Take the guts of an ultrabook and stick it into a roughly smartphone-sized device and what do you get? A tiny desktop called the Raydget SlimBox IV, apparently.
Communication Technology Ltd has unveiled a new line of miniature desktops with support for Celeron through Core i7 processors. The Raydget SlimBox IV is a thin model with a fan for active cooling.
Want a fanless system? The Coolbox IV is a lot thicker, but it has the same basic guts, but no noisy fans.
The folks at Mobile Geeks caught up with CTÂ and got a chance to check out the latest Raydget miniPCs.
Unfortunately the SlimBox IV and CoolBox IV aren’t available for purchase yet, but when they hit the market they’ll each be available with a choice of Intel Celeron, Core i3, or Core i7 chips, support for 4GB to 8GB of RAM, and 64GB of solid state storage.
There’s a standard laptop memory slot for RAM and an mSATA connector for a solid state drive.
The little computers feature 802.11b/g/n WiFi, 2 USB 3.0 ports, and headphone jacks. There’s also an HDMI port and Gigabit Ethernet.
A model with a Core i7 chip consumes about 25 watts of power or less.
The SlimBox measures about 5.9″ x 3″ x 0.63″ and weighs about 7 ounces, making it just a bit thicker and heavier than a typical smartphone. The CoolBox has a passive heatsink which makes it a bit bigger, at 5.7″ x 3.3″ x 1.26″ and 1.3 pounds.
How big is the power brick?
I’m eyeing the fanless CoolBox. I wonder if the Celeron ones could have been made smaller. It seems they use the same heat dissipation design for all the fanless ones.
Another use for my old lapdock… If only these could be power through the USB (no chance.)
The ECS Liva can be powered through USB but obviously is going to be bigger and far slower with a 7W CPU
I had always wished to see something like this, I wished more companies does the same, A PC that can handle HD medias and wont stick out of your TV stand
It seems like the current trend in the desktop market are these kinds of things. Unless I’m just biased because I want to see more of these mini x86 PCs going forward.
But the price is always a turn off for me since ones can buy Dell Venue pro 8 or similar spec with full on laptop or tablet for around the same price and then proceed to hook it up to monitors.
See…there are all these wacky “pocket desktops” that are requiring the use of a dock. If these pan out, the Raydget just handed all of those guys their butts in slings.
Ya, I never liked the idea of proprietary docks for those crowd-funded “pocket PCs”. It’d be more portable if you can “dock” to any TV/monitor, keyboard and mouse using standard ports.
actually if your pocket desktop has hdmi, display port, or vga, basiccaly it could use to any tv or monitor without a dock
That’s what he said though.
If they went this far they really should go dual band WiFi
Crazy to think this has a full U-series i3/5/7 in it! Not an ARM chip, not bay trail, not even Y-series! And how tiny is that motherboard for a full intel core cpu!
I see this as one potential future for PCs; add thunderbolt or dockport it would be amazing. I bet this thing is noisy though.
No way to sign up to be notified when these are shipping. Disappointing.
I wonder if they use the U-series or Y-series Intel Core i3/5/7 chips. I really hope its the U chips.
The PDF brochure on their website mention the U chips.
i7-4600U 3.3GHz
i7-4500U 3GHz
i3-4010U 1.7GHz
Man, NUC are small enough already but these are half the size of those.