Thursday, March 8th 2012

Colorful Announces Its First Mini-ITX Barebone for Gaming

Colorful is well-known for its highly innovative graphics card designs, it is one of China's leading graphics card brands. Some of its graphics card designs have captured our imagination. Its latest creation is a DIY mini-ITX barebones system for gaming, called Desert Eagle. The package consists of Colorful's own-design slim-form-factor (SFF) chassis, which bears a swanky combination of red and black, with ample perforations and and top handles; a custom-design, low-profile Colorfire AMD Radeon HD 6750 graphics card (Colorfire is Colorful's Radeon-selling brand); a mini-ITX socket LGA1155 motherboard based on the Intel H67 chipset (model: i-H67HD U3); and a 300W PSU.
Chassis
The chassis is Colorful's own design, it measures 228 x 262 x 110 mm, weighing 3.7 kg. It's made of an aluminum alloy. The side panels are designed to be hollow, and dampen noise. It has perforations on the front, bottom, top, and left-side to help air-flow. Internally, the chassis features a downside-up layout (think: BTX), so the right-side panel of the chassis opens up to reveal two 2.5" drive bays (well, actually hooks, to screw the drives onto); while the left-side opens up to the motherboard and graphics card. As a result of the design, the fans of the graphics card draw air from the perforations on top of the chassis. The case has two metal handles, that help you transport it to your LAN parties. The front-panel includes one USB 3.0 port, and a USB 2.0.

Graphics Card
As mentioned before, Colorful is packing a Colorfire Radeon HD 6750 1GB graphics card. The card is built in a low-profile design, spans across two expansion slots (which are present, in this case), and uses a dual-fan cooling solution. The card features clock speeds of 700 MHz core, with 1000 MHz (4.00 GHz effective) GDDR5 memory. Display outputs includes one each of DVI and HDMI.
Motherboard
The Desert Eagle kit includes Colorful's own i-H67HD U3 motherboard. This mini-ITX motherboard is based on the Intel H67 chipset, and supports current "Sandy Bridge" and next-gen "Ivy Bridge" Core processors. It uses a 4+1 phase VRM to power the CPU. The CPU is wired to two DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 16 GB of dual-channel DDR3 memory. Expansion slots include one PCI-Express 2.0 x16, and a mini-PCIe (for wireless LAN cards).

SATA connectivity includes two each of SATA 6 Gb/s and SATA 3 Gb/s internal ports. Other connectivity includes 8+2 channel HD audio with optical SPDIF output, gigabit Ethernet, DVI, D-sub, and HDMI for display outputs (which you'll probably not need), and six USB ports on the rear panel, of which two are USB 3.0 SuperSpeed. The board uses high-grade Tantulum capacitors, next to more conventional Japanese conductor-polymer ones.

The PSU
Now, onto the last component of the package, the PSU. Colorful includes a 300W flex-ATX PSU with the Desert Eagle ITX Gaming System barebone. This PSU is 80 Plus Bronze rated, and Colorful claims it provides sufficient power for any of the popular LGA1155 processors and the included Colorfire HD 6750 graphics card. The OEM is Enhance Electronics.

Since the Desert Eagle is a barebones package, you need to augment it with your own LGA1155 processor, DDR3 memory, and storage (SSDs or HDDs). Colorful did not give out pricing details. As for availability, Colorful operates in Asia and Europe, so that should be the availability area, as well.
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16 Comments on Colorful Announces Its First Mini-ITX Barebone for Gaming

#1
micropage7
desert eagle? its the same name with israeli pistols
btw i like the concept, small board with huge card
Posted on Reply
#2
m1dg3t
Nice! But why a 6750? Why couldn't hey have used a 6850 or better?
Posted on Reply
#3
Farmer Boe
Probably cause that is the best card that is widely available in the slimmed down form factor to fit that m-itx case.
Posted on Reply
#4
entropy13
m1dg3tNice! But why a 6750? Why couldn't hey have used a 6850 or better?
Power consumption, thus heat, as well as easily being able to make it low-profile.
Posted on Reply
#5
m1dg3t
I personally think they could have gone with a 6850 based card and it would have nearly doubled GFX performance, making it "game worthy" :o

From what i saw 6850 draw's about 40w more than 6750 but damn near DBL's it in performance, seem's like an easy choice to me but then again WTF do i know :roll:
Posted on Reply
#6
Liquid Cool
That 6750 is awesome! I've got a Sapphire HD 6670 low profile in my mini-itx rig(Wesena) now and it plays every game I own just fine in 1080p. No huge eye candy, but decent enough. I'd like an upgrade...hope we can get one in the US.

I also spot a Samuel 17...nice CPU cooler. I've got a few of these in operation.

LC
Posted on Reply
#8
PLAfiller
Release the LIONZZ! :D They make better and better stuff all the time. WANT :D
Posted on Reply
#10
Liquid Cool
rpsgc...Only for sale in Japan.

We had a thread about the HD 6850 on [H], I looked around for one...and couldn't find it. Contacted them through their website and no response. Now I know why.

An HD 6850 in my little wesena ITX...now that would rock, although I think the HD 6670 is pushing the thermal envelope. It get's warm fast, although a little dollop of MX2 helped a little...

Best,

LC
Posted on Reply
#11
mascotzel
The 6850 pictured above seems longer than the 6750 Colorful made. That one fits exactly into the space available in that case. That's kinda of a barebone there, several pieces made to fit well with each other.
Posted on Reply
#12
dieterd
what about hd 77xx series? I mean there is slingle slot 7750s out right now and 7770 TDP/Preformance is great too, there would be great use in mini_ITX for those overpriced GPU's.
Posted on Reply
#13
[H]@RD5TUFF
I can't wait! Though I would sell the GPU and get one that actually has working drivers.:shadedshu
Posted on Reply
#14
rpsgc
mascotzelThe 6850 pictured above seems longer than the 6750 Colorful made. That one fits exactly into the space available in that case. That's kinda of a barebone there, several pieces made to fit well with each other.
You're right. The HD 6750 fits very tightly in there.


Unfortunately there's a real shortage of "gaming" low profile cards.
Posted on Reply
#16
PLAfiller
It'll fit in length, but not in width. That card is a standart one, meaning at least ~101mm width. While the Low-profile ones vary between ~69-73. Acording to Amazon's website, this 6750 is 2 inch wide, but I'd say it's about 69mm. I don't pretend for accuracy.
Posted on Reply
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