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ZBOX-BI320-U-W2 - $140 @ Newegg

Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 8:18 am
by Jay_S
[ EDIT: 17 FEB 2015, SOLD OUT BY ABOUT DINNER TIME ]

This is an inexpensive complete desktop PC. It's price jumps around between $160-$200. It's on sale today at Newegg for $140.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6883218045
  • CPU: Haswell Celeron 2957U (1.40GHz)
    RAM: two slots, one comes populated with a 2GB DDR3 1.35V SODIMM
    HDD: comes with a 64GB mSATA SSD (preinstalled underside of motherboard), PLUS a 2.5" tool-less HDD site.
    OS: Windows 8.1 with Bing, 64-bit;includes reinstallation media
Nice review at Serve the Home:

http://www.servethehome.com/Workstation ... twork-box/

Re: ZBOX-BI320-U-W2 - $140 @ Newegg

Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 10:17 am
by CA_Steve
That's pretty cheap considering the included components.

Re: ZBOX-BI320-U-W2 - $140 @ Newegg

Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2015 11:41 am
by Jay_S
The Serve the Home admin posted power consumption numbers here:
Power Consumption:
5.4-5.8w Windows Desktop
11.8w maximum Cinebench 11.5 run
There's a long-ish thread on the XBMC/Kodi forums about it: Zotac ZBOX BI320 *Opinion please* Too good to be true? Here's some SPCR- and HTPC-applicable quotes ...
Yes - the 2955/2957U Haswell Celerons will do a VAAPI Motion Compensated Deinterlace in recent OpenElec builds. Very good quality. Think the BI320 has the 2957U - it's a great chip. HD Audio bitsreaming, no 24p bug etc.
FWIW, you can't boot off a SD card in the internal reader on the BI320. It's USB 2.0 based reader, but uses a Realtek controller that the BIOS doesn't recognize as a mass storage device. Windows even needs a driver for the reader.

OpenELEC can see cards in the reader, so it can be used for media input even though you can't boot from it. OpenELEC 5.0 runs fine on the BI320. It played everything I threw at it smoothly. Blu-ray with the different video codecs, 1080i and 720p MPEG-2 OTA HD, various resolution transcoded content, etc. CPU usage stayed low. As expected it passed the HD audio formats via HDMI without issue.
It is not fanless. However, the fan noise is negligible.
Standing right in front of it, its about 2 feet from my face where mine sits, I do not hear it. I do not hear it until I bend over and put my ear next to it.
The fan is on the edge of being too loud for me and it is the winter here. Does anyone have any experience using this in the summer? Does the fan spin up to loud levels?
I can't hear mine, even when about a foot away from it. Room is at about 20c