august 17 2010 review by ocia

BodhiBox is a Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) provider based in Orlando, Florida.

Conclusion: For general HTPC testing, the BodhiBox to was connected to a television and stereo system. Setting up and using the BodhiBox presented no issuesd. Running a 4k resolution video from YouTube maxxed out the CPU and the video was very laggy. This HTPC also worked just fine as an everyday PC. The system was never very loud during testing, but it did become audible under full load. Integrated wireless networking signal strength was strongt at any time. The LG Blu-ray player is a great feature.

The evaluation unit the reviewer received arrived with the heatsink not securely attached to the motherboard which resulted in system shutdowns during benchmark testing. The price tag in relation with the hardware used is pretty high. The BodhiBox also lacks an included TV tuner with the base model. You might also consider a Gateway SX 2311-03 SFF PC which is a lot cheaper. Both systems are extremely small, but the Gateway has the edge on hardware with double the storage space (1TB) and memory (4GB) and the CPU is an AMD Phenom II X4 processor.

Test Setup:

• CPU : Intel Core i3-530
• HDD : 500 GB WD Caviar Green
• Memory : 2GB DDR3 1333MHz
• Motherboard : ZOTAC H55ITX-A-E Mini ITX motherboard
• Optical drive : 10x LG Blu-ray drive,
• PSU : integrated 160W
• Video Card : integrated Intel HD Graphics

Back panel connectors:

Dual WiFi antenna, lear CMOS button, 10 USB 2.0 ports, PS/2 keyboard port, HDMI, DVI, eSATA, Ethernet jack, S/PDIF audio, onboard analog audio.

Mediagate Remote Control kit:

Includes the remote itself, wireless receiver and a pack of batteries, all this is pretty much a necessity for a true HTPC.

Benchmarks:

3DMark 2006, 3DMark Vantage, ATTO Disk Benchmark, CrystalDiskMark, HD Tune, PCMark Vantage, SiSoft Sandra: File Systems, Memory Bandwidth, Memory Latency, Processor Arithmetic and Processor Multimedia, Super Pi 1M and 4M

Real-world tests:

File transfer tests and an iTune Encoding Test.

Compared to: This Home Theatre PC was not compared to another desktop or laptop.