Sapphire Edge HD3 AMD E-450 APU Mini PC Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2012-05-07
·
1,462 words · ~7 min read
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welcome to my unboxing of the sapphire Edge HD3 or cubed however you want to
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interpret that Mini PC so Sapphire is no
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stranger to computer Technologies especially ones built by AMD they've
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been doing graphics cards for AMD going back as far as like dinosaurs and uh
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they've also got some AMD motherboards but as as far as all-in-one PCS go this
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is by far the most impressive product
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that I think they have yet released although I haven't seen one in person
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yet I have seen the marketing materials this is why I'm like skipping right to
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the like the part where the Box opens and I take the thing out because I want
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to check this thing out in person before
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I say almost anything about it so inside we find some packing materials look at
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that foam they're all they're pretty like serious business about foaming it
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up in here making sure that your uh your PC arrives in one piece because and this
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is this is good foresight on their part because this is one of Sapphire's first
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things that they're shipping with a hard drive inside right so they're all like
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yeah normally video cards no big deal it gets shaken around a little bit what's
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going to get damaged well a hard drive can so they've got a nice foam layer
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going on on all sides of this thing it feels very adequately protected in my
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personal opinion okay there's your driver disc don't bother with that
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download the latest off the Sapphire website quick installation guide so this
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covers quickly installing things to other things user manual so it's only
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six pages it's got to be pretty straightforward here got some specs got
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some FCC things going on okay cool got
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like a sapphire product registration form got a power cord hey look at this
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we've got a an HDMI cable it looks like
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it's even goldplated that's handy because I needed an HDMI
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cable obviously the HDMI cable is not
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the point of the product but you know it's in here I might as well use it
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right there you go goldplated HDMI
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action going on in there cool looks like
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it's about a meter all right we got a stand with a
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little screw on the bottom it's rubberized on the bottom so
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it's not going to go anywhere cool cool oh check this out we also have an HDMI
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to DVI adapter that is single link DVI guys because uh HDMI is Pinto pin
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compatible with single link DVI so you're not going to be going above 1920
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by 1200 at 60 htz just remember that I
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mean there's probably not many scenarios where you would be doing that with this
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anyhow but there you are okay so you got your power cord you got more different
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power cord and finally let's get to it here it is ooh
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I'm very excited about this don't laugh at me I'm talking to Slick not the
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audience so there it is this is The Edge
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HD3 here's our power button here's our
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hard drive activity LED here on the
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front we have two USB 3.0 ports there
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you go cover that up got like a soft touch finish I I realize like looking at
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it that it probably looks kind of just like dusty but when I go like this you
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can see it comes very very clean so it has it has a good way of like masking
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that so once you once you wipe it down once then it should be pretty much good
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to go so that's kind of nice I I I I personally love these like rubberized
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grippy grippy feels on the bottom here
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we can see that looks like your hard drive right there next to the ventilation holes there's the screw on
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the bottom for attaching it to the stand if you should see fit and on the back we
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find our IO so we have VGA just in case you still need it HDMI two USB 2.0 ports
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gigabit Ethernet power as well as
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headphones and microphone ports
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so what makes this guy special is the
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real question here I'm just going to go ahead and attach it to a little stand a
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few things would be the answer here and number one is the fact that it uses
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AMD's E450 Apu so a Apu if you guys do
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or don't recall I'm going to say it anyway an APU is a combination CPU and
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Graphics Processing Unit so what it means is you have direct X11 Graphics
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power in this unit it is capable of running direct X11 titles I wouldn't
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expect to be running them on the highest details or the most demanding direct X11
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titles but it can run direct X11 feature
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so there you go so stuff like Dirt 3 yes it will run off of this Slimline PC
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which is very very cool it's got 4 gigs of memory the graphics card is
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equivalent to what would be called a radon 6320
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yes just double check sorry I have a hard time remembering which HD graphics
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core goes with which apus sometimes so inside here also for the CPU component
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of the Apu is a 1.6 GHz dual core I mean
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look at this form factor it's ridiculous yeah I'm going to do it I'm going to do it I'm going to do the iPhone size
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comparison for those of you who think that I'm showing off that I have an
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iPhone I mean come on get real it's an iPhone for that's not the point the
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point is everyone knows how big an iPhone is so if I hold something up to
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an iPhone every one knows how big it is so there you go that's the thickness
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comparison against the iPhone and here is the size comparison against the
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iPhone so this thing is just tiny considering the fact that it contains a
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full PC inside so it's got oh you know
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what I missed something I missed it because I didn't actually see it hold on
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a second guys we found it cleverly disguised is the Kensington compatible
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locking slot you see it looks just like a ventilation hole except slightly Lar
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larger very convenient because if you're looking for a place whether you know
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airport or a coffee shop you need like a checkout terminal PC whatever else if
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you're looking for a low power PC but you don't want someone to run off with
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it because it doesn't weigh much and it you know is very very small you could
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easily like you know I'm assuming I had a pocket here you know hide it in a coat
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pocket or something like that you could easily run off with it if it isn't
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locked down speaking of low power Sapphire claims less than 30 Watts
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underload for the whole PC
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holy crap so stay tuned on my ncixcom
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channel where we're actually going to put all of their claims to the test but
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that sounds very impressive especially because under a typical usage scenario
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you wouldn't come even close to that load power consumption because you're not even going to be loading the
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graphics core that's built into the Apu one other thing about this particular
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unit is that it does not come with an operating system or rather I should say
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it doesn't come with a Windows operating system it comes with freed dos or something like that so you're going to
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have to Source your own Windows operating system you know you can buy OEM copies online you don't have to buy
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the retail copies which are more expensive in like a big box store but
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just grab an oem copy for around 100 bucks and you should be good to go or if
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you already have a retail Windows uh license then you can go ahead and reuse
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it on this machine as long as you're not still using it on the machine that you
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already have so thank you for checking out my unboxing of the edge HD3 or CED
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whichever you prefer to interpret it as don't forget to subscribe to lus Tech
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tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer
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