Foxconn AMD Fusion NT-A3500 Nettop Review

1. Introduction2. Foxconn AMD Fusion NT-A3500 Nettop3. Testing Methodology and Bios4. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra5. Synthetic: PCMark Vantage6. Synthetic: PCMark 77. Synthetic: Aida 648. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit9. Real World: BluRay Playback with Cyberlink PowerDVD10. Real World: Flash HD Performance11. Real World: File Copying with Kingston HyperX Max 3.012. Real World: Media Encoding with Cyberlink Media Espresso13. Image Quality: HQV Benchmark 2.014. Gaming: Left4Dead 2 720p15. Gaming: Resident Evil 516. Technical: Acoustics Performance17. Technical: Thermal Dynamics18. Technical: Power Consumption19. Closing Thoughts20. View All Pages

The Foxconn A3500 Nettop we received for review was a ‘bare bones' unit. This means it isn't supplied with a hard drive, memory or operating system. It is therefore up to the user to get the extra parts and to install their own operating system.

The bundle we received included a power adapter and cable, Software and driver disc. There was also a stand for the product, and some cable converters and magnetic ‘anti slip' feet.

The unit is protected inside bubble wrap.

Foxconn also supply a mounting bracket which is used to attach the product to the back of a screen.

Above left you can see the A3500 with the mounting bracket attached. The front panel offers a headphone and microphone jack, a media card slot, two high speed USB 3.0 ports and a reset and power button. There is also a small speaker included.

Above left, the mounting bracket attached, from the underside. The rear panel offers Wireless connectivity, 4 USB 2.0 ports, DVI and HDMI out, and a gigabit lan connector for networking demands. There is an audio out port at the right, next to the power connector.

With such a small chassis design, air flow is critical and both side panels are vented to ensure adequate cooling capabilities.

The finish is really very attractive, the piano black helps give the appearance of an expensive product. Sadly, it is also a fingerprint magnet and we had to clean the chassis everytime we touched it.

No, this is not a Photoshop edit. To give an indication of just how reflective and shiny the surface is, we forced our SLR to focus on the reflected surface (above).

If you don't want to mount the A3500 behind a screen, or vertically with the supplied stand, there are magnetic feet which attach to the underside. This prevents any slipping on smooth surfaces.

As we mentioned earlier, this is a barebones system, so we had to add a 2.5 inch hard drive and some memory to get the system fully operational. We used a 320GB Western Digital Scorpio (7,200rpm) hard drive and 2GB (SO-DIMM) 1333mhz DDR3.

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