First impressions & Teardown: Acer Revo RL70 AMD Sff System

Aikon359

Aikon359

Aikon359

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Today i just received the recently released Acer Aspire RL70 system and now have it in my grubby mitts ready for a quick teardown.

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I wanted to post a review of this for everyone as there isnt much on the net at the moment about the true internals and potential for this unit.

For those that want to know the basic specifications to start off with, here is what you get for just shy of £180.00:

APU: AMD E-450 1.65GHz Hudson D1 Chipset
RAM: 2GB DDR3 1333MHz SDRAM Dual-channel support on two DIMMs
HDD: 320GB SATA 3 Gb/s
BUILT IN GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6320
NETWORKING: WLAN: 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi CERTIFIED
LAN: Gigabit Ethernet, Wake-on-LAN ready
PSU: 65 W
SIZE: Width 209.89 mm Depth 209.89 mm Height 35.35 mm
PORTS:
Two HD audio jacks
6x USB 2.0
HDMI port
S/PDIF port
D-Sub VGA port
Ethernet (RJ-45)port
Multi-in-1 card reader

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In short, quite a bit of portable beef for £180.00 in my opinion compared to the current competition. A lot of atom and E350 systems with similar specs cant be picked up for less than £200.00 so big thumbs up so far.

I am not going to bother discussing the details of what else is in the box unless anyone specifically wants this as im sure were all just interested in the guts for the moment.

TEARDOWN:

So... have cracked the lid on the RL70 after testing that it boots up and works ok and all i have to say is i am coloured IMPRESSED!

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only 1 screw is used to keep the unit together and then everything else on the outside is kept on with clips (which were easy to unclip and the whole system is very sturdy and well held together.
Once the lid was lifted, you are greeted by a metal plate used to protect the internals and which is held on with 4 screws. This again is very easy to remove.

Now its at this point, where i was very pleased with acers choice of hardware and ports as they are clearly catering to people that want to upgrade.

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inside as you can see, we are greeted with the following:

1: additional SATA connector
and
2: CPU fan connector

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3: Sodimm slots with one socket free

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4: mini pci-e socket capable of taking a full size device

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5: Secondary mini pci-e socket (populated with wifi card) that can actually take another full size device.

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6: Sunon HSF

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7: 320gb western digital blue HDD


i had originally intended to buy this unit for a custom post apocalyptic style arcade project (build log comming soon!!) and had intended form the start to dissasemble this to integrate it so the plethora of upgrade options is fantastic!

At this point i will leave the review and will continue once i have fully stripped this down and have windows installed for further tests. (will also add more images and closeups with a better camera instead of my trashy phone cam lol).

Enjoy!
 
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posting from it now with the cpu maxed out, running at 59 degrees (which isnt bad for a mobile apu) and when putting my ear right next to the fan with the lid off, i can barely hear it at all. when putting the lid on i can quite safely say that its totally inaudiable. especially now ive ripped the 320gb wd blue out and replaced it with a corsair f60.
 
well with the corsair f60 fitted in and win7 installed, this lil beaut flies ;-), handles ANY video i throw at it and even had it running super streetfighter 4 arcade edition at quite a respectable framerate!, makes for an amazing lil media and arcade gaming rig ;-)

got 8gb of 133mhz corsair ram on the way so will be interesting to see the speed boost going from single channel to dual channel also aswell as the memory boost itself (can up the uma buffer to 512mb and possibly 1gb via the bios for the igp)

will be updating the post again tonight with further thoughts and possible a few more new pics.
 
well i just ran a W.E.I index and the gaming side of things scored 5.9 if that helps?, ill be running it through its paces over the weekend now i have the 8gb ram fitted.

(props to ocuk for sending out the ram so bloody fast!, ordered it friday afternoon fer free delivery and was at my door 8am on sat!)

the ram bumps the memory W.E.I score way over 6, the ssd sits at 7.9 the only lacking score is the cpu itself at 3.9 but that still beats all atom systems IIRC and coupled with the gpu its still a nice little runner.

as for the tv tuner side of things, if theres a mini pcie touer around, then im sure it woudl fit. theres even a specific cutout on the case itself to allow for a tuner socket to be plugged in (though on my model its blanked off with a rubber bung so could be another potential upgrade!)
 
Nope, the e450 and the acer revo rl70 supports dual channel ram over 2 sodimms.

i can see it working as my W.E.I score on ram jumped up quite a bit when jumping between a single stick and 2 sticks (have experimented with a single 2gb and 2x 1gb sticks to make sure just the additional ram was not the factor.)
 
it appears you are right, looks like the place i ordered it from and a really large amount of online retailers need to ammend their sales specs. ;-(

dosent explain my WEI index increase when using 2 dimms though.. wierd.

im just on the blower to virgin media havin a go at them (again) and then ill run iplayer in hd to see what happens for ya
 
FAO: Jokester - just to let you know, have gone through episode 3 of topgear in HD on bbc iplayer a moment ago on the rl70 and it didnt miss a beat. silk smooth all the way ;-) hope that helps!
 
ive seen the video previews of that, looks pretty sweet, kinda like a double stacked version of the rl70 , all i know is that the version i saw had a bluray drive and tv tuner built in too. verrrrry nice ;-)
 
heya satoshi, you just have to unscrew and pop the mainboard out and the hdd is fixed to the motherboard with 4 screws underneath. its a doddle to get out and put back together.
 
Not 100% sure if ill be updating this thread fer a bit now as my lil fully upgraded baby is now up for sale on the MM, (dosent fit my arcade cabinet as well as id hoped)

can still answer any queries while i still have it though ;-)
 
Apologies. Have a lot of real lifeissues going on right now which is why I've been a bit quiet on here. I will try to go through the thread ASAP and update with my responses.

Sorry about this.
 
btw in regards to the IR port, that is there for the double height htpc version of the rl70. they just double stack an extended chassis with a bluray drive on top of our models instead of the top and add an IR module to the bottom front.

when i did the teardown, the space where the IR module should be is blank.

was a bit of a bummer.
 
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