ASRock is well known for quality motherboard products, but the company’s portfolio extends way beyond that sector. Among the more unusual products manufactured by the Taiwanese company are mini PCs. ASRock’s latest mini PC comes in the form of Beebox J4205 powered by Intel’s Pentium J4205 Apollo Lake CPU clocked at 2.6 GHz. The mini PC is marketed as a digital singing, home office and home media center solution.
The small form factor PC measures 4.7″ x 4.3″ x 1.8″ and the Intel Apollo Lake CPU features a 10-Watt TDP. The model is not fanless, so there will be a slightly audible hum coming from it when the CPU works at capacity. The new Beebox can fit as much as 16GB DDR3L-1886 RAM and has several storage options: a 32GB eMMC module, an M.2 SSD slot, and a 2.5” bay for a hard drive or SSD.
The back panel features 2X HDMI ports, a DisplayPort, 2X USB 3.0 ports, as well as the usual Gigabit Ethernet jack. Only one of the HDMI ports supports audio + 4K@60Hz, while the other one does not support audio and can render only 4K@30Hz. The front panel integrates a USB 3.0 port, world’s first NUC paired with a USB 3.0 Type-C ports, a headset jack and the infrared receiver for the included IR remote control. The system is also compliant with 802.11ac WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 standards. The mini PC is expected to cost a little over $200.
I first stepped into the wondrous IT&C world when I was around seven years old. I was instantly fascinated by computerized graphics, whether they were from games or 3D applications like 3D Max. I'm also an avid reader of science fiction, an astrophysics aficionado, and a crypto geek. I started writing PC-related articles for Softpedia and a few blogs back in 2006. I joined the Notebookcheck team in the summer of 2017 and am currently a senior tech writer mostly covering processor, GPU, and laptop news.
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Bogdan Solca, 2017-07- 1 (Update: 2017-07- 1)