Asus Essentio CS5110, a Pocket Desktop Dynamo

[ April 9th, 2008 @ 8:39 pm ] ... [ C. S. Magor ] ... [ 918 views]

Asus Essentio CS5110, a Pocket Desktop Dynamo

Asus Essentio

For desktops, let’s face it, small is coming into vogue. It will be a while before gaming rigs follow suit, but for casual users and the HTPC crowd, the box is shrinking and shrinking fast. It seems that every other week we see a newer smaller desktop model. The trouble is that most of the smaller models make some serious trade-offs when it comes to performance. Typically the first thing to go is the discreet graphics card, which destroys the functionality of the system and leaves you with nothing more than a web surfing word processor. With the Essentio CS5110, Asus has bucked that trend and created a tiny PC with a discreet graphics card.

The Asus Essentio CS5110 is just 200—290×80 mm and weighs in at 3.4kg, which will be places it dangerously close to laptop territory. at 23.9 dB in idle, it is on the quiet side; though not completely silent. It features 7.1 channel sound via a S/PIDF output and an HDMI out thanks to the discreet graphics provided by an MXM MN8600M GT 256M GPU. It is something that should have been done a long time ago.

There are no compromises in the powerplant here either. This is a machine that is built for Vista. It will support a Core 2 Duo, which I assume would also mean that it can handle a Quad. In addition, it takes standard DDR2 RAM as opposed to SODIMM which is used by many other tiny PCs, the two slots giving up to 4GB. With 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth on board there should be no connectivity problems and should you choose to use this as a media center there is a fully integrated IR system. Asus has packed a lot into the Essentio CS5110 and I have to say, I am extremely impressed.

No word on price as of yet, but it should be within the realms of reason, given the manufacturer.

Source: Asus via Far East Gizmos via Slashgear

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