Last year, CompuLabs and the developers behind the Linux Mint operating system put together a small form factor PC called the MintBox. It seems that the project was successful enough to warrant a updated offering, because specifications were recently posted online for the MintBox 2. The MintBox 2 is a router sized, passively cooled PC that will be available later this year for $600.
The new MintBox 2 reportedly offers up to four-times the performance of the original MintBox Pro. Internal specifications will include an Intel Core i5 3337U processor clocked at 1.8GHz base (2.7GHz max turbo), 4GB of RAM (8GB max), a 500GB mechanical hard drive, and a NIC with two Gigabit Ethernet ports. The fan-less system is tiny, at 7.5" x 6.3 " x 1.57" (19 x 16 x 4cm). It will be available on Amazon for $599.
Where the original MintBox Basic and MintBox Pro scored 1,077 and 1,615 in the Geekbench benchmark, the upcoming MintBox 2 scored 7,541. In addition to the extra performance, CompuLabs is also extending the warranty period from 1 year on the original MintBox PCs to 5 years for the MintBox 2.
The MintBox 2 will come pre-installed with the latest Linux Mint 15 "Olivia" operating system.
A small Linux Mint logo is surrounded by four USB 2.0 ports on the front of the device. Exact rear IO specificaitons has not yet been released, but if last year's model is any indication, users can expect more USB 2.0 ports, a couple of USB 3.0 ports, eSATA, digital display outputs, and an eSATA port.
More information can be found on the Linux Mint blog.
“3rd gen Intel Core i5 3337
“3rd gen Intel Core i5 3337 Ivy Bridge 1.8 GHz”
That is a spec quote from Clem, the Mint project lead.
It could have been cheaper…
It could have been cheaper… Using Intel’s overpriced CPU.
A6-5200 would been a better option.
Yes, could have been much
Yes, could have been much Cheaper, isn’t the goal here to move away from the overpriced WINTEL OS/hardware and towards an open source reasonably priced solution! Hopefully in the future they will use PCIe OCuLink with
what the PCI-SIG group says will support external cable connections:
“The group said that both copper and optical cables are in development, and all cables will support 8 GT/s, providing up to 32 Gb/s in each direction within a four lane configuration. PCIe OCuLink is currently at revision 0.7, and product adoption is targeted for the first half of 2014.” see link below for Full Tom’s article.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/M-PCIe-M.2-PCIe-3.1-PCIe-4.0-OCuLink,23259.html
No the point is not to move
No the point is not to move away from Intel, the goal was to create the best computer for the money that they could. The two previous MintBox PCs were AMD based, and one of them is significantly cheeper if you don’t want to by a system with Intel. That they can offer a PC with almost 4x CPU proformance while only slightly increasing cost and dropping margins is somewhat surprising.
Using an AMD cpu or an i3 and
Using an AMD cpu or an i3 and knock a bit off the price. Then bring out a version that acts as a home server that will allow the usual home hodge podge of windows machines, android tablets and apple stuff to all log in and I think they will have a winning product for people like me.
I know I could do all of this myself using Linux, but have not the time, if no easy Linux product I will instal windows server on an Intel NUC and achieve the same result
As others have said, need
As others have said, need something cheaper. An i3 or AMD APU and $300 would make me bite.