Mini-PC

As part of its 2024 CES announcements, ASUS officially unveiled a number of NUCs based on Intel's Meteor Lake platform. The company had earlier released the NUC 13 Rugged - the first NUC product that had not been inherited from Intel's existing lineup - based on Alder Lake-N processors. The new NUCs fall under the mainstream category and are marketed with the Pro tag. The Pro line represents the original 4" x 4" ultra-compact form-factor (UCFF). The new ASUS NUC 14 Pro products fall under the UCFF category. In addition, ASUS is also introducing the NUC 14 Pro+. These are slightly wider (144mm vs. 117mm) than the regular Pro models. Their height of 41mm is slightly more than the slim Pro kit's 37mm, but shorter...

CES 2016: GIGABYTE’s Double Length Gaming BRIX

The BRIX mini-PC line from GIGABYTE is an odd internal mashup within the company whereby the server business unit designs it, but the consumer arm does the marketing and...

12 by Ian Cutress on 1/12/2016

Intel Expands Compute Stick Family with Cherry Trail and Core M Models

The desktop PC market is seeing growth only in two areas - the gaming high-end and the mini-PCs (in the NUC form factor). Intel has been strengthening its offerings...

34 by Ganesh T S on 1/11/2016

Zotac ZBOX MAGNUS EN970 Review - A Gaming mini-PC Done Right

In the course of our coverage of mini-PCs, we have seen offerings from vendors such as ASRock, GIGABYTE and Zotac targeting the gaming market. Usually, 'mini' doesn't fit the...

88 by Ganesh T S on 9/28/2015

ECS LIVA x2 Review: A Compact & Fanless Braswell PC

The popularity of the NUC form factor has led to a resurgence in the nettop category. Thankfully, the core computing performance of the new systems have been miles ahead...

30 by Ganesh T S on 8/24/2015

Intel Launches New Socketed 5x5 mini-PC Motherboards

Over the last couple of years, the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) has emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Kickstarted by Intel's NUC (Next...

44 by Ganesh T S on 8/24/2015

ASRock Beebox Review: A Fanless Braswell UCFF PC

ASRock had taken an early lead in serving the mini-PC market, thanks to its Core / Vision series units. Based on motherboards meant for the notebook market (smaller than...

45 by Ganesh T S on 7/14/2015

The MSI Gaming Booth Tour with dGPUs in AIOs and Notebooks plus Motherboards

It has been held as fact that for the past couple of years, gaming is helping to prop up a slowly decreasing desktop PC market. While many casual PC...

50 by Ian Cutress on 6/29/2015

ASUS GR Series Goes Broadwell i5-5200U: The GR6

At Computex last year ASUS formally announced its mini-PC platform in the shape of the GR8. It was designed to fit within a bookcase on a shelf and act...

25 by Ian Cutress on 4/15/2015

GIGABYTE GB-BXi7H-5500 Broadwell BRIX Review

Over the last couple of years, the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) has emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. Intel's NUC and GIGABYTE's BRIX...

53 by Ganesh T S on 1/29/2015

ASRock VisionX 471D Review - Evolutionary Upgrades for a Powerful mini-PC

ASRock has been one of the few motherboard vendors to focus on mini-PCs targeting the HTPC and portable gaming markets. Starting from the ION-based nettop days, they have consistently...

30 by Ganesh T S on 1/26/2015

ECS LIVA X Review: A Fanless Bay Trail-M mini-PC

Over the last couple of years, mini-PCs in the ultra-compact form factor (UCFF) have emerged as one of the bright spots in the troubled PC market. ECS first took...

35 by Ganesh T S on 1/16/2015

Zotac Updates ZBOX mini-PC Lineup at CES 2015

Zotac's ZBOX series of mini-PCs has been receiving lots of updates over the last year or so. In addition to the traditional ZBOX (which, in itself, was small enough...

12 by Ganesh T S on 1/14/2015

Intel Updates the NUC at CES 2015 with Broadwell-U

The big topic going in to CES was the launch of Broadwell-U, Intel’s 14 nanometer 5th generation Core products for laptops, mini-PCs and all-in-ones, with rated TDPs of 15W...

32 by Ian Cutress on 1/12/2015

GIGABYTE BRIX Gaming BXi5G-760 mini-PC Review

GIGABYTE's BRIX Pro (using an Intel Iris Pro part) has made a big splash in the market, particularly as a Steam machine. Enthused by its success, GIGABYTE has introduced...

36 by Ganesh T S on 9/15/2014

ECS Reveals LIVA Product Roadmap

The PC market is warming up to the ECS LIVA 'nettop' that we reviewed back in July. The fanless nature and low cost, as well as 'good-enough' performance serve...

3 by Ganesh T S on 9/4/2014

VisionX 420D Review: ASRock's mini-PC Lineup Continues to Impress

ASRock has been one of the few motherboard vendors to focus on mini-PCs targeting the HTPC and portable gaming markets. Starting from the ION-based nettop days, they have consistently...

30 by Ganesh T S on 9/1/2014

Zotac ZBOX EI750 Plus: A Feature-Rich Iris Pro mini-PC

Intel's Crystal Well parts (-R series) with integrated eDRAM have arguably been the most interesting products in the Haswell line-up. In the early stages, only Apple had access to...

34 by Ganesh T S on 8/25/2014

ECS’ LIVA Mini-PC, now in 64GB White

Ganesh recently reviewed the ECS LIVA, a mini-PC aimed at the nettop market to replace basic office machines, library computers coming out of XP support and digital signage, among...

1 by Ian Cutress on 8/4/2014

ZBOX Sphere OI520 Plus: Zotac's Take on the NUC

The Intel NUC has created a very successful niche for itself in the SFF PC market. While Gigabyte has released the BRIX lineup (with more options compared to the...

40 by Ganesh T S on 8/1/2014

Computex 2014: Zotac’s ZBOX Sphere and AMD Fanless Mini-PC

Over the last year or so, Zotac seems to have reduced its motherboard output in focus of the mini-PCs. It explains why we have no Zotac Z87 or...

4 by Ian Cutress on 6/12/2014

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