Launched again at CES 2023, Intel’s Alder Lake-N platform is the corporate’s latest and newest price range platform for entry-level PCs. With the {hardware} now delivery, Zotac is among the many first well-known PC makers to supply use the platform for its Zbox Edge MI351 mini-PC. Although it is not as small as a few of its rivals, it presents a level of upgradeability and loads of ports.

The Zotac Zbox Edge MI351 is predicated round Intel’s N100 processor, which presents 4 Gracemont CPU cores working at 800 MHz – 3.40 GHz and an Intel Xe-based iGPU with superior media decoding (AV1, H.264, H.265, and many others.) and encoding capabilities. From efficiency viewpoint, Intel’s N100 ought to supply efficiency akin to that of quad-core Skylake-class processors from 2015 – 2018, albeit with way more subtle multimedia engine. The latter of which is essential not just for HTPCs, but additionally for numerous different purposes N100 units are geared toward, together with kiosks and digital signage.

Trying on the MI351’s design itself, it is fascinating to see that Zotac opted to make use of an lively cooling system with a fan to chill down the N100 processor. The official TDP of the N100 is simply 6 Watts, however as Intel’s fashionable TDP mantra implies that chips are allowed to devour way more vitality than that when turbo boosting, producers are more and more designing their packing containers to maintain increased thermals as a way to maintain efficiency up.

The PC additionally presents a good diploma of upgradability for a price range, Atom-class field. Zotac hasn’t soldered down any reminiscence or NAND storage – a standard sight in these units – so the Zbox Edge MI351 presents a DIMM slot for a DDR5-4800 reminiscence module in addition to an M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot for the standard NVMe SSD.

Zotac’s Zbox Edge MI351 additionally presents above-average connectivity for a low-end mini-PC. In addition to a GbE port, 4 USB 3.2 ports Kind-A ports can be found (one on the entrance), in addition to two 4Kp60-capable show outputs (DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0), and the same old 3.5mm audio in/out connectors. Wi-fi connectivity can also be accessible by way of an built-in Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5.2 controller – although an exterior antenna (included) is required to utilize them.

The trade-off for together with room for DIMMs and M.2 SSDs, nevertheless, is that it requires a barely bigger footprint for the PC. Zotac’s Zbox Edge MI351 system measures 149.5 mm x 149.5 mm x 28.5 mm (5.89 in x 5.89 in x 1.12 in), which is a tad smaller than Apple’s M1 Mac Mini, however which is bigger than many Atom-based methods. Nonetheless, the field is greater than sufficiently small that it presents VESA mounts, permitting one to cover it on the again of the show.

Lastly, Zotac just isn’t disclosing pricing for its Zbox Edge MI351 at the moment. Understand that that is being offered as a barebones unit, so consumers might want to embody RAM and storage of their price range, in addition to a duplicate of an OS.