Station M1 & P1: Passively cooled mini-PCs that can be used as media centres

T-Chip has unveiled two new passively-cooled mini-PCs, the Station M1 and P1. The two machines are similar in some senses, but the Station P1 is more powerful than the M1. T-Chip has equipped the former with a Rockchip RK3399, a hexa-core chipset that combines two ARM Cortex-A72 cores with four Cortex-A53 cores. There is also a Mali-T860 MP4 GPU that supports up to 4K and 10-bit H.265 video decoding at up to 60 FPS.

Additionally, the Station P1 has 4 GB of LPDDR4 dual-channel RAM, eMMC flash storage and dual video outputs. There is also Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi 4 connectivity and multiple USB ports for connecting accessories. The Station P1 measures 124.4 x 79 x 31.6 mm and retails for US$120.

By contrast, the Station M1 costs a more reasonable US$75 and measures 93.8 x 65 x 15.8 mm. It also has the lesser Rockchip RK3328, a quad-core chipset that includes only Cortex-A53 cores and a Mali-450 MP2 GPU. T-Chip offers the Station M1 with 2 GB or 4 GB of DDR3 RAM too, along with eMMC 5.1 flash storage. A microSD card slot is also available, as is WiFi 4 and Gigabit Ethernet connectivity. Like the Station P1, the M1 has USB ports for connecting peripherals.

According to T-Chip, both machines support Station OS, an Android-based OS that includes desktop and media modes. Alternatively, T-Chip offers Android 7.1.2 and Ubuntu 18.04 images.