Attention Fanless Fanatics - I have your next small form factor PC.
The Asrock Beebox - Would you believe this thing has dual channel DDR3, msata, mini-pcie, and a 2.5" sata6 bay in this tiny package?
In the box you've got the Beebox itself -- available in 3 different colors: gold black and white. Also included is a 75/100 mm vesa mount, all appropriate screws for the mounting hardware, an IR remote, a manual and a mounting kit to mount a 2.5" drive inside the Beebox. Do note that the 2.5" drive requires a special cable, and the special cable is included in the box. I would suggest you DON'T LOSE IT by putting it inside the Beebox whether or not you plan to use a 2.5" drive.
At the back, it has a Realtek gigabit ethernet adapter, two HDMI ports, one displayport, 2 USB3, power socket and Kensington lock port. The power brick is a mere 35 watts. At the front is a standard USB3 port and then a USB 3 type C connector that supports fast charging for phones, tablets and other USB peripherals. There's also a headphone jack. Interestingly, the Cherry Trail platform can drive all three displays simultaneously (we tested 3x 1920x1080p).
To get under the hood, one has to remove only 4 standard phillips screws the hood here. 4 Phillips screws secure the bottom. The bottom cover doubles as the mount for the 2.5" drive. The big feature on the inside is that we've got two dimm slots instead of one. As we'll see in the testing, the higher performance of Dual Channel DDR really seems to help this platform shine.
The wireless connectivity is pretty good with the Bluetooth 4.0 and the 802.11a/b/g/n/ac. The bluetooth stack does not work on the UEFI screen if you've previously paired a bluetooth mouse and keyboard in windows, which may be curable by ASRock with the right UEFI extension, if the Bluetooth codec here supports pairing in hardware. This has always been a problem with built-in Bluetooth on PCs, so this is not really a surprise or a big deal.
For testing, we installed a Samsung SSHD in order to test compatibility. These drives put out a lot of heat and draw a lot of power. This is the drive we installed Ubuntu 15.04 on, and I'm happy to report the install was trouble-free. The Realtek ALC283 audio, network, bluetooth and wireless AC "just worked."
I didn't test the infrared but I would be surprised if that doesn't work.
This is sold in a number of different configurations -- you can get a barebones kit or a fully ready-to-go unit with a Windows License. I think I'd recommend the barebones version if you're comfortable installing ram, msata and the like, unless you need a discounted OEM windows license.
The other big feature of this Cherrytrail platform is that it is totally fanless. If you want a noiseless PC, this is perfect.
On Windows, you can run remote desktop, use it as a regular PC, use it as a thin client and it can handle light duty business and productivity applications. It works great. It can handle up to 16 gigabytes of ram with two 8gb sticks of ram, so you have a lot of room to move around.
I was skeptical at first because other fanless platforms I've evaluated in the past would tend to overheat or throttle to the point of being unusable with a large workload. I loaded up several apps and tried to kill the Beebox. Not only would it not die, it stayed in turbo mode the whole time! Out of the box the clock speed is a mere 1.04 GHz, but it can turbo up to a little more than 2ghz. Being fanless, I was sure that it could only maintain 2ghz until it warmed up. However, that wasn't the case. It was able to sustain my abuse and so I think the platform would be suitable for every day use. I also think that, because of this, using multimedia intensive applications like Plex Media, Kodi Media Center (on Kodibuntu) or something like that would work great here.
The included remote is a really nice touch. If your HTPC is going to do double duty, Windows is fine for that and you can even use Plex on Windows. I had some trouble with the remote waking the Beebox from sleep, but that seemed to be down to a driver issue and I am sure that will be fixed shortly.
If you are wondering about HDMI CEC -- that's the standard that lets your TV remote control your HDMI perhiperhals directly -- it is still not supported owing to Intel's lack of support for HDMI CEC. This is surprising and disappointing. If the raspberry pi, for example, can do it then I see no reason for a behemoth like Intel to ignore the standard.
I never understood the cost proposition of the original NUC, sporting i3/i3/i5 processors and i3/i5/i7 pricing. The dual core turbo-boosting Cherrytrail N3000 in this unit is delightfully snappy and the dual channel DDR means that memory intensive operations, like 4k video playback, are pretty smooth.
CONS: I would have liked to see more USB3 ports, but if you use a bluetooth mouse and keyboard, or a USB hub, that will not be much of an issue. The USB 3.1 type C front port is great for fast charging phones, tablets, etc. You can drive 4k monitors with this platform, but only at 30hz. While I'm wishing for a driver update to fix that, I don't anticipate it will happen.
Despite that, this has been the best ultra small form factor fanless platform that I've ever tested. There is some cool software for the Raspberry Pi called Screenly that turns the Pi + a TV into digital signage. I want to see something like that ported to this platform -- it would be easy to modify that software and make it drive up to three sign displays, which the Beebox supports.
Plex media client on linux, or windows, is also a good choice. You can also run l inux and even use a USB HDMI or Component capture device, such as this one from Hauppauge to capture and store high def video fanlessly. I can't believe the fanlessness didn't lead to any lockups or overheating in spite of my somewhat informal torture testing.
OVERALL:
This is a great and inexpensive desktop computer for the bedroom, the living room or anywhere you need a computer. For business applications, this platform would be great for data entry and day-to-day lightweight productivity applications. It also opens up a universe of computer-powered appliances such as digital signage, kiosk computers and other business considerations. The low cost, microscopic form-factor and relatively powerful platform are a winning combination; The fanless aspect is just one more bonus feature.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://teksyndicate.com/videos/asrock-beebox-tiny-16gb-cherry-trail-desktop-pc