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AMD Windows Hardware Linux

Tiny Fanless Mini-PC Runs Linux Or Windows On Quad-core AMD SoC 180

Posted by samzenpus from the getting-small dept.
DeviceGuru writes CompuLab has unveiled a tiny 'Fitlet' mini-PC that runs Linux or Windows on a dual- or quad-core 64-bit AMD x86 SoC (with integrated Radeon R3 or R2 GPU), clocked at up to 1.6GHz, and offering extensive I/O, along with modular internal expansion options. The rugged, reconfigurable 4.25 x 3.25 x 0.95 in. system will also form the basis of a pre-configured 'MintBox Mini' model, available in Q2 in partnership with the Linux Mint project. To put things in perspective, CompuLab says the Fitlet is three times smaller than the Celeron Intel NUC.
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Tiny Fanless Mini-PC Runs Linux Or Windows On Quad-core AMD SoC More

Tiny Fanless Mini-PC Runs Linux Or Windows On Quad-core AMD SoC

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  • These guys are claiming barebones PCs will start at $129. I find this a relief in comparison to the companies that keep offering barebones rigs like these starting at $400 or more.
    • My youngests computer died, and I ended up replacing it with a Biostar A68N-5000. It was $70 shipped. It is fanless and draws very little power. I imagine this is just a further iteration of the technology.

      • My youngests computer died, and I ended up replacing it with a Biostar A68N-5000. It was $70 shipped. It is fanless and draws very little power. I imagine this is just a further iteration of the technology.

        That is only a motherboard, though. You still need a case - and the mini ITX cases generally come without power supplies. You could likely get this with case and power supply for under $200 but not by a lot. A nice recommendation either way, though.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by cdrudge ( 68377 )

          You still need a case - and the mini ITX cases generally come without power supplies. You could likely get this with case and power supply for under $200 but not by a lot.

          A M350 mini-ITX case runs $37 on Amazon. Presuming the power supply isn't some stupid proprietary design, $5-10 for a power supply. I did exactly this for a Intel miniITX HTPC that used a laptop charger as the power supply.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Hadlock ( 143607 )

      You can get an ASUS X205 with Windows 8.1 preinstalled for about $200 shipped if you shop around, $179 if you're willing to walk in to a Microsoft Store.
       
      That said it's not three times smaller, it's three times less volume. It's only 2cm on a side smaller, not much bigger than a Raspberry Pi B+, which let's be honest, isn't game-changing at this point. 2012 was a long time ago.

      • Re:Perhaps at last an affordable mini PC? (Score:5, Funny)

        by PPH ( 736903 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @05:00PM (#48814535)

        with Windows 8.1 preinstalled

        And since nobody likes Windows 8.x, its pretty much a fanless PC as well.

      • You can get an ASUS X205 with Windows 8.1 preinstalled for about $200 shipped

        When I search for "Asus X205" i find only laptops. We're not really in the same class, here; there are times when a small form factor desktop is distinctly advantageous for the application.

        That said it's not three times smaller, it's three times less volume.

        Yeah, but the former is catchier for advertising than the latter. :)

        not much bigger than a Raspberry Pi B+, which let's be honest, isn't game-changing at this point

        Have you seen a PC in the past 5 years that would honestly count as "game-changing"? Neither have I. Everything is an iterative step now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

          Have you seen a PC in the past 5 years that would honestly count as "game-changing"? Neither have I. Everything is an iterative step now.

          Really. I've been looking for something like this since for projects 2009. The nVidia ION nano-ITX reference platform looked perfect, but NOBODY ever made it for sale:
          http://hothardware.com/reviews... [hothardware.com]

          I did evaluate a Fit-PC2 , but it was too badly hobbled by the binary blob video driver. Plus, we had some severe issues with SATA that made it almost unusable with an SSD.

          I'm glad CompuLab is trying an AMD version of this form factor. My only worry is with the AMD/ATi video, but it's been a long time sinc

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by dfsmith ( 960400 )

            I got an nVidia ION-based Asus Aspire Revo PC a few years back. It worked fairly well, gets nice and warm, and is still in service as my Kodi box, NAS/backup server (eSATA+GbE with RAID) and secondary DNS/DHCP. It does leave out the PCI slots from the reference platform though.

            I'm currently evaluating a $150 (from Fry's) Asus VivoPC as my next primary server. Dual core, hidden micro-PCIe, SATA and USB3. So far, so good.

          • My only worry is with the AMD/ATi video, but it's been a long time since I had been burned by the ATi 7500 All-in-Wonder...

            That stopped being a worry a few years back. I've been running Radeon graphcs exclusively and continuously now for years. I switched from fglrx to exclusively Xorg drivers a few years back, at first with some noticeable loss of functionality and performance, but now... no worries, it is way past good enough. BTW, that is not just normal desktop loads but a lot of serious OpenGL hacking. For a coulple of years I put up with jaggies... no antialiasing support (though I hacked some myself with buffer accumulat

      • I checked on that X205 laptop and it is sadly a model with everything soldered down (like a mac book pro) with not even wired ethernet, and limited storage (a fifth of what old Windows netbooks have, and these could be upgraded to bigger).
        It is a tablet with permanently attached keyboard more than a traditional PC. In this the new tiny PC is more PC-like, as the memory is upgradeable and storage is too by the way of the mSATA slot (the next generation will probably have M.2 PCIe), external bandwith is USB 3

      • I don't know of any Linux distribution that comes close to running well on the X205, or at all without doing a lot of unusual installation and configuration steps. I hope one will soon.

      • Re:Perhaps at last an affordable mini PC? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @08:57PM (#48816103)

        That said it's not three times smaller, it's three times less volume. It's only 2cm on a side smaller, not much bigger than a Raspberry Pi B+, which let's be honest, isn't game-changing at this point. 2012 was a long time ago.

        "Times smaller" is an excruciatingly ambiguous phrase anyway. It is very much open to interpretation, even if you presume they mean volume.

        • Agree. Why can't they say "a third the volume?"

          Slack thinking like "three times smaller" probably accounts for many bugs in software. Precision is important.

    • Re:Perhaps at last an affordable mini PC? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @05:11PM (#48814595)

      If you buy the top of the line model for around 2k you get about 6 years out of it, so that is $300 per year. If you buy a starting PC for $400 you will get about 2 years out of it $200 per year.

      Now if these barbone PCs will be able to operate modern OS and websites without being unbearable for over a year we are still making out.

      • Do low powered PCs wear out quicker, or are you talking out of your ass again?

      • Load it with 8GB RAM and an SSD, and it's already better than my desktop except for the CPU performance.
        OS requirements stay the same or decrease slowly over time (e.g. Windows gets better, linux graphics drivers get better).
        Browsers get better with time : Firefox is better than a year ago, then it will get Electrolysis, then it will get the rewrite in the Rust language (this may takes years, but in the end you'll get the four CPU cores used instead of one and a half)

        The Web will still be full and even more

      • If you buy a starting PC for $400 you will get about 2 years out of it $200 per year.

        Where do you get this number? I've had my current PC for more than 2 years, and it cost ~$250 new. My previous PC lasted 6 years and cost ~$350 back around 2006 when PCs cost more.

        Mini-PCs are a different animal though. People are buying them for the form factor and the lack of fan noise, not purely for price.

      • If you buy the top of the line model for around 2k you get about 6 years out of it, so that is $300 per year. If you buy a starting PC for $400 you will get about 2 years out of it $200 per year.

        Ridiculous. For one thing, who would bother with a $2000 desktop, except for a gamer with money to burn?

        • I believe that was his point. Nobody besides a fanatic or clueless rich guy buys a high end PC these days, as witness the market statistics. Even highly paid engineers are now making do with years old gear that was never top of the line in the first place. So it goes.

          • Well not $2k but ~$1300 is what I spent on my current desktop at home. Then again I was building a machine to support my hobby of doing amateur cartography and needed a machine that had at least 24GB ram to do what I was trying to do. That was about 2.5 years ago and since I put a priority on reliability and quality instead of cost it should last for close to a decade. The one splurge was going from a middle of the pack i5 to a top of the line i7 since MicroCenter had the i7 on sale for only $25 more than t

        • For one thing, who would bother with a $2000 desktop, except for a gamer with money to burn?

          There are some professionals who think nothing of spending $5,000 to $10,000 for a high end PC workstation, let alone $2000. Hell, the software alone can cost many times that much, so why would they balk at buying the best hardware money can buy? Digital audio workstations are a good example of this sort of high-end niche industry.

    • Will I begin contemplating idiotic reasons why I need one of these in my car? Yes, yes I will. I don't know why in the age of laptops, tablets and GPS enabled smartphones, there is still some nerd sex appeal to the possibilities of trunk mounted PC. What possibilities at my command, what freedom from the confines of the factory "infotainment" system.

      • ...there is still some nerd sex appeal to the possibilities of trunk mounted PC. What possibilities at my command, what freedom from the confines of the factory "infotainment" system.

        What a great way to broadcast the guy who breaks your side window to the internet (be sure to take a photo for insurance).

    • Re:Perhaps at last an affordable mini PC? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Tough Love ( 215404 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @08:37PM (#48815985)

      Their previous offerings have been in the $300 range, I have two of them from a few years back. Beautiful, understated and rugged engineering. Due to the technology of the day, somewhat underpowered but they still manage debian with KDE, short of smooth video playback or 3D animation. With wifi and a hard disk they run a bit hot at 11 watts, but with 100 MHz ethernet and a SSD they drop down to less than 4 watts.

      I certainly do not begrudge them their relatively high price point in the past, it allowed their boutique business to survive until technology caught up with them. Now, with the kickass AMD graphics, improved mips/watt, more memory and half the price, they land firmly in the buy it and try it zone. Remember Shuttle? We all hoped they would keep pushing the envelope of light and tight, but they lost the plot and devolved to just another mediocre box maker.

      This new generation of Fit PCs should now be just about perfect for video playing, and even work decently for legacy 3D games, but don't even think about the latest Far Cry. Or the latest Windows for that matter, if you want it to be not a toy then it better be running Linux, you have been warned.

      These little boxes are just about as perfect as you can get for a home server. Completely silent, can be exanded to as much usb storage as you want, the right network connectivity, enough memory. The tiny power envelope means "always on" is a no brainer. Also decent for a non-professional browsing/emailing box capable of running drawing programs but not engineering CAD. Gimp but not Photoshop (unless you are truly patient...) Blender but not Maya.

      I really appreciate the return to the straight box form factor. Their previous couple of generations are curvy and cute, but what practical sense does that make? I will take squat and homely, but stacks nicely, any day. That is beautiful to me. Much like the way I like my stero amplifier.

      So long as Android fails to gain the UI functionality you actually need for productivity apps, these tiny PCs have a niche to grow in, and needless to say, these are fully functional with completely "libre" software with all the benefits that entails, not at all the case with Android.

      No, they didn't pay me to write this post or send me a free machine. I just really like the way they engineer their boxes, their general attitude, and their stick-with-it-ness, and needless to say, their first class Linux support.

  • Frequency (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @04:55PM (#48814493)

    clocked at up to 1.6GHz

    Actually we might as well stop mentioning the CPU clock speed of devices already. :) They all hover around 2GHz and still vary wildly in performance. At this point the clock speed is essentially just a trivial configuration parameter of the chip.

  • Network appliance (Score:3, Interesting)

    by phorm ( 591458 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @04:56PM (#48814497) Journal

    Depending on how well the ethernet interface performs, this looks like it would make a decent little network appliance (PFsense, etc). Of course with the R2 graphics, it's probably good for more than that, but since Via seemed to slow down on their stuff I've had issues finding good mini-boards for firewalls etc (not enough interfaces on a Pi, which is also a bit slow).

    It looks like the 6200T also has some AES acceleration, but I wonder if there's anything like Via's padlock (which was quite nice for VPN's or SSL tunnels).

  • Only thing missing is a fan (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Russ1642 ( 1087959 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @05:07PM (#48814569)

    I have a Chromecast, which is a mini PC on a dongle. It has a fanless design, but it desperately needs on. Trying to keep it cool in the summer is difficult and after ten minutes it's too hot and stalls.

  • Hope it has GigE. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mal-2 ( 675116 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @05:10PM (#48814591) Homepage Journal

    I have an E-350 laptop, and although it has only two cores at 1.6 GHz, it can easily keep up with 1080p video. (Having maxed it out at 8 GB of RAM doesn't hurt.) The thing that tends to be an issue is WiFi bandwidth. If wired to the network (it has GigE) or if the file is copied to local storage first, it's fine. Otherwise, you're just asking for the darn thing to burp several times during your movie.

    Even 100Mbps Ethernet (using some old three-pair cable already in the wall) can prove insufficient for pulling 1080p off the NAS box, if there's any kind of contention at all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jandrese ( 485 )

      Fitlet-B and Fitlet-X — 1x gigabit Ethernet port
      Fitlet-i — 2x gigabit Ethernet ports

      Looks like it has you covered. I'm actually interested in turning the thing into a router. It's cheaper than a lot of commercial home router solutions, and can do a lot more.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sootman ( 158191 )

      I rarely say this, but RTFA. Not only does it have gigabit ethernet, you can optionally get 2 or more gig-E ports.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        It looks like the options are for 1, 2, or 4 Gig-E ports. I'm most interested in the 4 port version, but I need to see the price on it first. It's not a good sign that they only announced the price on the bare bones starter model.
    • That doesn't sound right to me, your movie would have to be about 90 GB (at 2 hours) to saturate that bandwidth. 100Mb/s*7200s /8[b/B] =90GB. Am I missing something?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jiriw ( 444695 )

        Probably a combination of:

        1) High bandwidth consuming action scenes (actual bandwidth demand can fluctuate quite a lot over the runtime of a movie)
        2) Not enough buffering (I guess that primarily depends on the media playing software)
        3) Congestion on the WiFi channel (neighbour(s) also streaming video... and even if you can't find another SSID doesn't mean there isn't another non-WiFi appliance or a 'silent' WiFi using that bandwith and your access point has to 'packet switch' around the nuisance... )

        Never c

    • Can you verify you're actively hitting the CPU for video decoding? Because that sounds very late 90s. My RPi can also easily keep up with 1080p video and has never once stuttered playing anything over a 100Mbps network despite it's horrendously specced CPU and RAM.

      Playing video is not a good indication of performance given how many SoCs simply do hardware decoding or otherwise accelerate video.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

      it isn't the Toshiba in Monza Red from PC World (2011) is it?

  • Benchmarks for that AMD chip look bad... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JoeyRox ( 2711699 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @05:12PM (#48814607)
    For example, the AMD E1 Micro-6200T in the Fitlet-B:
    http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cp... [cpubenchmark.net]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rob Riggs ( 6418 )
      Really? For 4W TDP? Versus the top tier Intel i7 @ 47W? It depends on what you are measuring.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Really? For 4W TDP? Versus the top tier Intel i7 @ 47W? It depends on what you are measuring.

        I believe he is measuring dick length. For the rest of us, this is a more than capable processor and the GPU is the best in the business at that form factor. See, at this scale the name of the game is getting the most out of small number of transistors because there is only so much power you can dissipate from that little box into the surrounding slow moving air. Or to put it simple terms, sure, you can stuff an I7 into that box but it will burn a hole through your hand and set your stero cabinet on fire if

    • But if the NICs are decent ones, and are able to offload most traffic, I'd love to use this for Untangle / PFSense / VMs and such.
      cpubenchmark shows this as being roughly 30% more powerful than the Intel D525's that I've been using for said task.

      Might even use it for XBMC / PLEX Home Theater.

  • Can you connect a USB cablecard tuner to these things and use them to replace your cable company provided STB?

  • What a crap way of saying a third of the the volume.

  • It takes up negative 2 times as much space as the Intel NUC?!

    • Nah, you're doing the marketing math wrong.

      If product A is 99% the size of product B, then A is smaller than B.

      Therefore, if product C is 97% the size of product B, C is "three times smaller" than B.

    • I like that "three times smaller" assumes multiplication is the operation we're talking about, and having "smaller" instead of "bigger" means we should use the inverse operation of multiplication, not the inverse operation of addition. So, casual language is geekier than you.
      If people understood that more often, they would multiply percentages together when appropriate instead of mistakenly (and nonsensically) adding them.

  • I'm sure the lowest-spec version with the four extra gig-E ports would be more than adequate. Consumer routers sometimes cost more, but they don't have SATA and their USB throughput suuucks.

  • "1.7GHz Exynos4412 Prime Cortex-A9 Quad-core processor with PoP (Package on Package) 2Gbyte LPDDR2 880Mega Data Rate"

    $65.00
    - http://www.hardkernel.com/main... [hardkernel.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sowelu ( 713889 )

      Lack of a case makes it a poor comparison. Sure, if you're in the mood to DIY things, maybe even trivially, it works. But the Fitlet is "buy and then place on a shelf". When prices are this low, the time and effort and money to find or make a case that'll fit this other thing is actually pretty significant relative to the final cost.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by quenda ( 644621 )

      ASUS Chromebox $160, has been $120 complete.
      Fanless, 2GB (+ vacant slot), 16GB SSD, 4xusb3, Gig-E, display-port, wifi, BT ...
      Only thing missing is s/pdif.

      Might be a subsidy from Google. Sells with Chrome-OS but freely unlockable.

    • the competition [techcrunch.com]. costs $100, but it's a complete product and not a bare board. it's going to be superior in every other way, too.

  • I really want one of these things, or something similar sized, for a tiny home server. The only issue I have with running a home server is that, with home renovations, we need to kill the power for a couple minutes now and then and I'd love to not have to shut down the server every single time...same with relocating it to a different shelf. Could someone recommend a tiny UPS suitable for these mini-servers, with lifetime in the neighborhood of an hour?

    • I'm sure somebody could recommend a normal-size UPS with uptime much greater than an hour (even when running this as a server, plus your router, plus your cable/dsl modem), which seems better to me.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sowelu ( 713889 )

        Way overkill. UPSes are expensive to maintain if you need to replace a car battery every few years, they're very bulky which ruins the point of a tiny server that sits on a bookshelf, and they don't solve my problem of "I'd like to move it to a different shelf without losing power" unless I want to get a few people to carry around the UPS + everything attached to it. From my experience with large UPSes, just replacing batteries will cost more over the life of this machine than the computer would. I don't

    • Closest product I have seen is a href="http://www.mini-box.com/picoUPS-100-12V-DC-micro-UPS-system-battery-backup-system">PicoUPS. Takes a 12v battery and maintains a constant DX output. With a standard 9Ah battery you could run most small devices for at least 8 hours.

      Personally surprised that there aren't any 12V power supplies that can provide 3-4 regulted 2A outputs. Eliminate multiple wall warts and give yourself battery backup as well. I would love to have all the home networking gear and a NAS in

    • I haven't got an advice on what to buy. I do have an advice on what not to buy.
      Don't trust a Trust
      I have one. It is too slow. If I use it as an UPS and pull the wall plug the computer first shuts down due to power loss and then the UPS comes up and I can immediately restart my PC without putting the plug back in the wall.
      It drops the power long enough to kill the PC. How can they not have detected that during testing?
      It is useful for some other use cases, but not as an UPS. Just as an easy 240V power suppl

  • Goddamnit ... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by thomst ( 1640045 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @05:54PM (#48814969) Homepage

    <RANT=ON>

    ... I simply DESPISE the locultion "(x) times smaller than." It's lazy, stupid writing, and it needs to die in a fire.

    The proper way to phrase the concept would be "(suitable fraction) of the size of", as in "one third the size of".

    <RANT=OFF>

  • With name like "MintBox" (Score:5, Funny)

    by chispito ( 1870390 ) on Wednesday January 14, 2015 @06:40PM (#48815285)
    It if doesn't fit in an Altoids tin, I'm suing for false advertising.

  • still got that thing, it's still trucking even after its third power supply and nth set of capacitors (why the fuck is it going through so many capacitors??), that titchy little fan is gone (finally burned out) so I chucked a 120mm on the back of the Shuttle XPC box it's in (had to take the hacksaw and the dremel to that to make the board fit), it's now practically silent.

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