A Closer Look - Inside

Arctic ships the MC001-BD with 4GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive. Thanks to the normal screws and the lack of warranty seals, you should be able to upgrade these components. First, I removed the Aluminum side panel to gain access to the functional side of the MC001-BD.


All the heatsinks are lined with a thermal pad, which transport heat to the side panel. As the top sink cools the CPU and AMD ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5430, it features two heatpipes and is much larger than the one placed over the chipset. The combination of an Intel Atom CPU and AMD Radeon graphics is more than unusual. Traditonally most media centers either offer Atom in combination with an Intel or NVIDIA ION chipset, or in form of the AMD Fusion platform with Radeon graphics. Since ARCTIC has chosen to go with AMD on this one, it had to use three major ICs instead of two: CPU, chipset and graphics.


The Intel CG82NM10 PCH is generally used in compact entry level systems utilizing the Intel Atom CPU. The downside of this chipset, which is also the reason why you will not find it in most systems aimed at home theater, is the lack of support for 1080p playback. It offers a PCIe x4 configuration, thus the included AMD Radeon Mobility is interfaced through that. ARCTIC has installed two 2 GB 1333 MHz modules from Team Group in our sample. It is good to see some brand name memory used, but as the supply changes, ARCTIC may go for different manufacturers as time passes by. I tried to remove the heatsink covering the CPU and AMD graphic card, but I was not able to pull it out of the casing as the heatsink seems too big to get out after the system has been assembled.


Removing the other, plastic panel reveals both the 2.5 inch HDD and slimline BluRay drive. The 500GB drive is made by Hitachi and is of the 7200 RPM variety. It is good to see that ARCTIC has chosen this type instead of the slower 5400 RPM unit. A small PCB at the base of the unit is actually the WiFi stick and utilizes a RaLink RT3070 chip. I say "stick" because - as is obvious by the choice of IC and the four pins connecting the PCB, this is simply a WiFi USB stick without the housing and connector. A single cable leads to the back of the MC001-BD to allow for the 2 dBi antenna to be attached.