ASRocks into Braswell

Beebox-A-Lula

ASRock has got into the NUC market with a series of Intel Atom Braswell SoC based machines which it says are quiet as mice and have updated features.

The Beeboxes will be available as a barebones kit, a full system with OS, and a full system without OS. The three systems are identical and fanless. They will also be available in three colours becauset the colour of a tiny box is so important.

ASRock used Chipzilla’s Braswell-based N3000 SoC, which only has a TDP of 4 W, which makes the fanless design possible, Unfortunately the N3000 currently is dual-core and therefore about as quick as a FIFA inquiry into corruption.

It should not matter too much. This is a low end of the market product so speed should not be a major problem. ASRock is targetting the gear towards workplace environments, to be used for tasks such as digital signage or simple web browsing workstations.

The Beebox includes a USB 3.0 Type-C connector for fast charging and much greater data bandwidth. The WiFi standard is the better 802.11ac.

Braswell also provides a graphics performance upgrade. Baytrail’s iGPU only had 4 EUs, was locked at a max resolution of 1080p, It could only manage dual-monitors, Braswell’s iGPU has 12 EUs, can run three displays, two over HDMI and one over the display port. It features resolution support of up to 4K.

ASrock said the Beebox is the only NUC that does true 4K video because of its dual-channel memory design. This Beebox has 2 x 2 GB RAM as opposed to a single DIMM,

ASRock said that the first of these NUCs without the OS should be in the shops in a couple of weeks. The barebones Beebox will cost just $140 but you will need to find some Ram and storeage.

The no-OS black or white Beeboxes will be $220. The gold model will be  $230. Having an Operating system will be about $200. The two non-barebones will likely launch after Windows 10 on July 29.

Here are the specs