ASUS EBOX cracked open for world to see, previewed

Okay, so this isn't the finalized SKU or anything (it's an "early sample," if you must know), but it's close enough to the real deal to warrant a dissection. The model shown here came sporting a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of DDR2 RAM, a 160GB Seagate hard drive and built-in gigabit Ethernet / WiFi / Bluetooth. Best of all, you'll see more than flashes of EBOX PCB when you step into the read link below -- you'll get a lengthy list of initial impressions too (hint: it's rather impressive). Go on, get!

[Thanks, Charlie]

[adis0 @ May 29th 2008 10:20AM]

You will make a wonderful dedicated Ubuntu desktop.

[KM @ May 29th 2008 10:43AM]

A computer that took all it's clothes off?

[Teetdogs @ May 29th 2008 10:47AM]

After reading the review, I couldn't buy this guy if only it was able to do full 1080p h.264 decoding then it would make a hell of a little htpc box but without the h.264 options i really cant see a good strong market for this machine, the only thing I personally could use this for would be a network monitoring server even then i dont know if it could keep up.

[tom @ May 29th 2008 10:55AM]

Atom's CPU horsepower is worse than E2140 by 75%

see tomshardware's review
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-cpu,1938-2.html

You'd be lucky if it can squeeze out 720p

[Kaiser-Machead @ May 29th 2008 10:58AM]

If just for the power, then you'd be better off buying something for just a bit more. But, all in all, I think that a great deal of consumers just don't need a lot of speed and power, just enough to start up and access files in a reasonable amount of time.

I think the biggest issue is the lack of an optical, which would then require another expensive peripheral, adding on the cost if you want to be able to install disc-based programs into this thing, or perhaps put in a different OS every now and then.

[Bill @ May 29th 2008 6:18PM]

High Definition H.264 content can be decoded in hardware by an onboard GPU. Lots of GPU's are already capable of doing this. That being the case, then an Atom CPU is more than capable of handling 1080p playback as all or most of the video processing would be offloaded to a HD capable GPU.

For example, when I use hardware decoding on H.264 1080p video on my PC, via an ATI HD 2600XT video card, the CPU is only about ~5%. However, if I bypass the GPU, the CPU usages jumps up to ~65%. I have an Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 running at 2.33 GHz for reference.

[Teetdogs @ May 29th 2008 3:29PM]

@ Bill

I take it you didn't bother to read the review, he states this machine isn't capable of handling 1080p H.264 content, also you are comparing your core 2 duo with a lightweight Atom proc, this machine doesn't have much in the way of graphics cards so its all on the proc in this case and if your core 2 duo jumps to 65% the atom shouldn't be capable of doing this.

[barry99705 @ May 29th 2008 10:56AM]

This will make a good web browsing machine. Throw one in the kitchen for looking up recipes, stuff like that. I might throw one in our library to do all the barcode look ups/inventory.

[Jake @ May 29th 2008 11:16AM]

With Atom's low power consumption, will it be able to run fanless?

I want a no-moving-parts machine, which means losing that drive for something solid-state too.

-jp

[tom @ May 29th 2008 11:33AM]

yes - passive cooling indeed (no fan)

Even with c2d, they can set up as fanless too, the heatsink is HUGE, i mean HUUUUUGE

[B @ May 29th 2008 1:08PM]

Considering it's still single core (even if with multithreading) for SSE3 it has 1/3 of E2140 performance. Not bad - dual core Atoms should be much more interesting and with proper software (optimized for many threads plus SSE3) a viable solution. That's for 16W with chipset but of course C2D is superior. It's a pity that C2D ULV version are rather expensive thought.

[chefgon_ign @ May 29th 2008 12:53PM]

Do we have a probable price range for this machine yet? I want one as an unobtrusive, low heat file server to stick in my bedroom (wired to the HDTV as the rarely used monitor), but if it costs more than $250 I just don't see it being worth it.

[sinai @ May 29th 2008 12:58PM]

*yawn

[ark_v2 @ May 29th 2008 1:13PM]

If the pricetag is reasonable, this will be my next media center.

[Teetdogs @ May 29th 2008 3:31PM]

Why would you use this as a media center, it is not capable of 1080 h.264 decoding.

[Michael Scrip @ May 29th 2008 2:12PM]

Why does someone need a PC the size of a Wii?

I'm all for smaller gadgets, but I never understood the tiny desktop computer.

[Manimal529 @ May 29th 2008 3:01PM]

It looks like the wii circuit board

[Juaquin @ May 29th 2008 4:45PM]

Damn, I really wanted a smaller to drive to reduce the cost. I'm just going to install the OS on it and use an external drive for storage, 20GB internal would have been plenty.