The rise in popularity of the small and ultra-small PC has taken the world by storm – not everyone can afford the top end $2000 spec of computers. The appeal of a quieter, yet equally powerful, machine is definitely marketable.
Intel announced the NUC (next-unit of computing) PCs way back in 2012, which can perform to the same standards as your average range computer for apps and productivity. It seems AMD are finally catching on to the small form-factor PC idea, and on Tuesday they officially confirmed project Quantum: the SFF personal computer, with enough welly to perform to a high standard of gaming.
Project Quantum, at first glance, looks very much like a console, but don’t let its design fool you – this bad boy could out-perform a console any day. The system boasts 60-90 fps in all games at 4k resolution… Take that, Xbox.
Getting your hands on a system will require going through ‘elite partners’ later this year, but the price is currently unknown. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re going to be splitting with a bunch of your money, though, as these systems are hardly low budget.
The full details on the specifics of AMD’s Quantum have still got some question marks, but here’s what we know so far. The computers will have an (as of yet) unknown multi-core processor by AMD, two AMD Radeon R9 Fury ‘Fiji’ graphics processing units operating in CrossFireX with 8GB of HBM memory in total. The CPU and GPUs both use closed-loop liquid cooling systems, which will keep your mini PC from overheating and sounding like it’s about to take off – something most normal PCs can’t achieve.
“All of the processing technology is in the bottom, in the top we have got all the cooling solutions,” explained Mr. Hook. “It is whisper quiet; it is engineered and tooled out of beautiful materials, aluminium and magnesium.”
Not only will the machine look great, but it will also be shipped with Microsoft Windows 10 and DirectX 12 (presumably meaning that the whole Xbox to Windows streaming will be available, too). AMD’s project Quantum PCs will be coming out this fall.