Arctic MC001 BD Blu-ray HTPC Media Center
Arctic MC001-BD Blu-ray HTPC Media Center
I’m always surfing the web for anything HTPC related, why? because HTPCs rock! 😀 Recently I came across a review of the Arctic MC001-BD, an all in one HTPC build by Arctic. Highlights of the unit include:
- Passively cooled dual core Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz)
- ATI HD 5430 with 512mb GDDR3
- 4GB DDR3 1333MHz
- 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Drive
- Windows 7 Home Premium (32bit)
- Blu-Ray 4x
- 10/100/1000 ethernet
- b/g/n 802.11 Wifi
- 6x 3.5mm audio jacks (for your computer speakers), SPDIF, BGA, HDMI, 5x USB2.0
- Optional DVB-T TV Tuner
- Integrated IR receiver
*Being that it is a real computer, I’m not going to list compatible video and audio formats.
After going though the review it is clear the unit struggles with video playback. However, this strikes me as a bit odd, the Intel Atom coupled with a HD 5430 should be able to handle any type of video thrown at it. Being that you have a dedicated video card, whether or not it is a mobility series, the cpu should offload a majority of the workload directly to the GPU for decoding. AMD specs indicate that the HD 5430 includes AMD’s ATI Avivo HD Video & Display technology which comes with a dedicated video accelerator. Which leads me to the question, what gives?
Well further reading of the article indicates that the unit tends to overheat, and triggers the Intel thermal overload protection. Essentially the processor will underclock itself to bring down the temperature. A good thing right? Of course it is…however it appears the Arctic design is prone to high temps. Why? I have a feeling it is due to a few factors:
- Passively cooled
- Confined space
- Hard drive is directly behind the cpu socket on the motherboard
I’m unsure of the of the chipset and GPU location as the motherboard is a custom design from ECS. There should be a Intel NM10 chipset somewhere on this board, seeing as how the review did not remove the heatsink I can’t locate it. My guess is that the combination of cpu, chipset, and gpu under a passively cooled heatsink is overwhelming and the unit is overheating. Additionally, those strange pads near the bottom of the motherboard are a bit alarming. If these pads contain either the chipset or god forbid the GPU…Arctic has seriously overlook the motherboard design. Further searching around the net has uncovered that several users are placing heatsinks on a chip under the above mentioned pads.
It appears that constant overheating and CPU throttling is causing the MC001-BD to fail miserably at its designed purpose, being a HTPC.
Here are a few photos from the review and a photo of a user installed heatsink:
If you’d like to read the full review it can be found here: BenchmarkReviews.com. I very much have to disagree with the scoring system over at BenchmarkReview.com. The Arctic MC001-BD scores an 8.25 in performance, 8.75 in functionality, and 7.25 in value. Excuse me? This unit can’t even play 1080p without stuttering? Where is the performance/functionality/value in a HTPC if it cannot fulfill its design purpose and task?
In my opinion is that the Artic MC001-BD should be capable but poor design an implementation have limited the units ability to be a TRUE HTPC. Factoring in pricing, which is $600 direct from Arctic and my mind is made up on this unit. The overall look of the unit is great, and I love the integrated IR (not sure about compatibility) however the Intel Atom D525 with HD 5430 is old tech and is easily no match for the AMD Fusion E-350. The Arctic MC001-BD is an overprice unit and under delivers, for $600 you can easily have a HTPC build that easily outpaces the Arctic MC001-BD.
Category: Uncategorized
