Acer’s Revo Construct Is a Puzzle of a PC

Acer final week introduced the most recent in its circle of relatives of Revo small-form-factor PCs on the IFA 2015 business display in Berlin. The Revo Construct M1-601 is composed of a cuboid base unit with a footprint measuring about 5 inches sq. and a collection of simply attachable modules.

There are two variations — one with an Intel Pentium processor and the opposite with an Intel Celeron CPU. Each have built-in Intel HD graphics and as much as 8 GB of DDR4 RAM.

Acer plans to release the Revo Construct in Europe in October and in China December. It has now not indicated when it’ll be to be had in the USA.

Pricing reportedly might be about US$220 in Europe and about $315 in China.

Simple to Construct

Modular blocks for the Revo Construct attach thru pogo pins with magnetic modules. The blocks can paintings independently or with different PCs.

A 500 GB/1 TB hot-swappable moveable arduous pressure module might be to be had at release.

Acer sooner or later will roll out an influence financial institution for wi-fi charging, an audio block that may incorporate audio system and microphones, and different growth blocks.

Been There, Accomplished That

“IBM has attempted to construct a modular PC a minimum of two times that I do know of, and neither made it to marketplace,” stated Rob Enderle, major analyst on the Enderle Team.

“Toshiba if truth be told did create a modular desktop for industry, however that went so badly they exited desktop PCs altogether,” he advised TechNewsWorld.

Enderle participated as a board member a few 12 months in the past, when IBM made its final try to revise the IBM modular pc.

“They sought after me as CEO, however I’m now not that nuts,” he stated. “You need to work out some way across the economics.”

Acer has a line of Revo merchandise, to be had at Amazon, eBay, NewEgg and in other places, although none is modular.

Will Acer’s Revo Construct Fly?

The Revo Construct has had a combined reception up to now. Some other folks love it, whilst others aren’t certain the place they stand. A number of other folks have likened it to Google’s Challenge Ara.

“It’s leading edge, however the glory days for the desktop PC are long past,” noticed Jim McGregor, major analyst at Tirias Analysis.

Maximum companies “gained’t like the theory of getting a PC in items, and customers have a plethora of alternative choices — and it’s arduous to overcome one thing that’s cellular,” he advised TechNewsWorld.

“Processors within the high-end smartphones will almost definitely be offering equivalent or higher efficiency and connectivity,” he prompt. “Who wishes a bigger arduous pressure when you’ll be able to hook up with the Web anyplace, any time?”

Modular Computing’s Godzilla

There are different modular computer systems in the marketplace, alternatively.

There’s Razer’s Challenge Christine, which has a PCI Categorical structure and we could customers make a selection modules at the fly, in any mixture, and plug them in.

The modules are sealed and self-contained, they usually be offering lively liquid cooling and noise cancellation. Parts will also be overclocked with out voiding warranties.

Xi3 gives the X7A, which is composed of a three-board gadget that may maintain 3 impartial displays. The X7A runs on 30 watts. Previous I/O and processor forums will also be swapped out for brand new ones.

The X7A has a quad-core AMD Trinity Sequence processor of as much as 3.2 GHz, a Radeon HD 7660G GPU with 384 programmable cores, 8 GB of DDR3 RAM, an mSATA SSD of 64 GB to at least one TB capability, two Mini DisplayPorts, one mixture HDMI/DisplayPort, and 12 different ports — 4 each and every of eSATAp-III ports (which additionally give a boost to USB 2.0), USB 2.0 ports and USB 3.0 ports. It additionally has one 1-GB Ethernet port.

The X7A measures 4.3 x 3.6 x 3.6 inches. It comes with a three-year guaranty and runs Home windows 7 Professional, which prices $137 additional, or openSuse.

The chassis is priced at $100 to $600, relying at the inner garage.