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Today we are looking at the latest Edge VS8 Mini PC from Sapphire, the follow up to the Edge HD3 which we reviewed earlier this year. The new Edge VS8 is based around an AMD Quad Core A8 1.6ghz APU with onboard HD7600G graphics. Our review sample ships with a large 500GB hard drive and 4GB of DDR3 memory. Is this an ideal solution to as a diminutive ‘general use' PC when paired up with a High Definition Television set?
When I reviewed the Edge HD3 in February I was pleasantly surprised with the usefulness of the DVD sized system, even though the AMD E450 APU was a little underpowered.
The new Edge VS8 features AMD's latest A8 4555M APU, a more powerful design with enhanced graphics capabilities. The HD7600G graphics core is actually a slightly down clocked version of the GPU in the more expensive AMD A10 series.
Sapphire will be offering a ‘bare bones' unit which means you can add a Solid State Drive, with support for memory configurations up to 16GB.
The only thing you need to watch out for, is that Sapphire don't ship the Edge VS Mini with any operating system installed – so you need to budget that into the overall cost.
Sapphire ship the Edge VS8 in a plain black and red box. The front is devoid of any image, just the company and product name. There is special mention of the VESA mount, for connecting to the back of a television set.
The rear of the box gives a basic overview of the product, including a list of ‘special features' related to the AMD hardware inside.
Inside, the box is split into two separate layers. The literature and software disc rests on top of the main unit, which is protected between cardboard and a foam insert. The Edge VS8 itself is wrapped inside a plastic protective cover.
Sapphire supply an extensive bundle with the Edge VS8 which includes:
1 x HDMI cable
1 x HDMI to DVI adapter
1 x Quick Installation Guide (QIG)
1 x Chassis Stand
1 x Power cord
1 x Power Adapter
1 x Driver CD
1 x Optical SPDIF cable
1 x VESA Mount
The Sapphire Edge VS8 is finished in a matt black surface which unfortunately attracts fingerprints rather easily. I was constantly cleaning the surface during testing.
There are cooling vents on both side of the chassis which expel the hot internal air.
The rear of the machine is home to the majority of the ports. On the front of the Edge VS8, hidden behind a protective port are two USB 3.0 ports, alongside a card reader.
The complete I/O list is as follows:
1 x Mini Display Port
1 x HDMI Port
1 x RJ-45 Gigabit Lan
4 x USB 2.0 Port
1 x Audio-in
1 x Line-out
2 x USB 3.0 Port
1 x Optical SPDIF
1 x SD Card Reader
The supplied stand is easy to fit, simply line up the screw with the underside of the chassis, as shown above and screw firmly into place. We could do this with by hand without a driver, as the screw is substantial.
Above, the unit mounted vertically. The image on the right shows the two front mounted USB 3.0 ports, as we removed the little protective cover. The cover sadly isn't held in place with a rubber catch so it could be easily lost.
The Edge VS8 is slim and certainly won't take up much room, fitting easily behind or beside a television set. The power button is almost hidden into the shape of the upper cooling vent – although the logo can be seen if you look closely.
For the review today we are testing the Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini PC with a variety of synthetic, real world applications and modern games.
For comparison purposes we will test against a wide range of desktop and mobile systems.
It is worth pointing out that the Sapphire Edge VS8 does NOT ship with any operating system installed. You need to budget in the cost of an operating system and a USB drive with Windows installer prepared, or an external USB powered DVD/BluRay drive to install from the DVD disc.
Is this an ideal situation for an inexperienced user? Sadly not.
Ideally Sapphire should ship a more expensive version of this machine with a Windows Operating System and all drivers already installed.
All the software on the optical drive is available to download from the Sapphire website. Drivers are available for 32 bit and 64 bit Windows 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7 and 8. We are using Windows 7 64 bit for our review today.
Above, an overview of the hardware as shown in CPUz and GPUz. At the heart of the Edge VS8 is the AMD A8 4555M APU which runs at 1.6ghz with a turbo boost up to 2.4ghz. It is a quad core Piledriver Trinity chip built on the 32nm process. There is no level 3 cache. The TDP is rated at 18W.
The 4GB of Transcend dual channel DDR3 memory is clocked at 1333mhz @ 9-9-10-24 timings. A full list of HD7660G specifications are listed here.
Comparison processors:
AMD A8 3870K
AMD A8 3850
AMD Zacate E-350
Atom D525 @ 1.8ghz
Turion X64 X2 L510 @ 1.6ghz
Core i7 3610QM
Core i7 2960XM Extreme Edition (Mobile)
Core i7 2630QM
Core i7 2640M processor
Core i7 2360QM
Core i7 2600K
Core i5 2500K
Core i5 2410M
Core i3 2105 desktop processor.
Software:
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
PCMark 7
Cinebench 11.5 64 bit
FRAPS Professional
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra 11
Cyberlink MediaEspresso
HQV Benchmark 2.0
Left4Dead2
F1 2012
Total War: Shogun 2
Sleeping Dogs
Hitman Absolution
Technical Monitoring and Test Equipment:
Asus BluRay Drive
Lacie 730 Monitor (Image Quality testing)
Thermal Diodes
Raytek Laser Temp Gun 3i LSRC/MT4 Mini Temp
Extech digital sound level meter & SkyTronic DSL 2 Digital Sound Level Meter
Calibrated Power Meter
Nikon D3X with R1C1 Kit (4 flashes), Nikon 24-70MM lens.
All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Some game descriptions are edited from Wikipedia.
SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl’s) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.
It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.
Native ports for all major operating systems are available:
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x86)
- Windows XP, 2003/R2, Vista, 7, 2008/R2 (x64)
- Windows 2003/R2, 2008/R2* (IA64)
- Windows Mobile 5.x (ARM CE 5.01)
- Windows Mobile 6.x (ARM CE 5.02)
All major technologies are supported and taken advantage of:
- SMP – Multi-Processor
- MC – Multi-Core
- SMT/HT – Hyper-Threading
- MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSSE3, SSE 4.1, SSE 4.2, AVX, FMA – Multi-Media instructions
- GPGPU, DirectX, OpenGL – Graphics
- NUMA – Non-Uniform Memory Access
- AMD64/EM64T/x64 – 64-bit extensions to x86
- IA64 – Intel* Itanium 64-bit
Slightly disappointing results from the AMD A8 4555M processor in the Edge VS8 Mini PC, especially the memory bandwidth benchmark which is firmly last place in our graph.
PCMark 7 includes 7 PC tests for Windows 7, combining more than 25 individual workloads covering storage, computation, image and video manipulation, web browsing and gaming. Specifically designed to cover the full range of PC hardware from netbooks and tablets to notebooks and desktops, PCMark 7 offers complete PC performance testing for Windows 7 for home and business use.
Performance is quite weak, although the overall score is held back significantly due to the budget, ineffective 2.5 inch 5,400 rpm hard drive.
CINEBENCH R11.5 is a real-world cross platform test suite that evaluates your computer’s performance capabilities. CINEBENCH is based on MAXON’s award-winning animation software CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.
CINEBENCH is the perfect tool to compare CPU and graphics performance across various systems and platforms (Windows and Mac OS X). And best of all: It’s completely free.
A score of 1.31 points indicates that the A8 4555m isn't going to be a great choice for any serious duties. It is a significant improvement mind you on the last generation.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset. A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.
Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.
Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:
- Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
- Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
- Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
- Multicore CPU support
- Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
- Powerful C++ API
- Comprehensive performance profiling system
- Flexible XML-based data structures
We use the following settings: 1280×720 resolution. Anti Aliasing off. Anisotrophy 4, Tessellation normal. Shaders High. Stereo 3D disabled. API: Direct X 11
Even at 720p, the Edge VS8 Mini PC struggles to break into double digits. This is an intensive benchmark test however.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading.
After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.
If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.
The system scores 884 points in the default ‘performance' test, and 1,400 points in the lower ‘Entry' test.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0 x64. We are testing the onboard 500 GB 2.5 inch 5,400 rpm drive.
Sapphire are using a 2.5 inch 5,400 rpm 500GB Western Digital drive with 8MB of cache. This is an entry level unit.
When we reviewed the Edge HD3 earlier this year we commented on the choice of poor, 5,400 rpm 2.5 inch drive and Sapphire have decided to ignore the feedback. Sadly the overall performance of this unit is held back considerably with such a poor drive. It peaks around 95 MB/s write and 81 MB/s read.
In real world terms, the Sapphire Edge VS8 takes around 1 minute to become responsive in Windows 7 after boot and it feels sluggish generally. If they had adopted a 7,200 rpm mechanical drive, this situation wouldn't have been quite as bad.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
ATTO verifies the results found in CrystalDiskMark. The drive peaks around 80-90 MB/s and it feels slow all the time.
Cyberlink PowerDVD 11 is one of the finest solutions for the BluRay experience on Windows and we found this software to work perfectly with this chipset. We tested with the new extended Bluray Disc of Lord Of The Rings.
The onboard GPU acceleration helps reduce the load on the HD4555M. No problems playing back Bluray content.
The Matroska Media container is a very popular, open standard Multimedia container which is usually found as .MKV files. It is a very popular format in enthusiast circles and can be played directly in Windows Media Player with suitable codecs installed. We use the Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP).
We ripped our BluRay disc of Sniper Reloaded to 1080P MKV and use Windows Media Player to playback the file.
MKV playback is demanding, although the system handles the task fine, with plenty of cycles left over for multitasking.
Many people using this system will be enjoying Flash related content so we feel it is important to test with some of the more demanding material available freely online. Full hardware acceleration is enabled.
Good results from the system, demanding an average of only 16 percent APU time.
CyberLink MediaEspresso 6 is the successor to CyberLink MediaShow Espresso 5.5. With its further optimized CPU/GPU-acceleration, MediaEspresso is an even faster way to convert not only your video but also your music and image files between a wide range of popular formats.
Now you can easily playback and display your favourite movies, songs and photos not just on your mobile phone, iPad, PSP, Xbox, or Youtube and Facebook channels but also on the newly launched iPhone 4. Compile, convert and enjoy images and songs on any of your computing devices and enhance your videos with CyberLink’s built-in TrueTheater Technology.
New and Improved Features
- Ultra Fast Media Conversion – With support from the Intel Core i-Series processor family, ATI Stream & NVIDIA CUDA, MediaEspresso’s Batch-Conversion function enables multiple files to be transcoded simultaneously.
- Smart Detect Technology – MediaEspresso 6 automatically detects the type of portable device connected to the PC and selects the best multimedia profile to begin the conversion without the need for user’s intervention.
- Direct Sync to Portable Devices – Video, audio and image files can be transferred in a few easy steps to mobile phones including those from Acer, BlackBerry, HTC, Samsung, LG, Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Palm, as well as Sony Walkman and PSP devices.
- Enhanced Video Quality – CyberLink TrueTheater Denoise and Lighting enables the enhancement of video quality through optical noise filters and automatic brightness adjustment.
- Video, Music and Image File Conversion – Convert not only videos to popular formats such as AVI, MPEG, MKV, H.264/AVC, and FLV at the click of a button, but also images such as JPEG and PNG and music files like WMA, MP3 and M4A.
- Online Sharing – Conversion to video formats used by popular social networking websites and a direct upload feature means posting videos to Facebook and YouTube has never been easier.
For our testing today we are converting a 3.3GB 720p MKV file (2h:12mins) to Apple Mp4 format for playback on a portable device. This is a common procedure for many people and will give a good indication of system power. We are using the newest version which has been optimised for Sandybridge processors.
Hardware acceleration is enabled.
The overall time is far behind the performance leaders, however it is a reasonable time, and significantly faster than the last ‘low end' generation, which take well over an hour to complete the same task. Still, not the ideal machine to be performing intensive video editing with however.
HQV Benchmark 2.0 is an updated version of the original tool and it consists of various video clips and test patterns which are designed to evalute motion correction, de-interlacing, decoding, noise reduction, detail enhancement and film cadence detection.
There are two versions of the program, standard definition on DVD and high definition on Bluray. As our audience will be concentrating on HD content so will we.
This has a total of 39 video tests which is increased from 23 in the original and the scoring is also up from a total of 130 to 210. As hardware and software gets more complicated, the software has been tuned to make sure we can thoroughly maximise our analysis.
Read our initial analysis over here
| Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini PC | |
|
Dial
|
4 |
| Dial with static pattern | 5 |
| Gray Bars | 5 |
| Violin | 5 |
| Stadium 2:2 | 5 |
| Stadium 3:2 | 5 |
| Horizontal Text Scroll | 5 |
| Vertical Text Scroll | 5 |
| Transition to 3:2 Lock | 5 |
| Transition to 2:2 Lock | 0 |
|
2:2:2:4 24 FPS DVCAM Video
|
5 |
|
2:3:3:2 24 FPS DVCam Video
|
5 |
|
3:2:3:2:2 24 FOS Vari-Speed
|
5 |
|
5:5 FPS Animation
|
5 |
|
6:4 12 FPS Animation
|
5 |
|
8:7 8 FPS Animation
|
5 |
|
Interlace Chroma Problem (ICP)
|
5 |
|
Chroma Upsampling Error (CUE)
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Sailboat
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Flower
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Sunrise
|
5 |
|
Random Noise: Harbour Night
|
5 |
|
Scrolling Text
|
5 |
|
Roller Coaster
|
5 |
|
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
|
Bridge Traffic
|
5 |
|
Text Pattern/ Scrolling Text
|
5 |
|
Roller Coaster
|
5 |
|
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
|
Bridge Traffic
|
5 |
|
Luminance Frequency Bands
|
5 |
|
Chrominance Frequency Bands
|
5 |
| Vanishing Text | 5 |
|
Resolution Enhancement
|
15 |
|
Theme Park
|
5 |
| Driftwood | 5 |
|
Ferris Wheel
|
5 |
|
Skin Tones
|
7 |
| Total | 196 |
We were pleasantly surprised to see a score of 196 points, which is a match for the leading discrete AMD solutions on the market today. This figure translates to class leading HD image quality.
Left 4 Dead 2 is a cooperative first-person shooter video game. It is the sequel to Valve Corporation’s award-winning Left 4 Dead. The game launched on November 17, 2009, for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 in the United States and November 20 in Europe; in 2010, Left 4 Dead 2 was made available to the Steam client for Mac OS X. It builds upon the cooperatively-focused gameplay of the original and uses Valve’s proprietary Source engine, the same game engine used in Left 4 Dead. The game made its world premiere at E3 2009 with a trailer during the Microsoft press event.
We selected 720p and configured the engine to run with a mixture of low, medium and high settings.
The Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini PC is able to power the Source engine at 720p, maintaining smooth frame rates throughout.
Shogun 2 is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, in the aftermath of the Ōnin War. The country is fractured into rival clans led by local warlords, each fighting for control. The player takes on the role of one of these warlords, with the goal of dominating other factions and claiming his rule over Japan. The standard edition of the game will feature a total of eight factions (plus a ninth faction for the tutorial), each with a unique starting position and different political and military strengths.
We test with the built in STEAM ‘Benchmark DX11 Graphics Balanced 720p' setting.
This engine proves very demanding and the A8 4555M struggles to maintain smooth frame rates, even at balanced 720p settings.
F1 2012 is a video game developed by Codemasters. It is based on the 2012 Formula One season, and is the sequel to F1 2010 and F1 2011. It is the fourth Formula One game developed by the Codemasters studios after the company renewed its licence to develop the official games of the series.
The game features all twelve teams and twenty-four drivers competing in the 2012 season, as well as the twenty circuits — including the brand new Circuit of the Americas in Austin, Texas — included in the championship.
We configure the engine to run at 720p with the ‘low quality' preset. We run the built in benchmark for this test.
The Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini PC has a problem maintaining smooth frame rates at 720p with low settings, averaging 21 frames per second.
Hitman: Absolution is an action-adventure stealth game developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix. It is the fifth entry in the Hitman game series, and runs on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier 2 game engine.
We selected a 720p resolution and the ‘lowest' quality settings preset.
The system can't really power this game, even at 720p with low image quality settings. We tested ‘real world' as well, however the experience was rather juddery throughout.
Sleeping Dogs is a 2012 open world action-adventure video game developed by United Front Games in conjunction with Square Enix London Studios and published by Square Enix, released on August 14, 2012, for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360. Sleeping Dogs takes place in Hong Kong and focuses on an undercover operation to infiltrate the Triads.
We selected the lowest possible image quality settings at 720p.
We tested both with the built in benchmark and under real world situations. The game is almost playable at these settings, if you are willing to accept some drops in performance at specific in game locations.
We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the chassis and 4 foot from the ground with our Extech digital sound level meter to mirror a real world situation.
KitGuru noise guide
10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet take off/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum
The Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini PC is extremely quiet, basically silent most of the time, until pushed hard with synthetic tests. When the fans are at full speed the system is audible, but still quiet. These are excellent results, especially if you want to use the system in a bedroom environment and leave it powered on 24/7.
To test power consumption today we are using a calibrated energy meter. We loaded the system with Cinebench and 3DMark11 and measured results at idle and load.
The Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini sips power, delivering exceptionally efficient power consumption results.
The Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini PC is an attractively designed Mini PC which will fit comfortably into a bedroom or living room environment. The diminutive physical dimensions will ensure it won't offend other family members either.
First impressions are positive – the bundle is excellent. Sapphire include a quality HDMI cable, VESA mount, Optical SPDIF cable, HDMI to DVI converter and all the necessary drivers for installation.
Build quality of the Edge VS8 is fantastic, it feels sturdy and will be able to deal with rough handling and less than ideal operating conditions. My only negative comment would be that the finish does attract fingerprints rather easily, although they are straightforward to remove with a cleaning cloth.
Sadly, for inexperienced users, the Edge VS8 may prove too much to handle. The lack of supplied operating system and optical drive will alienate the ‘PC World' style end user who has little knowledge or interest in setting up his or her system.
Extra cost should therefore be factored in for the Windows Operating system and a USB powered optical drive. Advanced users will be able to install their operating system directly from a USB flash drive.
AMD's A8 4555M APU is certainly no powerhouse, but it is a decent step up from their last generation ‘all in one' chips. It is more than capable of handling general office duties, surfing, daily internet browsing and even light Photoshop work. It is also an excellent choice for high definition media playback as the image quality is at the same level as AMD's more expensive discrete solutions. Hardware acceleration also ensures ultra smooth playback of Bluray and H264 contained video.
More serious duties such as 3D rendering and video editing may prove a little much, especially when paired up with the slow 2.5 inch, 5,400 rpm mechanical hard drive.
While the Sapphire Edge VS8 has limited gaming capabilities with the latest Direct X 11 titles, it has enough power under the hood to drive older titles such as Left4Dead2 at HD resolutions with good image quality settings. Our testing today has shown that it will be able to handle Direct X 9 and some Direct X 10 titles at 720p.
When I reviewed the Edge HD3 Mini PC in February this year, I commented on the poor choice of mechanical hard drive and unfortunately Sapphire have decided to adopt a similarly low end 5,400 rpm drive which struggles to handle even the most basic tasks.
This has a noticeable negative impact on overall system performance and may cause many people to blame the AMD A8 4555M. Waiting almost a minute for Windows 7 to boot into a responsive manner is not something I am happy to accept in 2012, even with a budget unit.
I can appreciate the need to meet specific price points and Sapphire have informed us that they will be selling a ‘bare bones' version of the Edge VS unit, to allow the enthusiast user to fit their own memory and SSD drive. While this resolves one concern, it still doesn't address the ‘mainstream' audience who will want the machine shipped with Windows operating system and drivers already installed.
Even if Sapphire had to charge £500 for this ‘complete OS' unit with SSD, I think it would be a worthy addition to the range. The lack of optical drive and operating system disc will surely alienate the average punter who won't have the necessary background skills to get the machine up and running.
Due to time constraints and the need to circulate our Edge VS8 sample to other press, we didn't get time to take the unit apart and replace the 5,400 rpm drive with a Solid State drive for further testing, however we are confident that this would address the majority of our concerns.
The Edge VS8 Mini PC's biggest strengths are the low heat dissipation, tiny power drain and almost silent operation. Under most situations it is completely inaudible and will only be taking around 30-35 watts at the socket. This will barely have any impact on an electricity bill, even if left on 24/7. This is something we can't ignore in this tough economic climate.
In closing, I have been impressed with the Sapphire Edge VS8 Mini PC, although I have some concerns which I feel Sapphire should address.
The lack of pre-installed operating system (and optical drive to install from) will cause problems for a wide audience. I know many people who would expect this system to boot to a Windows environment first time, without the need for additional purchases and manual OS/driver installation.
The choice of entry level 5,400 rpm mechanical drive seems somewhat of an oversight, and I am sure that people would be willing to pay a little extra for a smaller, but significantly faster Solid State unit. I did say this when I reviewed Sapphire's Edge HD3 system in February and it is a little disappointing 10 months later to be reiterating the same point.
We don't have confirmed pricing for this unit, but we have been told that it should be around the £300 inc vat point. I would advise our readers to get the ‘bare bones' unit however, as a solid state drive could be fitted.
Pros:
- extremely tiny.
- almost silent.
- very low power drain.
- runs quite cool.
- capable of handling a lot of everyday tasks.
Cons:
- no operating system.
- no optical disc support without extra cost (USB DVD drive).
- poor choice of slow 5,400 rpm 2.5 inch drive. Why no 7,200 rpm unit?
- a complex install for the ‘average punter'.
Kitguru says: We recommend you buy the ‘bare bones' unit and fit your own memory and Solid State Drive.
