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Comment by zucked | Hacker News Reader

How do they perform? I run an older Mac Mini to do all my network routing, IP Camera recording, PVR, etc. I would expect they've got some decent graphics prowess seeing as how their sole job in life to capture and display video conferencing…

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I used an older Chromebox as my desktop. If you get the decent ones, it's an Intel laptop cpu with decent (but not heroic) cooling and performs as you would expect from that. I don't think you get any controls for ram timings or voltage control, and generally the storage slots are very short, so you have limited options. It's great as a low cost, no bs, small form factor platform, but if you want performance and can go bigger, desktop chips will run laps around it.

For network routing, I don't think I've seen a chromebox with two nics, so you need to be OK with USB networking or single nic routing (which can still be useful depending on the details).

Video conferencing isn't that hard these days, the iGPU handles video encode/decode and you're done.

The Asus Chromebox will host an M.2 SSD.

You can easily get those in 2TB if you want.

My Asus Chromebox only does 2242, which I haven't seen in large capacity from reputable vendors. Maybe they increased the length for future Chromeboxes though.

You probably have the previous generation, the one I got is a chromebox 3, link to picture of MB provided above, you can check the SSD spot, the stand-off for the mount can be moved to an alternate position for a longer SSD on that one.

Be very careful when moving that stand off so you don't damage the circuitry.

Aha, I see that now, that's probably 2280? Which seems to be the most common/mainstream size. That's a nice update!

Indeed, and not that much money either. But even if the longer screw position isn't there it usually is there electrically and you might be able to run a bigger unit anyway by removing the stand-off and using some double sided tape+a tie wrap. Not the most elegant solution but hey, this is hacking :)

I'm using one to run Ubuntu Studio and it works flawlessly, but since the box doesn't have internal audio I added a USB based audio card. The display hooked up to that box is a 32" Dell QHD monitor.

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