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It has been a really strong year for Arctic Cooling as they have continued to expand upon their product portfolio, even diversing into a range of rather interesting remote control toys, for land and sea. Today we are reviewing their latest Entertainment Center, a sleek HTPC with an ATOM processor, AMD graphics, BluRay drive and 4GB of DDR3 memory. Unlike many other ‘all in one' systems we have reviewed lately they also include the Windows 7 operating system, so there is no fiddling around with discs and drivers when you open the box. With a huge selection of ATOM based media centers already available, can the MC001-BD offer something new for the consumer?
One of the key selling points is that the MC001-BD Entertainment Center is completely passively cooled, and therefore silent. This alone will pique the interest of many enthusiast users who want a noiseless, yet capable media system for the bedroom or living room.
Arctic Cooling have four versions of the entertainment center available. The MC001-E (barebones), MC001-DVD (DVD player), MC001-DVDS (DVD player and 120GB SSD), and the model we are reviewing today, the MC001-BD, which is supplied with a BluRay player.
| CPU | Dual Core Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz) |
|---|---|
| Graphics | ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5430, 512MB GDDR3 |
| Chipset | Intel NM10 |
| Memory | 4GB DDR3 1333MHz |
| Storage | 500GB 7200RPM 16MB cache HDD |
| OS | Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit |
| ODD | Blu-ray 4x |
| Additional Software | CyberLink PowerDVD 10 |
| LAN | 10/100/1000 Ethernet |
| Wireless LAN | IEEE 802.11 b/g/n |
| Front I/O Ports | IR receiver x 1 USB 3.0 port x 2 3.5mm stereo I/O jack x 2 (Headphone, Mic) 4-in-1 memory card reader x 1 |
| Rear I/O Ports | 3.5mm audio I/O jack x 6 (7.1 OUT x 4, LINE IN x 1, Mic x 1) SPDIF port/optical x 1 VGA port x 1 HDTV interface x 1 (HDTV cable included) Ethernet RJ45 port x 1 USB 2.0 port x 5 DC power jack x 1 |
| TV Tuner | DVB-T / DVB-C (optional) |
| Power Supply | 19V DC 60W |
| Volume | 1.5 L |
| Dimensions (Product) | w/o stand: 143 L x 40 W x 266 H mm w/ stand: 161 L x 65 W x 275 H mm |
| Dimensions (Packaging) | 205 L x 130 W x 329 H mm |
| Limited Warranty | 2 years |
| EAN-Code | English Windows EU: 872767004399 UK: 872767004320 US: 872767004252 |
| EAN-Code | Multilanguage Windows EU: 872767004405 UK: 872767004337 US: 872767004269 |
| itemnumber | DPACO-MC10001-GB |
| UPC | |
| Weight | 2.65 kg |
No fans. id live with the lowish performance for that. looks quite nice too. Id best get entering the competition!
This is purely for media and it works. win for me. I wouldnt buy it for gaming.
No noise would be great. my girlfriend hates fans and this is quite nice looking. Its a bit bigger than the actively cooled media centers, but that is quite a heatsink over the CPU/GPU area.
the two tone colour system is odd. Not sure if that would grow on me. you reckon its meant to allow people to ‘pick’ their favourite colour and to rotate it to suit in a living room?
32 bit Windows 7? what a weird choice. the caching idea is unusual too. id rather have 64 bit and the memory for windows.
seems like a good enough deal, but id want my media center with a bit more grunt. not core i7, but something more capable.
Nice idea however, its a great idea for them to produce something which doesnt make noise. Many people will embrace this.
Its passive, I can forgive a few of the mistakes I think they made with this, just for that. because its extremely difficult to do.
I like the two tone idea, not sure its the prettiest looking media center, but its noiseless and has a bluray drive.
I like my PS3 however for media, but a PC would be better overall for the codec support…..
I’m sort of surprised that they build a really capable system and then slapped in an Intel Atom and Windows7 32-bit. Maybe its just me but I think that they could have gotten something better as far as the processor goes and still kept the beast silent. All in all though it seems like a good idea.
Thanks for the review, this looks like an interesting product. One thing I’m worried about is heat. The temperatures for CPU and GPU looked pretty high, and I wonder what the temperature of the device itself is, and how high it can reach if the room is at 30c+.
I have to wonder why they didn’t use an AMD E-350, though. Is the Atom + GPU combination lower power or provides more features?
By the way, I’m sure I said it before, but the “view all pages” option is a great feature of KitGuru reviews, and I wish more sites had it.
ET,
I have to agree with you on this. I want to know why they didn’t use an AMD APU for this build. The only thing that I can come up with is perhaps they were offered a significantly cheaper solution with the Atom and they took that route in an effort to keep pricing to a minimum.
maybe not that bad to have the 32bits, the D525 only can address 4GB anyway, and with all the issues I met with the 64bits, I am actually happy that they use the 32bits.
It should as well speed up the boot