Recent years have witnessed a lot of upheavals in the PC business, with the middle of the previous decade marking a huge turning point – laptops began overtaking the traditional desktop PC as the most popular form among consumers, as seen is sales statistics.
And laptops have come a long way, with recent examples providing uncompromised gaming, plus ever-so stylish netbooks with great portability.
But there’s just something about a traditional, down to earth desktop you can’t beat, and the gentle giants have been staging a comeback, even incorporating many of the lessons learned with laptop design.
Glossy after all these years
The CM5675 is one such desktop PC, and you can tell from the glossy, curved case that it has taken to heart a few highlights from principles refined on well-heeled portables. This isn’t a vanilla desktop by any means, it’s a nice looking piece of technology that’ll revitalize any living or working space.
The undeniable truth
A very simple one. Desktops are bigger than laptops, ergo they can deliver more power, storage and facilities. There’s no arguing over this, but it’s a trade off, since desktops take up more space. Laptops have caught up considerably, but they still can’t compete with the brute force of an honest to goodness desktop.
The CM5675 has been built to serve as an entertainment and media center for the home, which is why it comes with up to 6TB of storage across three hard drive storage slots. Seriously, no laptop in the world comes even close to this.
You can do the math on how much content 6TB will store you, but we’re told it’s something like 1.7 million super fine photos or 2600 hours of DVD-grade video. A lot, in other words.
The CM5675 deploys Q-Fan technology, which is a silenced cooling solution for home entertainment centers, since most people don’t want their movies drowned out by whooshing fan blades. This desktop is pretty quiet, and reasonably easy on the light bill –it’s not an energy hog at all, mostly thanks to the ASUS EPU (Energy Processing Unit), which adjust various system components based on performance presets, so less demanding tasks cause the machine to consume less energy.
Go green
Balanced specs
The reason we’re talking about the CM5675 is because it’s a cool desktop that does what’s expected of it with no undue frills. The integrated graphics are more than enough to power the multimedia needs of almost any user, plus they can take on gaming to a large extend, even if not on max settings. RAM goes up to 8GB, and the processors are new Intel Core i3 and i5, depending on specific model variety chosen.
Oh the memory...
Besides, this is a desktop, so expandability is a given. Unlike restrictive laptops that can’t be modified, the CM5675 comes with all the potential for additions you’d normally associate with a desktop. Going for gaming? Stick a dedicated graphics card in there. Want Blu-ray? Easy swap and the default Super-Multi DVD drive comes out. It’s all possible, and ASUS even throws in the keyboard and mouse while they’re at it.
As a home entertainment system, this is a nice machine, albeit one much bigger than something like the O!Play range. Then again, CM5675 can also do your gaming and productivity, or anything else you want to do with a PC. Like we said, you can’t keep a good desktop down.