Asus Touts New Desktop PC to the Eee Lineup

Asustek's recently announced Eee PC desktop system has caused quite a buzz around the miniature computer enthusiasts. However, while the upcoming 9-inch Eee PC and the 4G-X model that ships with Windows XP shine in all their glory, the latest desktop PC addition sneaks quietly to take its place on the market.

The Taiwanese manufacturer has announced its latest addition to its low-cost desktop PC portfolio, known as the Essentio CS5110. Under the sleek, tiny bonnet, painted in full black, the manufacturer managed to pack a fully fledged discrete graphics card, which allows the company to tout it as "the world’s smallest desktop PC equipped with a fully embedded discrete graphics card."

The desktop PC comes in a small form-factor that measures about 7.9 x 11.4 x 3.1 inches and only weighs 3.40 kilograms. The tiny device is extremely suitable for the crowded office places, where space is critically diminished as well as for the extremely quiet environments (the CS5110 only emits 23.9dB of noise in idle mode).

The miniature desktop PC is quite powerful, given its diminutive size. The computer is built around a G35-based motherboard and can work with multiple processors (one at a time) such as Intel's Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual Core and Celeron D chip models. The motherboard comes with two SO-DIMM memory slots, that can accommodate up to 4GB of DDR2 memory.

However, due to its small case, the desktop PC can only host a single 3.5" SATA II HDD and an optional slot-loading DVD SuperMulti or Blu-ray drive.

The PC's strongest point is the introduction of a fully-fledged Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics card with 256MB of onboard memory, that not only is enough for playing the majority of mid-range gaming titles around, but it also can hardware decode high-definition video streams, to shift significant workload off the central processor.

The connectivity options are also well covered. The CS5110 desktop PC comes with 802.11b/g/n wireless capabilities, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, Gigabit Ethernet, six USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, an HDMI port, a VGA port and a 10-in-1 media reader.

The manufacturer did not disclose pricing or availability information as of the moment of writing.

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