Is the nettop a relic of the past or a fast jack of progress? Let's take a closer look and decide.
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At the beginning of the 21st century, humanity is faced with a new threat in the form of a lack of energy for the growing digital labor market. Chicken coops and candle factories were demolished, and in their place new box buildings were erected, their inner space was divided by plasterboard walls into sections, and thousands and thousands of ant operators had to work there. And each such ant had to have its own personal computer, connected to the network, on which it could count other people's money for the bank, keep track of documents and post cats on social networks.
Content
- Yesterday
- Today
- Tomorrow
- Conclusion
Yesterday
It is enough to imagine a multi-storey anthill, in which there is a thousand PCs with a consumption of 350 W each, to understand the needs for electricity and the company's motives Intel – to make money on the lack of electricity, as well as get the perk of a 'green' manufacturer that saves the environment the whole planet. Considering the specifics of such workplaces, the first Intel Atom was supposed to relatively quickly open documents in MS Office and display an image on a monitor with a typical resolution of its time – 1024×768 pixels.
Asus Eee Box, one of the first. Inside Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, Windows XP
At the beginning of 2008, the year of the massive release of the first Atoms, there was a wide selection of laptops based on the generation Intel Core Duo processors on the market, but among them there was not a single one that could compare with the first ones in terms of energy efficiency. Atom. Take the typical Intel ® Core ™ 2 Duo L7500 processor and one of the first mass-produced 'atomic' N270s.
Atom N270 was significantly inferior in performance to the 'full-fledged' L7500 processor, but surpassed it in the main parameter – energy efficiency. And this efficiency is expressed not only in the fact that the processor consumes less electricity, but also in the fact that the simplest cooling system is suitable for cooling it, while the older brother needs a full-fledged cooler. Despite all these advantages, netbooks and nettops of the first generation did not enjoy massive success, they were not used so much that individual devices were in electronic stores for 10 years. Despite this, the idea of a small (but full-fledged) personal computer got its life thanks to Intel Atom.
There were other foundations for ancient nettops, not just the base Intel. The era of their appearance in time is associated with the death of the third manufacturer of processors for the x86 system, VIA. It could even be said that Intel Atom destroyed that company's last consumer processors ('C' series) and are now extremely rare.
Today
Today the nettop idea is blooming, but there are questions. It would seem that the Low-Power segment should be represented by devices based on Intel Atom Z37xx and slightly newer Atom X3,5 and 7, but this is not so, most often they can be seen in the HDMI whistle form factor . For this reason, one could say that in the company itself Intel their performance is considered insufficient for normal operation, they are considered as separate devices, and not a platform for connecting other devices. But this is not so, the store shelves are full of netbooks based on Atom Z and X platforms. It is absolutely unclear why Intel Celeron of various versions reign in the nettop segment. Maybe you have an explanation? Be that as it may, the massive transition to flash drives (with HDD) and modern manufacturing processes (28 nm instead of 45) gave their advantages, it became possible to use office programs on a nettop without swear words, even if we are talking about Windows 10 and MS Office 2019.
A typical modern nettop from the brand is ASUS MiniPC PB60 for an over 40,000 rubles. Inside Intel Core i5. There is nothing more interesting in it.
There is another direction in the development of nettops, which at first glance seems absurd. We are talking about the so-called 'game' nettops, almost the Red Book birds of our space and time. GIGABYTE GB-BXi 5G – 760 (2014) can be considered a typical representative of a rare species, from its name you can see that Intel Core i5 is installed inside, and Nvidia GTX760 is responsible for the graphics. The five-year-old gadget will surely pull off any modern game at medium-high graphics settings.
Gaming Nettop GIGABYTE GB-BXi 5G – 760. The review can be viewed on the friendly resource Ferra
Last year, an even more monstrous ZOTAC ZBOX Magnus EK71080 nettop was released with a Intel Core i7 7700 processor and an Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card, which sells poorly at a price of about 170,000 rubles, and therefore it is not a problem to find it on sale.
ZOTAC ZBOX Magnus on the promo looks small
In the hands of the surveyor, the nettop no longer seems small. A video review of the design can be viewed on The Tech Buyer's Guru channel
Why do you need a gaming nettop, that's another question. On the one hand, it cannot directly compete with game consoles, because it is too expensive, and on the other hand, it cannot be a demonstration of technology, since there are almost the same volume (namely, physical volume, measured in liters) laptops and monoblocks on the market, with the same performance and a lower price. As if the automobile plant not only demonstrated the possibility of installing an engine from a ZIL truck in a Zhiguli, but also began to mass produce it.
Original, fun, interesting, but it is not clear why.
It just so happened that AMD is poorly represented in the nettop market. The first attempts to enter this market began with the creation of AMD C-50 and 60, E-350 and 450 processors, which fell into thoughtfulness when launched from a solid state drive even Windows XP (verified personally). It's not even worth talking about more modern systems. A little later, AMD 'A' series processors appeared with good integrated graphics, but an extremely weak processor part, which together did not allow the manufacturer to occupy a significant part of the market. A typical representative of such a budget nettop is the Zotac ZBOX CA320 nano based on AMD A6-1450.
These days, almost any branded nettop comes with a VESA mount adapter.
Summing up a certain intermediate result, we can say that any modern “hardware” can fit in a modern nettop, and only the price can be the main purchase condition.
Tomorrow
Let's consider the current trends, whether the idea of a nettop matches them. The main trend is the escape of the conditional FLOPS (unit of performance) from the office to the basement, where the server is running one for all. Perhaps there are already companies where all work takes place in a remote rented cloud, and the workplace is required to have only a network port, a screen and input devices (sensor, mouse, keyboard). And if this trend continues, the nettop will still be relevant.
If we consider the growth of nettop performance in the near future, then on the site Intel there are no hints of updating the line Intel Atom yet, and other low-end processors with the release of new models give a performance increase of about 10-15% in year. You should count on this.
In the middle 'nettop' segment, where platforms Intel Core still reign, there may be a significant reshuffle associated with the hyped AMD company. After the release of the successful Rizen with integrated graphics last year (Ryzen 5 2400G and 3 2200G), reports of stable performance shown by processors when playing modern games at low settings have been raining from a cornucopia. This is not expected from a processor priced at around 7,000 rubles, which does not need a discrete graphics card. If such a nettop enters the market, then some will have to make room.
Conclusion
A compact box with a computer inside and all the necessary connectors is a universal thing. On specialized forums, you can easily find instructions on how to turn a nettop into a NAS.
Others are trying to make a video player from an old inexpensive nettop. To do this, they often install a beautiful and lightweight Linux Mint instead of Windows. As such, the nettop is better than any HDMI whistle due to the number of USB ports and the easy connection of any peripherals.
Linux is still better suited for a media center than Windows, the operating system will not be arbitrary
But the majority still expect the nettop to perform its main function – to replace a full-fledged computer. The compact size allows you to experiment with the placement of the nettop: hide it in the drawer of the cabinet, screw it from the bottom to the table top, hang it on the back of the monitor and anywhere else, the length of the wires would be enough.
Standard design for attaching a nettop to a VESA monitor mount.
A bundle of nettop and monitor is still cheaper than any candy bar, and there are no prerequisites for changing this situation.
Friends, tell us what you think about the very idea of a nettop? Do you use it on a regular basis, or has its time passed? Is there enough performance?