Sapphire Edge-HD Mini PC First Look

In the past couple of years, it’s become less common for tech companies to stick to a single line-up of products, and in fact, the transition has been inevitable. Companies like Corsair no longer only make memory, but power supplies, audio peripherals and even chassis. The same kind of thing could be said about many different tech companies, including Sapphire.

Hardly an unknown, Sapphire is the most popular pusher of AMD’s Radeon products, and in recent years, the company has also begun producing motherboards. More recently, though, the company unveiled a “Mini PC”… essentially a net-top. We’ve had one for a couple of weeks and are planning to publish a review in the weeks ahead, but for now I just wanted to talk about it a little.

The official product name is “Mini PC Edge-HD”, which sums up the fact that it’s both a mini PC and capable of handling HD content. Much smaller than a Nintendo Wii, the Edge-HD is designed to sit next to a computer monitor and do its thing quietly. This isn’t a PC for gamers, but those who need something simple, that will still allow them to enjoy HD content.

The PC features an Intel Atom D510 1.66GHz dual-core CPU, 2GB of memory, a 250GB hard drive, an NVIDIA ION 2 GPU, n wireless and a total of four USB ports (two of which will likely be taken by a mouse and a keyboard). Like a Wii once again, the PC stands up, and thanks to its base, it looks like it’s protruding from an oil spill. As a whole though, the PC is solidly-built, and feels rather durable.

To keep costs down, the Edge-HD doesn’t ship with an OS, so it’s up to you to install Windows or Linux. In my case, I picture this PC being best-used as an “extra” PC in the house, so I’ve been doing all my testing using Linux. For those wanting to remain legal and genuinely want to keep costs down, Linux seems to me as being the only option, as a Windows license itself will tack on $100 to the machine. Despite that, I will be doing testing under both, in case there happens to be a major performance advantage to one or the other (especially in regards to HD content).

What do you guys think from what you’ve seen so far? Can you see any use for a PC like this in your house? Kitchen PC? Media-player? Leave your thoughts in our thread!