Rating: 7.5.

1. Introduction 2. Packaging and Bundle 3. Arctic MC101: Exterior 4. Arctic MC101: Interior 5. Installed Software, Hardware Configuration and Test Methodology 6. Synthetic: SiSoft Sandra 7. Synthetic: PCMark 7 8. Synthetic: Cinebench R11.5 64 bit 9. Synthetic: Super Pi 10. Synthetic: Unigine Heaven Benchmark 11. Synthetic: 3DMark Vantage 12. Synthetic: 3DMark 11 13. Synthetic: Hard Drive Performance 14. Real World: MKV 1080P Performance 15. Real World: Flash HD Performance 16. Real World: Media Encoding 17. Gaming: Battlefield 3 18. Gaming: Dirt 3 19. Technical: Acoustics Performance 20. Technical: Thermal Dynamics 21. Technical: Power Consumption 22. Closing Thoughts 23. View All Pages

Home entertainment continues to be a fast growing trend in the computer usage market. Smaller, faster and quieter are all characteristics that users demand from their HTPC, but not ones that naturally go hand-in-hand. Arctic aim to care for the needs of home entertainment enthusiasts with their slim and elegant MC101.

On paper, the MC101 is a powerful home entertainment system. It packs an AMD Trinity A10 – 4600M, HD 7660G, 8GB of memory and 1TB hard drive into a chassis which is no thicker than a SD card. Built to operate silently with a low power usage, Arctic’s intelligent fan speed settings should allow media-lovers to enjoy their films and TV shows without disturbance. A DVB-T (HD)/ ATSC TV tuner and front panel infra-red receiver outline the system’s HTPC intentions.



Arctic’s passive MC001-BD earned our KitGuru ‘Worth Buying’ award. Can its more powerful, $749.00 sibling impress us as much?

Specifications:

Processor: AMD Trinity A10 – 4600M (2.3GHz)

Chipset: A70M (Hudson M3)

Memory: 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3 1600MHz

Graphics: AMD HD 7660G (512MB)

Hard Disk Drive: 1TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue (2.5″)

Optical Drive: None

TV Tuner: DVB-T / ATSC

Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Become a Patron!