MSI Wind Nettop 100 Desktop PC 1.6 GHz
| Brand: | MSI | ||
| Average Rating |
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Intel atom330 (dual core) 1.6g intel gma950, 7 x usb 2.0 ports drive bays: 1 x 3.5 & 1 x 5.25 wifi antenna 4-in-1 card reader & silver foot stand more info
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This thing ROCKS!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I work for a company that rents PC’s. We needed to bring some newer, faster, smaller PC’s into our fleet and this fit the bill perfect. Small and compact yet still easy to work on. We built 15 to start with and they have been out in the field 2x with no problems. I plan on building 40 more here shortly. I liked it so much I built one for my good friend. To get a bare bones system (case, CPU, MB) all for less than the cost of most motherboards today is a great value. I put together a complete PC for less than $300.00 (not including monitor). I am running Windows XP Pro with SP3 and it runs great. The on board video was even better than expected.
Not bad for a small box.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This MSI computer seems to be a good machine. I couldn’t get the built in Wi-Fi to work though. Fortunately I have a Linksys /Cisco router, and I don’t need the Wi-Fi on this box. It’s a bit slow to boot up, but for the price it does a good job. I wish they would put a Firewire port on these little machines, because I would want to load stuff from a video camera or a good DSLR in the future. They should have put a DVD+RW drive on it. I had to buy an external DVD+RW drive. So far, no breakdowns, knock on wood. I don’t trust the hard drive they installed, so I bought a Seagate Replica backup drive, and it works well. If something goes wrong, I should be able to get it running again myself.
Gets the job done, low powered
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I needed something that could run 24/7 as a file server that could be occasionally used as a Desktop. While I would not recommend this as an everyday desktop, it gets the job done.
Pros:
Size
Solid Build – High quality contruction, feels like a mini business class desktop.
Low Power Usage
Took only 10 minutes to install ram, hard drive and dvd burner.
External power supply reduces heat (laptop type ac adapter).
For much less than $300 I was able to build a 1tb file server that will outperform just about any NAS in that price range.
Cons:
No WDDM 1.1 support for the 945 chipset. This cripples Aero performance when using Windows 7. No linux drivers for this chipset, forcing VESA drivers.
Loud – The single fan is louder than I expected. I’m looking into replacing the fan.
You can not run 2 hard drives at the same time due to power limitations. Not an issue for most people, but worth a mention if somebody is planning on using the ODD sata port for a 2nd hard drive…
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Other thoughts:
After reading rave reviews of Windows 7′s performance on netbooks I thought this would be a no brainer. I did not take into consideration the low netbook resolution which is much easier on the graphic chip than my 19″ monitor is. Disabling some visual effects like transparent windows and animations helps, but Windows XP may be a better option for everday use.
Edit: After trying everything from Ubuntu to Windows 7, I’ve found that Windows XP runs better than anything else on this. Everything works the way you would expect it to in XP, while everything else either suffered from less than full hardware support or inconsistent performance. (end edit)
Built in CF slot is perfect for a permanent ready boost solution.
Performance is exactly what I expected. A quieter fan and a chipset that supports WDDM 1.1 would have earned it a 5th star. No regrets here…
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Notes on Amazon:
My first order was dead on arrival. Amazon got a replacement to me less than 17 hours after I submitted the return request. They paid for the return shipping and overnight shipping for the replacement. I can’t say enough good things about Amazon.
everything goes great until you want to insert the second hard drive
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
This barebone does not come with memory, hard drive, mini-PCI card, optical hard drive, or compact flash card. Anyway, I bought this machine to build my low power file server, and was planning to add two hard drives into it. There is only one 3.5″ slot and the other slot is 5.25″ for optical drive. So I purchased a bracket to accommodate the second hard drive. When I tried to install the second one, I realized that it is not designed to do so!!! The power cable at the 5.25″ side is very short that it barely hooks up the hard drive, so does the data cable! The worst thing is that the hard drive has about 1 – 2mm overlap on top of the hard drive power plug on the motherboard. I have to cut off a piece of the power cable plug in order to make it (merely) work with the hard drive. Also, you have to remove the drive bay in order to install compact flash card and mini-PCI card. Overall, it is a good machine, but has a few flaws to improve.
One good energy efficient machine.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The unit works as advertised, quiet and energy efficient. This is a great web browsing machine. You will just need 2 Gbytes of memory and a HD.
a good thing made better
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
I purchased one of the single core models like this for personal use, and was so impressed, I got one of these dual core models to use in my “day job.” I wanted to experiment to see how well these beasties stood up against the other full sized PCs we use. I started out using Ubuntu Linux, but plan to try XP on it as well.
This barebone computer is NOT complete; minus RAM, a hard drive or Compact Flash card, an optical drive, monitor, keyboard and mouse, and operating system. Adding all those items can easily cost more than the basic machine, depending on how much you have sitting around. Since I had plenty of monitors, keyboards, and mice, I only needed to add RAM, hard drive, and optical drive to be ready to install Unbuntu. (I actually had a spare new SATA hard drive as well.)
Installing the parts was about a 20-30 minute task. The case and motherboard are quite well made and solid. I haven’t installed a Compact Flash card on the motherboard, but that would require removing the motherboard due to the case size and positioning of the connector. Installing, updating, and running Ubuntu on it is a breeze. The wired network connection works quite well. I rarely use wireless, so haven’t tried that.
While some people like to complain about fan noise, I come from an era where computers were a lot more noisy than they are today, and that doesn’t make much difference to me. I don’t find the fan to be a problem.
Benchmark tests I have seen rate the overall average performance gains from the dual core model at about 30% over the single core Atom. I can say that I noticed a very clear difference in how the Flightgear flight simulator worked on the different models. The dual core performance gain with that software was very apparent.
This is NOT a game machine or a 3D rendering machine, so don’t compare it to those. It is a small, low power, basic computer that works well for most desktop uses, as well as many media uses. I have run photo slide shows while also playing WAV files (not smaller mp3s) with no problems at all on the single core machine. This beastie and a 17 inch (or larger) monitor would make a great digital picture frame.
This is the only computer I have seen using the dual core Atom chip, and I am surprised that more aren’t using it. It would probably create some heat issues for tiny netbook-style cases, so this might just be the ideal format for it.
This is a sweet little computer, and you can hardly go wrong getting it for most daily uses. It is one of the most cost effective computer solutions available. I am currently using it in a small TV control room for monitoring online video conferencing recording, and it does just fine with that.
I have not tried playing DVDs or HD video files on these machines, since a DVD player is far less expensive. At some point in the near future, I will try a DVD in the dual core machine and update this review.
Good solution for everyday computing
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
I purchased theis nettop to use as a music server on my home network and for net surfing when needed.
Chassis is fairly good quality and easy to access. I just added a hardrive, optical drive, memory, WIFI card, and operating system and got things going. I ended up using a Gigabyte N300 for WIFI interface.
I have two gripes.
1. The case fan that comes with it is very noisy. I replaced with a 60mm Silenx. That really helped bring the noise level down.
2. The supplied antenna did not perform as expected (with any of the WIFI cards I used). I ended up purchasing a couple of tyco antennas and hid them in the chassis. That brought great reception to the table. The supplied antenna may have been defective as it didn’t pickup my home network one room away.
Otherwise, it fit the bill as expected.
missing hard drive and memory?
Rating:3 out of 5 stars
I just received this item.
It has no hard drive or memory, despite the item saying (1.6 GHz Intel Atom Dual Core N330 Processor, 1 GB RAM, 160 GB Hard Drive, Barebone)
HAS A DUAL CORE PROCESSOR !!
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The Wind PC is ***NOT*** intended to play videos or games. How foolish can anyone be to assume so when it has a 1.6GHz dual core processor ? This CPU *typically* uses less than 1.0 watt of power. It is intended to be used as either a basic web-surfing/email/basic tasks utility PC appliance or else a perfect platform for creating a home file server (can stream videos, but *not* play them). Look into FreeNAS. Its *really* easy to set up. Did I mention that FreeNAS is free ? No knowledge of *any* Unix/Linux/BSD is required.
If you are really into green machines then choose a green HDD for slightly less total system power consumption. For use as a server, temporarily hook up a USB external or SATA internal optical drive and any old monitor. For less than 250 bucks TOTAL for adding a hard drive (+50 to 75 bucks) and less than 30 bucks for a single 2GB memory stick you will have a great and complete home server with a 100Mbit or 1Gbit wired LAN connection. Or, add a good USB wireless-N or -G adapter to eliminate the LAN cable. There are *very* many bad ones out there, so do your homework and thoroughly research to find a good one.
There is no cheaper complete solution using brand new (waranteed) hardware.
Unlike the Wind PC 100 model, this one does *not* have a PCI expansion card slot. There will never be a Compact Flash G or N wireless adapter.
Using a USB FLASH drive to hold the OS and boot from is definitely a bad idea. The FLASH technology used has a limited write-cycle lifetime and it is *guaranteed to wear out*. However, solid state disk (SSD) drives (also known as MLC FLASH) use a better technology and will never wear out (in your lifetime).
SSDs are still new technology and the performance differences between early models that are still being sold and the newest ones are great. The newest large capacity SSD drives add a big RAM cache buffer to speed up the overall operation (just like HDDs and CPUs). Shop carefully, read the user reviews and look for the best performing models.
Almost all SSDs come in the 2.5 inch hard drive form factor that is intended for laptop PCs. However, they all have the standard SATA power and data connectors. To install in a non-laptop PC a 2.5″-to-3.5″ adapter bracket is needed.
Remember that the OS drive needs to be only 32GB or less !!! Prices for the large SSDs are *very* high due to current production techniques for this technology. Like LCD displays prices will fall rapidly in time.
Some Recommended models (i.e., many good user reviews):
RiDATA RDESSD16G-R-BX 16GB USB 2.0 & eSATA EXTERNAL THUMB DRIVE ***MLC*** SSD ~$70
This model’s interfaces appears to be unique at the moment. Good for FreeNAS, Freebsd and XP. Linux ??? Too small for Vista and Win7 (they are pigs !).
OCZ Vertex Series OCZSSD2-1VTX30G 2.5″ 30GB SATA II MLC ~$140 w- $20 mail-in rebate
OCZ Agility Series OCZSSD2-1AGT30G 2.5″ 30GB SATA II MLC (64MB On-board Cache) w- $20 mail-in rebate
Transcend TS32GSSD25-M 2.5″ 32GB PATA MLC SSD ~$120
SUPER TALENT UltraDrive ME FTM32GX25H 2.5″ 32GB SATA II MLC ~$120
SUPER TALENT MasterDrive EX2 FHM32GF25H 2.5″ 32GB PATA/IDE MLC ~$125
This model’s interface (IDE) appears to be unique at the moment.
Corsair Extreme Series CMFSSD-32D1 2.5″ 32GB SATA II MLC ~$150 w- $15 mail-in rebate
SUPER TALENT MasterDrive SX SAM64GM25S 2.5″ 64GB SATA II MLC ~$172
Corsair Extreme Series CMFSSD-64D1 2.5″ 64GB SATA II MLC $210 w- $30 mail-in rebate
Patriot Torqx PFZ64GS25SSDR 2.5″ 64GB SATA II SSD ~$235
OCZ Vertex OCZSSD2-1VTXA60G 2.5″ 60GB SATA II (On-board Cache: 64MB) ~$230
Kingston SSDNow V-Series SNV125-S2BN/128GB 2.5″ 128GB SATA II MLC SSD ~$285
Crucial CT128M225 2.5″ 128GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid state disk (SSD) (64MB DRAM Cache) ~$320
Patriot Torqx PFZ128GS25SSDR 2.5″ 128GB SATA II SSD ~$340
OCZ Summit OCZSSD2-1SUM120G 2.5″ 120GB SATA II MLC (128MB On-board Cache) ~$370
Patriot Torqx M28 Series PTX128GS25SSDR 2.5″ 128GB SATA II SSD (128MB DRAM Cache) ~$365
Most users seem to love the OCZ “Vertex” series. Certain other competitor’s models are equivalent. I think it has to do with the large on-board caches for these large capacity models.
Barebone Review: Atom dual core performace is excellent and = low watts
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
>>>> UPDATE! mon 20 july 2009 < <<<
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I make a puzzle with tcpmp win32, and now with it you can play even 1080p
videos and others high bitrated videos with the intel GMA !
You can play HD content with it totally smoothly ! for eee pc as well
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This is the best low consuption computer.
COOL
Earth will thank you
> There is no hard drive, memory, or disc drive. So you can choose what you want and save money, and choose low power hard disk
> Only 30 W of power are required
> Atoms dual core performance is great, don’t worry about it if you are planning using it like a server 24/7
BAD
> There is no wifi card
> Intel GMA video chip is slowly and crappy. Here is my recomendation:
You will realize, that you actually can’t play high definition videos with the wife of the Atom processor, the Intel Graphics Media “Accelerator” (GMA). Frame skipping and audio cuts, will be totally a mess.
Can be frustrating, but there is a solution:
> Deactivate deblocking filter on all the codecs that support it (H.264/MPEG-4 AVC)
How ?
Install klite codec pack, and at the end of the setup, choose deactivate deblocking.
If you use build-in codecs player programs such GOMPlayer, there are options for quit deblocking filters.
This way you can play even 720p hardly encoded videos, you will see some blocks here and there, but no frame skipping or audio cuts.
Alternately, if you need more performance, you can choose 16bit of color depth.
FEATURES:
There is a:
four rear usb ports 9) one rear ethernet jack 10) one rear VGA port 11) one frontal SD/MMC card slot 11) two SATA internal ports -sata only- 12) CF internal port -compact flash port- 13) one DDR2 200-Pin SODIMM Laptop Memory RAM slot 14) 3.5 hard disk bay 15) one power button 16) one power supply 17) one disc with drivers/controllers 18) one vertical stand adapter 19) one multilanguage user manual
1) cdrom/dvd bay, 2) mini pcie port, 3) wifi antenna -and rear socket for it- 4) rear jacks for 7.1 speakers system -and line-in/out and mic- 5) one frontal speakers jack 6) one frontal microfone jack 7) two frontal usb ports
There is no:
ram memory -must get it-
1) reset button 2) wifi card 3) DVI port 4) IDE ports -sata only- 5) hard disk -must get it- 6) compact flash drive 7) dvd/cd drive
Enjoy your hardware.
Frustrated Linux sharpie
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
The MSI CS120 does in fact run Windows XP with what seem to be no problems. However, it does not come with an expert system manual, and trying to figure out the key to push on startup so as to set up the bios for a Linux boot is not clear from any documentation. After hitting enough keys during one attempt, I got a menu for choosing which drive to boot up from, so I chose the Toshiba CD/DVD reader with the gobble the CD insertion process. Still booted only Windows. If Amazon, or anyone, has the real information for the F? button to push, please post it.
I contacted MSI’s online technical support, and they demand information not included with the system package before they will even accept the form input. I would rate MSI technical support as “extremely unhelpful”.
I bought both the CS120 with the slot dvd player and Windows XP _and_ the barebones. If you only run Windows on the CS120, it probably is a good machine for you. The slot dvd player has some problems reading CDs. I may have a defective player, so I was able to install some old Windows software, and the slot player took a few seconds to decide how to read it. I inserted a Linux boot disk into the slot player, and it took at least a minute to decide how to read the iso boot sector and go into boot mode. Something is not well with this device. Also, after I booted Linux and did work with the “live” system and shut the machine down, the machine refused to boot up Windows. I kept getting an “insert disk and reboot” message from the bios. I managed to look into the bios and discovered that the hard drive (/dev/sda in Linux) was absent. There is a bios setting in the ide disks or boot configuration or both that you have to reset to hard drive present in order to boot up Windows again after booting up with any other than the hard drive as media. This also happened when I booted a Linux system from a sandisk compact flash inserted into the reader (mentioned in the previous review that it won’t boot at all from a pendrive).
Oh yes, the cs120 manual doesn’t mention it, but you push the delete button on the keyboard to enter the bios for editing.
Lucky I bought the barebones and a memory stick. The barebones came with the that information the cs120 was missing. I am writing this from a Linux slackware on 2 gigabytes of sandisk on the barebones. The barebones may have the same bios problems as the cs120, but I don’t immediately plan to find out, I am so pleased with it as a Linux machine.
Good product, didn’t really need it.
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Well, I should start out by saying that I didn’t really need the computer, it was actually just a project to occupy some time.
Pros:
External power supply was a great idea, greatly reduce the over all bulk of the machine.
Liked the cable routing.
Easy to install all needed parts, the ram was a tight fit, but it went in.
Recognizes my 4Gb CF card.
Cons:
No wifi card, I just got a USB card and use that instead.
Have to remove the mother board to install the CF card.
Really I have nothing else to say about it, I haven’t used it much.
It’s my Linux router-on-a-stick
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
Good: Small form factor, reasonably fast, lower power consumption than the micro-ATX PC that it replaced, compatible with Debian and boots from a SDHC card.
Bad: Could still be smaller (the drive bays are unnecessary for my purposes). It could draw even less power if the chipset were so optimized (none of its competitors are, either). The blue LED on the front blinds me with the light of a thousand suns.
Overall, this is the best choice I could have made.
Small, Low Power, Decent cable routing, Pleasant to work in.
Rating:4 out of 5 stars
It’s a pretty decent low power system, and MSI did add a couple of nice things I’ll describe below. The box is a bit heavy for the size. If placed horizontally ‘s about the size of a VHS player (for those young ones, slightly taller than a slim DVD player, but not as wide.)
Hardware:
********************
PROS:
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- Even though it is not specified, the kit actually includes screws for both the Hard drive and the Optical drive. This was a nice surprise (I usually buy OEM drives which don’t include screws), since I thought it may not have them.
- External passively cooled power supply. (it’s just a brick, like a laptop’s psu, so no noise)
- Small and sturdy, includes card reader.
- Awesome cable management – got to give them props 6 stars for how neatly organized everything is in there. Nothing is loose, the SATA disk drive cables are color coded and already set up for you in very neat fashion. Same with all the cables in there (LED cables all bundled together, etc).
- Passively cooled chipset and processor, no fan = no noise. Big aluminum heat-sink on to, covering both.
- Consumes about 40-50 watts on normal use (less than a regular lightbulb!)
CONS
——-
- The only fan gets loud constantly.
- Overheats a lot (I may have gotten a bad item – we’ll see how it goes). But one design aspect that they chose to save money was using 1 big heatsink over both the chipset and processor. The problem is the uneven heights of these two, so they went cheap on us and added extra layers of paste for contact on the shorter item, which is not optimal at all. I saw temperatures of 89 degrees (Celsius!) almost 200 Fahrenheit. I would rank this item 1 or 2 stars, but I can’t seem to change my rating now.
- No wifi card included. Just a bad decision, charge a few bucks more and include one. Having the antenna makes you think there is wireless included, plus these days people want/use wireless a lot.
- IMPORTANT – To make matters worse, they do not include an flat head (M2) screw, which you need to attach the wifi card onto the motherboard. If you plan on using the mini pci-express slot for wireless, please avoid unnecessary hassle and buy this screw. How much could it cost MSI about 2 cents? It would save a lot of heartache. It’s an absolutely tiny screw, so chances of having an extra one that would fit are virtually zero.
Other thoughts (neutral comments)
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- Need to remove the drive cage to install the mini pci-e wifi card.
- Can’t play HD content (I already knew this)
- Includes antenna for wifi card (nice, but I wish they had included the card as well, as it is, it’s only a tease)
- Looks ok, but I wish the optical disk drive had a cover for it, to make it blend in more in a living room. Right now it is just the exposed drive (so you can’t really re-use say, a white dvd drive). It is a little better in person though, the photos here aren’t that good. I’ll upload some photos soon, make sure to check them out.
NOTE:
I will add more details in a week or two after using the system some more.
Product is good but Amazon description is ***WRONG**** ( Amazon corrected its product description now )
Rating:5 out of 5 stars
The product is good. You can see its review on newegg.com.
But the website description is wrong.
I ordered it assuming it had 160GB hard drive and 1GB memory. It has none.
So be careful. It is just the standard barebone which is available elsewhere