Foxconn NetBox-nT330i Barebone Review

All-in-one PC by stefan @ 2010-08-30

The NetBox-nT330i barebone from Foxconn is an interesting product for those that need a very small media center PC, which can be also used for office applications or browsing the internet; its performance varies depending on what 2.5inch HDD/SSD and DRAM you decide to use with it.

Introduction, Specs & Features

Introduction

The NetBox-nT330i barebone from Foxconn is an interesting product for those that need a very small media center PC, which can be also used for office applications or browsing the internet; its performance varies depending on what 2.5'' HDD/SSD and DRAM we decide to use with it.

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I want to thank Foxconn for making a review of their NetBox-nT330i Barebone possible.

About Foxconn

“Guided by a belief that the electronics products would be an integral part of everyday life in every office and in every home, Terry Gou founded Hon Hai Precision Industry Company Ltd, the anchor company of Foxconn Technology Group in 1974 with US$7,500, a devotion in integrating expertise for mechanical and electrical parts and an uncommon concept to provide the lowest "total cost" solution to increase the affordability of electronics products for all mankind.

Today, Foxconn Technology Group is the most dependable partner for joint-design, joint-development, manufacturing, assembly and after-sales services to global Computer, Communication and Consumer-electronics ("3C") leaders. Aided by its legendary green manufacturing execution, uncompromising customer devotion and its award-winning proprietary business model, eCMMS, Foxconn has been the most trusted name in contract manufacturing services (including CEM, EMS, ODM and CMMS) in the world.

Focusing on fields of nanotechnology, heat transfer, wireless connectivity, material sciences, and green manufacturing process, besides from cooperating with the establishment of the research institution for nanotech, new material, and optical electric, Foxconn also sets up several research centers and testing laboratories for mechanism, material, electronics to conduct the services of science research and technology development worldwide.

Furthermore, Foxconn’s devotion to develop nanotech, thermal treatment, nano measure, wireless network, environmental protection, CAD/CAE, optical plating technique, precision/nano processing, SMT, and network CMOS chips, in terms, allows Foxconn to accumulate over 25,000 patents granted worldwide by 2010. This made Foxconn a recognized leader of innovation and technical know-how in rankings such as MIT's or IPIQ’s patent scorecard.

Aside from hardware related technology research and development investment, Foxconn also relentlessly seeks to provide customers ever fuller menu of end-to-end services to choose from. Logistic planning and e-supplying system adopted for the global supply chain management, computer software development and computer programming, sales channel solutions are just some of the latest investment and involvement that have continued to gain appreciation from the worldwide customers.

Foxconn's commitment to continual education, investing in its people long term and localization globally not only leads to the deep collaborating relationships with leading institutions of higher learning, but also helps to make this Fortune Global 500 group's global operations including the largest exporter in Greater China and the second largest exporter in Czech Republic.”

Features:

Specifications:

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Packaging

Packaging

The NetBox-nT330i Barebone from Foxconn comes in a relatively small cardboard box, with a drawing of the main product inside on the frontal part:

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Inside, we can see that the box is split into multiple compartments: two with accessories and manuals and one with the product itself:

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Along with the barebone, which is also inserted into a plastic support so we can mount it in the back of our monitor, we can also find a DVI to VGA adapter, some screws to fix the support, 4 magnetic feet, a wireless antenna, some more adhesive feet, the power adapter, a power lead, a support in which we can put the product so it can occupy less space on the table, a quick installation manual and some guides:

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The power adapter is made by Darfon Electronics Corp and it is rated on the output 19V/3.42A:

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The support to install the product on a table (in case we do not want to use the magnetic feet for that matter) does have the same color as the product itself and a hole to permit proper ventilation:

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On the back, the support does have rubber feet, so it won’t scratch the surface it will stay on:

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One of the brochures tells us how to connect the barebone to the monitor and rest of the peripherals, but also how to proceed with the OS installation:

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Inside it we can also find a CD with drivers for all the intefaces like LAN, video, audio, wireless and so on:

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Before use, the product must be populated with a 2.5’’ HDD and also a SODIMM DDR2 memory module before use; the Quick Installation brochure tells us how to do that:

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A Closer Look Part 1

A Closer Look

The barebone can be found pre-mounted in a white plastic support, which is the VESA mount cradle:

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The cradle comes with some pre-drilled holes:

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The barebone itself is fully white and does have on both sides a transparent protective film, to avoid damages during transport:

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On the top cap we can find an Intel authenticity sticker telling us we have an ATOM CPU inside:

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The frontal part of the barebone holds the headphone and microphone jacks, a card reader for MS/SD/MMC, two USB 2.0 ports, a line with LEDs that light up if something is wrong, a red HDD activity LED, some holes for the inside speaker, as well as a Sleep button and a Power button:

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On the back, we can find the WiFi antenna connector, 4 spare USB 2.0 ports, a DVI and HDMI port, a RJ45 port for wired networking, a Line Out/SPDIF Out port and a Power Input port:

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On one of the laterals, the air intake spaces can be found:

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The opposite does have the exhaust, where the little turbine cooler is installed to evacuate the hot air:

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On the bottom, some metallic circles can be found, which are the places where we have to install the magnetic feet:

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Opening up the top cap is not an easy task. I have used an older little knife, which was not sharp at all, and kept the protective film on the cap, to avoid scratches on the surface:

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A Closer Look Part 2

After the removal, we can see that the top cap does have some little plastic spaces in which the lateral feet of the barebone stay fixed:

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When we look for the first time at the internals of the barebone, we can see that there is little to none space to fit anything else inside it; the HDD retention mechanism is placed near the air intake and we can find on the right part the little fan that is supposed to evacuate all accumulated heat along with the SODIMM memory slot:

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After taking a closer look on the cooling system, we can see that the little blower assembles one used in low power laptops or netbooks and it is rated 5V/0.30A:

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The antenna connector can be found near the blower and has a wire that travels from it to the Atheros Wi-Fi adapter:

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The Wi-Fi adapter installed does have support for one more antenna and is plugged in a port like we can find on most laptops:

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The single memory slot can fit any 1GB/2GB SODIMM memory module; the Netbox seems to be a little picky regarding the 4GB modules and it is recommended to ask on specialized forums which models work best, because these modules are also really expensive:

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The place where we have to install the HDD is fixed in the chassis with 4 screws and is surrounded by protective material, to avoid short circuits:

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Installing the memory module is really easy if we follow the guide from the included manual:

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After the removal of the HDD support, we can find a large black protective material under it:

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After we will sit properly the HDD (in this case a Hybrid SSD from Walton Chaintech) on the support, we can fix it with the included screws:

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When the HDD is installed, we can slide it back for it to be connected to the SATA data and power ports:

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The included speaker is a 1.2W, 8ohm one, manufactured also by Foxconn and it functions like one from notebooks or laptops (when there is no speaker or headphones connected, the little speaker will automatically take their functions, not only for system sounds like on desktops); also, its audio quality is pretty good, considering the sizes:

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After putting all back together, it is recommended to use the case in one of the supplied cradles or with its magnetic feet, to avoid overheating under it:

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The BIOS

The BIOS

The BIOS is divided into multiple menus like Main, Advanced, Chipset and so on; in the Main section, we can see the market name and model name of the product (since these are barebones, the Foxconn partners might change these values and sell them under their own brand names), set the system date, time, see the installed HDD or the system information:

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Here is a view in the System Information section:

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In the Advanced section, we can set the Suspend mode, enable/disable the Legacy USB support, set the Restore on AC Power Loss state or enable/disable Deep Sleep:

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In the Onboard Device Configuration section, we can enable/disable the onboard LAN controller, LAN ROM or the Audio Controller:

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The Advanced Chipset Settings section holds the information regarding how much RAM memory is used for the GPU Frame Buffer; unfortunately, we cannot set it by ourselves, only the Auto value being available; this value changes by itself, depending how much RAM we have installed:

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In the Boot menu, we can find several sections like Boot Settings Configuration, Boot Device Priority and so on:

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The Boot Settings Configuration section gives us the ability to enable/disable the full screen logo, or enable Num-Lock on boot:

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In the Boot Device Priority section, we can select the drives we want to boot and in which order:

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The Security menu allows us to set a Supervisor and a User password:

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Finally, in the Exit menu, we can save the changes we’ve made, discard them or load the optimal defaults:

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The Tests and Extra Info

The Tests and Extra Info

To test out the barebone from Foxconn, I have installed in it a Hynix PC2-5300S-555-12 SODIMM DDR2 1GB DDR667 module and a 32GB hybrid SSD from Walton Chaintech, previously reviewed on Madshrimps.be.

The OS installed on it was Windows 7 Enterprise Edition with all updates and most of the drivers were downloaded from the manufacturer web pages and selecting the latest version.

I could extract more information regarding the system with the latest version of Everest Ultimate Edition:

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I have also run some benchmarks, which demonstrate that a system like this is not suitable for gaming:

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The 3DMark 2005 benchmark gave an error twice in the same place, the second CPU Test:

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After leaving the case in IDLE for about 30 minutes, I was amazed how high the temperature for the CPU cores remained, all this at an ambient temperature of 27.1 degrees Celsius:

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I have done some tests to see how much the Netbox heats up during video playback:

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Conclusive Thoughts

Conclusive Thoughts

The NetBox-nT330i Barebone is an interesting product from Foxconn, which can be equipped with the DRAM quantity and HDD/SSD capacity of our choice. When looking and holding it, we can say it’s about the size of a Wireless router.

The barebone comes with the wireless adapter installed, which worked perfectly after I have installed the latest driver version from station-drivers.com.

This little computer can be used successfully for Office work, browsing the Internet with a low number of tabs (considering that they are fully loaded with Flash) or watching HD content (720P and 1080P clips played without a hitch in Windows Media Player 11 and the latest VLC version).

Regarding the power consumption, I was impressed, considering that I have recorded in IDLE only 29.38W and during the playback of a 1080 HD clip 38.08W.

The only issue I have found is the temperature of the CPU in some situations, like playing HD content; when we fresh start the computer, we can observe that if we stress the CPU only by a little, the fan will reach it maximum speed and it can be clearly heard.
Having temperatures on one of the Atom 330 cores of about 83-85 degrees Celsius is a little too much after playing a short HD clip. Surprisingly, I have not encountered any system freezes during the benchmarks, even if the temperatures were high.On the outside, though, the case does not get that hot.

Considering the high temperatures, I have searched on the Internet to see if other people experienced the same issues and they did; some of them have cut a hole through the top plastic cap and replaced the fan inside. The temperatures they have obtained were much lower, but I guess not a lot of people would like to do such kind of modifications. (without cutting the plastic with a special tool, we could easily ruin the outside aspect of the barebone).

The price of this mini-computer that can turn your monitor into an "iMac" clone is around $220, add in the cost of RAM and a HDD and you're looking at $300 price tag, making it one of the more affordable mini-PCs out there. Yes you can go for a small laptop or netbook at a slightly higher price, but will that play HD content fluently? For a netbook that's capable of that, you're look at $450-500 price range!

I would like to thank again to Foxconn for making this review possible.