Advent Eco PC gets photographed, tested

After the latest green PC (that'd be the Advent Eco PC, pictured above) launched in late September, we don't suspect too many Britons rushed out to get one. Why? 'Cause the £600 ($880) list price has already sunk to around £440 ($646). If that figure is a little more in your budget, you might want to give the read link a look. The critics over at Techcast Network found the design to be fairly attractive, the keyboard to be a touch cramped (and unnecessarily wireless) and the performance to be "nothing to write home about." Comically enough, they also point out that an Atom CPU would've probably increased the "greenness," and quite frankly, this machine lacks the raw horsepower necessary to adequately handle Windows Vista. But hey, there's lots of pretty pictures to glance at below even if you've no interest in bringing one home.

[Android Overlord Posted Dec 7th 2008 6:01AM]

Buy a cheap notebook with a core 2 duo and I think you've got a better deal and probably better specs.

[Android Overlord Posted Dec 7th 2008 6:05AM]

They would use similar sort of power. May be the laptop would use a bit more.

[frauhottelmann Posted Dec 7th 2008 6:19AM]

Yeah, but every netbook probably needs less than this...

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 6:24AM]

NICE

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 6:35AM]

meh, i can make an AMD Phenom quad core pc smaller than this with 4Gb RAM and 500Gb HDD for the same price...

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 6:39AM]

Forgot to mention, also uses under half the power of an ordinary ATX pc

[MarbleMind Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:25AM]

@Oli D

Piss off. Engadget is not an advertising pillar.

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:27AM]

@marblemind

Chill out, i'm proving a point not trying to sell.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 8:19AM]

What, so the thing converted and now calls everything nice???

[Professor Kaos Posted Dec 7th 2008 11:57AM]

The act of low ranking a simple comment like "nice" will never cease to bewilder me. Maybe some visit this "intelligent" board of readers just to low rank people haha. And I know people will low rank me because of this, but that just proves my point even more. Low rank on' pre-pubescent teenagers!

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 3:14PM]

Hmm.. I think ProfessorKaos = Fusion Fuzo 05 - Mr Professional..

But anyway - maybe people low rank him (or.. you) when they disagree with him (eh.. you), because it's not "NICE".

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 6:46AM]

It'll also over-heat three times as fast with that Phenom inside of it. lol

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:26AM]

i had that coming didnt i?

Twin zalman fans tend to suffice though.

[Professor Kaos Posted Dec 7th 2008 11:59AM]

With a proper non-stock cooler and arctic silver 5you shouldn't ever overheat your processor...the TDP of AMD jokes are extremely old my friend.

[mingistech Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:35AM]

Hmm... I noticed that monitor is running Leopard Server behind the PeeCee. ;)

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:35AM]

Be that as it may, it's hard to believe such a small form tower could house any fan (much less two) that could actually provide sufficient cooling for a Phenom. Plus at their price point i can't imagine it'd have a decent power supply that's at least 500 watts.

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 8:21AM]

The CPU fan is slimline granted, but i made sure i didn't economize on it.
The case fan is 120mm.

I used the 2.2Ghz Phenom, so it doesn't actually generate as much heat as expected, runs safely under the maximum operating temperature.

The PSU is 120w, but thats all it needs, start cranking up the power supply and you begin losing the point of a low draw but high performance pc.

Its more of a point prover than a viable product but the same setup runs nicely with an Athlonx2.

[Aaronage Posted Dec 7th 2008 11:35AM]

@Oli D

Checked your website, many typo's you may want to sort out :)

But nice systems!

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 1:26PM]

Yeah i keep meaning to change that... the whole thing is a shambles

Cheers though

[chen Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:36AM]

Another boring PC, dubbed "eco", pretty stupid idea.

[Sheppard Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:46AM]

Yeah because saving money on your power bill by using a PC that has more than enough power for web browsing, watching HD movies, playing music, photo editing instead of using a massive Quad Core PCI with a power sucking GPU is a stupid idea.

Asshat.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 7:57AM]

id reather take that macbook and cinema display in the background.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 8:21AM]

Its actually a half decent pc and will meet most normal pc users requirements quite happily, still a bit pricey - I got a Quad Core HP, 4gb ram, 500gb sata and a hole in the ozone layer above my house all for just £400

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 8:40AM]

Surely the best application for this PC is as a media centre. Slip a nova-t-500 usb in the back and it could quite happily sit in the background with little noise and very little energy consumption.

Even better would be for DSG/PC World to use a brain cell or two and slip in a blu-ray slot loading drive and a motherboard capable of running hi-def. That might be worth paying a bit extra for...

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 8:50AM]

Wow, no one has asked the question yet :)

Let's keep it that way.

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 9:01AM]

aaah, but does it run lemmings?

[bebop Posted Dec 7th 2008 9:26AM]

It all depends on what premium you personally put on small, silent computing. For a fanless desktop this is actually on the cheap side.

[webterractive Posted Dec 7th 2008 10:31AM]

Funny that Techcast laughed at it but they have recommended it so I can't be all bad.

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 10:49AM]

With Mac OS X on the background, cool :-)

[Professor Kaos Posted Dec 7th 2008 12:00PM]

Could be, but also could be linux with a high res gnome bar at the to ;D

[Jake Smith Posted Dec 7th 2008 1:40PM]

OS X Server to be specific

[Professor Kaos Posted Dec 7th 2008 11:55AM]

My only little mini-monolith :))))

[Modred189 Posted Dec 7th 2008 12:21PM]

How does this not have enough horsepower to run Vista well?
"...quite frankly, this machine lacks the raw horsepower necessary to adequately handle Windows Vista."

That makes no sense. A midrange Core2Duo cpu (even a laptop one) and 2gb of ram is more than enough...

[Oli D Posted Dec 7th 2008 1:41PM]

There's no Apple badge therefore it cannot run vista

[Modred189 Posted Dec 7th 2008 3:28PM]

... or any other decent software?? ;-)

[ChrisMav Posted Dec 7th 2008 4:53PM]

Us brits paying more than the yanks again, terrible

[(Unverified) Posted Dec 7th 2008 10:55PM]

Looks not so good