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Deses
25
Aug 17, 2016
Named i5, mounts an Atom. No thanks in a million years.
RankoKohime
25
Aug 17, 2016
DesesThe Atom may not have as much raw horsepower as an i5, but watt for watt the Atom is the strongest thing Intel has going.
If it had a few more gigs of RAM (8 would be nice), and all Linux-compatible hardware, I'd be all over this drop.
ETA: I've had this exact Atom CPU in a netbook, and it does not struggle at all to play back 1080p YouTube to a secondary monitor while typing in a document on the internal screen, to give you an idea of it's capabilities.
techwiz
235
Aug 18, 2016
RankoKohimeProbed around for some datasheets and it looks like the Bay-trail Atom is kinda like an SoC so most of the system would work normally with a linux distro built for this processor (look up linuxium) and the WiFi chipset looks like it's based on the Broadcom BCM4330 which I think is also supported. Bluetooth might be a little sketchy tho. Unfortunately there's not much more info on this board since it's probably a custom PCB. I also think the linux distros that run on this Atom are Debian based with wicked out dated kernels (3.x)... Oh and the Bay-trail doesn't support more than 2GB of DDR3 memory, so no chance for an upgrade ever, sorry.
RankoKohime
25
Aug 19, 2016
techwizBroadcom spells instant fiddling. Some Broadcom stuff "works", but almost never out of the box.
I would actually doubt the custom PCB. Whoever is manufacturing them is probably also selling to various laptop vendors, such as Asus for their X205TA, which I have and has the same basic specs, as well as a Winbook tablet (I forget the model #), also with the same specs.
techwiz
235
Aug 19, 2016
RankoKohimeI think the specs come from the Atom, not the board. I think the Z3735F is an SoC with exposed pins for all the stuff like storage and memory. Less like a PC, more like a tablet if you will. Very likely it's a custom PCB since the design is simple, just wire it all up and add a power delivery system. Of course I say simple comparing it to creating an motherboard with north and south bridges, various other controllers and such, not that I would know how to do such a thing.
Also apparently the BCM4330 works native on 3.3+ kernels FWIW.
This little box might be worth the price for the windows license alone lol. Too bad it's OEM so you can't resell but you could feasibly reuse.