
Zotac, most well-known for their motherboards and preconfigured mini-ITX + processor boards, has today unveiled a couple of new tiny PCs. They are called the ZBOX nano AD10 and the AD10 Plus.
The difference between the two machines is the Plus model ships with 2GB RAM and a 320GB hard drive where as the non-Plus doesn’t. As the AD10 can take up to 4GB RAM and the hard drive included is only a 5400rpm unit, it may be worth opting for the non-Plus model and selecting (faster) components yourself. An SSD would help speed things up and cut noise too.
Zotac’s focus with the AD10 is minimizing the size while maximixing performance. The case measures just 127 x 127 x 45mm, but inside you’ll find an AMD Brazos E-350 APU running at 1.6GHz. As it’s an APU you also get a DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.0-compatible Radeon 6310 GPU on-board, making for a system that’s more than capable of handling HD content, web browsing, and most games.
Other features include a HDMI port, eSATA, 2x USB 3.0 ports, 2x USB 2.0 ports, Ehternet, WiFi (n/g/b), 8-channel audio, and a 6-in-1 card reader. For an OS you have a choice of Windows or Linux, but you need to buy or download that yourself.
The ZBOX isn’t a new name for Zotac as it has been using the brand for its mini-PCs since last year. However, the AD10 is a new, even smaller nano version that doesn’t include an optical drive and in so doing saves on space.
Although Zotac hasn’t released prices yet for the AD10 and Plus model, we can take a stab at predicting them. The standard ZBOX PCs start at around $255, so we’d be surprised if the barebones AD10 had an RRP above that. As for the Plus model, anything above $300 would be too much and I’d opt to build myself.
