Sapphire Squeezes Sandy Bridge Chip Inside Edge HD4 Mini PC

[[Coi] Mr.CLuBBeR]

Sapphire's Edge HD4 mini PC is about the size of a paperback book.

After testing the mini PC waters with its Edge HD series, which is supposedly the "smallest fully featured PC in the world," Sapphire felt motivated to introduce a new, more powerful model. Sapphire's Edge HD4 retains the "stylish outline" of its predecessors, but offers better performance with an Intel Celeron 847 processor. The Celeron brand gives some users the heebie jeebies, but note that this is a dual-core part clocked at 1.1GHz with 2MB of L3 cache and built around Intel's last generation Sandy Bridge architecture. It won't run Crysis, sure, but it shouldn't trip over day-to-day computing chores, either.
The Edge HD4 measures 19.3 cm (L) by 14.8 cm (W) by 2.2 cm (H) and consumes less than 30W under load. Though it's small in stature, it boasts a respectable feature-set consisting of 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 320GB hard drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, a single USB 3.0 port, three USB 2.0 ports, GbE LAN, HDMI output, VGA port, and audio ports.
"Despite its small size, the Sapphire Edge HD4 is a fully featured PC for home, education or business use. In the home, its compact size is a welcome replacement for a bulky traditional PC whether for browsing the internet, children’s homework or home office tasks, with many applications accelerated by state-of-the-art technology," Sapphire explains. "Built in HD video capability enables the smooth streaming of video content over HDMI to a TV or monitor and the stylish design is just as at home in the living room as in the study."
Bear in mind that many mini PC systems, this one included, don't come with optical drives or a pre-installed operating system. You also need to provide your own mouse, keyboard, and monitor.
No word on when the Edge HD4 will ship or for how much.
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