ASRock Combines Calpella and NVIDIA's GT 425M in new Mini PC

Though the Intel Calpella platform and the 400M series of DirectX 11 NVIDIA GPUs are intended for laptops, ASRock decided to use a combination of both in the Vision 3D 135B Mini PC, a nettop with fairly decent specifications.

NVIDIA, some time ago, unveiled a full line of graphics processing units aimed at mobile PCs for all the levels of the market.

These GPUs fully support DirectX 11 graphics and have up to 288 processing cores, clock speeds of up to 675 MHz and up to 1GB of memory, on an interface of up to 192 bits.

The model that ASRock used in its latest small form factor PC is the GeForce GT 425M, which has 96 CUDA cores, though it is just part of what gives the PC its appeal.

Basically, ASRock tried to cram as much power as it could, or very nearly, inside this machine, including features like 3D Vision support, even though it will likely mean a higher price point.

At the heart of the so-called nettop lies the Intel Core i3-370M central processing unit, which runs at 2.4 GHz.

This chip is backed up by 4GB of RAM and the aforementioned GPU, along with the full range of storage, connectivity and I/O options.

A hard disk drive with a capacity of 500 GB and a platter rotary speed of 7200 RPM handles the file storing tasks.

As for the rest, ASRock threw in Gigabit Ethernet, a Blu-ray combo drive, a 4-in-1 card reader, 802.11b/g/n WiFi and 7.1 channel audio.

Finally, the device has a DVI and a HDMI output available, as well as USB 3.0 connectivity, for high-speed transfers to and from next-generation external storage devices.

Unfortunately, the company has not disclosed any sort of information in regards to pricing and availability, though one can be certain that the newcomer won't come cheaply.