Lini PC Delivers A Nice Haswell-based Xubuntu PC

The current Lini PC is based around the Habey EMC-600SL Mini-ITX chassis with brushed aluminum finish. The case itself is decent: it's less than 2.5-inches tall, durable aluminum construction, and relies upon an external fan-less power supply.

So inside this review unit we have an Intel Pentium G3220 processor, a dual-core Haswell CPU that's clocked at 3.0GHz and provides Intel HD Graphics and has a TDP of 54 Watts. The motherboard used by the system was an ASRock H81M-ITX that is very adequate for these purposes while maintaining a low-cost.

The 8GB of system memory in this unit (and also the 4GB base version) is using DDR3-1333MHz memory. It would have been much nicer seeing the Lini PC with at least DDR3-1600MHz memory as it wouldn't inflate the cost much at all, but the Pentium G3220 is only officially rated for DDR3-1333. The disk drive used by the system was a 120GB Kingston SV300S3 Serial ATA 3.0 solid-state drive.

Overall, it's a decent selection of hardware for a low-cost system. In fact, Lini PC seems to be operating on fairly low margins for being a hand-assembled system in California. Given their a low-volume vendor they're likely to be seeing little in the way of bulk discounts or other distribution deals. The hardware costs would come down to roughly $400 USD (estimates of EMC-600SL: $70, Intel Pentium G3220: $70, ASRock H81M-ITX: $65, 8GB DDR3-1333: $100, 120GB Kingston SV300S3: $90) while the system is selling for $499 USD, so if you don't want to assemble a PC yourself, the Lini PC is selling far from an exorbitant price. The system is very Linux friendly and with using Intel HD Graphics you don't need to worry about any GPU driver binary blobs.