As regular readers know, I occasionally take a dive into the world of mini-pcs (especially low cost models) in my quest to get the best bang for the buck/watt. On my travels through the depths of Aliexpress this morning, I came across very reasonably priced Z8350-based system. It’s not going to blow the doors off, but I have a soft spot for these boxes, simply because they do so much for what they are.
This one is a design which is new to me, sporting more USB ports than normal, as well as both VGA and HDMI video ports. You’ll need to be careful though, as the retailer seems to be a bit confused about what hardware they’re selling …in the product “overview” they state it has 2 x USB3 and 2 x USB2, but the images clearly show 1 x USB3 and 5 x USB2 ports. The header of their advert also rather vaguely claims “support 2.5 inch HDD”, but (despite the extra height of this case compared to other models) there are no obvious SATA headers on the motherboard pictures and in the overview they only mention support of “external” disks.
They’re also a bit on the boastful side about the service they provide (hence the “giggle” in the title of this post — see image, below).
The price for the 4GB/32GB model is a modest $84.45 (plus $3 shipping to my part of the world). Although these boxes are sold as “Windows 10” machines, I certainly wouldn’t advise anyone to try running Windows on the 32GB eMMC model, as the initial download of updates will overflow the available storage space.
As I’ve mentioned before though, these machines make excellent little low-cost, low-power-usage servers for anyone doing 24/7 self hosting (I’ve even got a similar box with more than 12TB of USB disks hanging off the back as a back-up server on my home network). This version also comes with 4GB of main memory, which is 2GB more than my original Z8350 based system (which has been running 24/7 since Dec 2016).
Please note that I don’t own this exact system, so I can’t verify its actual hardware configuration or performance. I haven’t ever used the supplier SZMZ before either, so I can’t vouch for their delivery times or packing. Another point to note is that although SZMZ has a very impressive 100% feedback rating, it is only based on two orders (at the time of writing). All the same, this looks like a nicely built mini-pc (with more ventilation holes than equivalent models, if nothing else).
‡ — As to the strangely worded phrase in their advert, I’m working on the assumption that what they’re trying to convey is that different builds and versions of this model are available …or maybe the copywriter just took this chance to broadcast their views on men in general.
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