Fresh off the reveal of the sub-$500 LarkBook, Chuwi is back with another new product announcement. This time around it’s a mini PC and they want your help deciding what hardware makes it into the final design.
Chuwi has posted all the possibilities on its 2021 mini PC voting page. To encourage people to participate they’re going to send pre-production units to 10 lucky voters. The winners will be expected to offer suggestions on how to improve the crowdsourced computers before they’re offered up to the general public. I’ve reached out to Chuwi to clarify whether they’ll get to hang on to those PCs or send them back when they’re done testing.
There are a handful of options for each of the PC’s core components. You’ll start by selecting which type of enclosure Chuwi should use: ABS, magnesium-aluminum alloy or “all metal.”
Next up are the processor options, which include a Tiger Lake Core i7-10870h, an AMD Ryzen 5 4600h, a Core i7-10870h and a Ryzen 9 4900h. You can choose from 8, 12, 16 or 32GB of RAM and 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of NVMe storage.
Although Chuwi is inviting you to “help build the most powerful mini PC in the world,” that probably won’t be the ultimate result. We already know that Gigabyte is planning to launch Brix PCs next quarter that feature 15W Ryzen 5000U Cezanne processors, and those chips have produced some very impressive benchmarks. It’s more likely that Chuwi is aiming for a sweet spot that balances price and performance in a way that’s enticing to mini PC enthusiasts.
To that end, the page keeps a running total of the price of your build. Chuwi notes that the current figures are for reference only and that actual pricing won’t be determined until the mini PC goes up for sale. That will likely happen via a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo, just like Chuwi did with the more budget-focused LarkBox last year.
Those guys from chuwi can’t get their online form to accept my email, let alone a pc…
Why choose ram and storage size, are they soldered?
I like how the Chuwi “about page” doesn’t tell you anything about them and uses stock pictures of American executives. https://store.chuwi.com/pages/contact-us
Chuwi already knows what they are going to build.The rest is just P.R.
Agreed. At best, this campaign is just going to help them confirm if their pre-designed product meets public demand.
Well, if anything else it’s interesting that they’re offering AMD alternatives in the first place, Chuwi has always relied on Intel for their x86 needs.