ACEPC has added two new compact computers to its lineup. The ACEPC GK1 is a mini desktop with an Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core Gemini Lake processor, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of eMMC storage plus room for an additional hard drive or SSD.
Gearbest is selling the ACEPC GK1 for $199 and the fanless ACEPC GK2 for the same price.
While the two computers basically have the same specs, the GK1 model is a little smaller, since it has a fan for active cooling, while the GK2 is a fanless model with passive cooling (and a larger chassis to allow the heat to dissipate).
But the difference isn’t all that dramatic: the ACEPC GK1 measures about 5″ x 5″ x 1.5″, while the GK2 is 5.5″ x 5.5″ x 1.9″.
Both systems have dual HDMI and USB ports, a microSD card reader, Gigabit Ethernet, and a headset jack. Under the hood both models also have a 2.5 inch drive bay for a hard drive or SSD and an M.2 slot that can be used for solid state storage.
The computers support dual-band 802.11n WiFi. ANd both models ship with Windows 10.
ACEPC GK1
ACEPC GK2
via AndroidPC.es
It seems it has space for a HDD or SDD but comes with Windows 10? It implies it has neither. What is the Windows 10 on?
It would be neat as a bare bones computer or as one without an operating system so one can try different ones without having to pay for one that one won’t use.
It’s installed on the 32gb of eMMC flash storage. You can add a HDD or SSD for additional (and possibly speedier) storage.
No mention of Linux support. I’d buy one of these if it shipped with Ubuntu instead of Windows.
These looks strikingly similar to the HP Z3 G3 and HP Slice.
and about 100 other mini PCs offered by every other company.
I remember when you could tell how powerful a CPU was. 486DX at 25mhz, Pentium at 233mhz… they would toss in numbers like L2 and L3 cache. Socket type was also important because people used to upgrade. It was all pretty straightforward and easy to follow.
Nowadays, I can’t make any sense of what a processor will deliver without intensive research. I can’t extract any useful information from “Intel Celeron J4105 quad-core Gemini Lake processor” except for the word ‘Celeron’ which means (to me) low-end. Even marketing terms like i3, i5 and i7 have lost their meaning when an i5 can outperform an i7 (I’ve seen on some benchmarks) and when clock speeds no longer help a consumer decide.
Maybe the industry should move toward ‘Instructions per Second’ but they might lose the (self-perceived) marketing advantages.
Even when you look up different chips, you often can’t compare them on multiple benchmarks.