First impressions & Teardown: Acer Revo RL70 AMD Sff System

[haterzwantwar]

Just had a quick tinker with a mini PCIe SSD and to answer my own question and for future reference to others, it was not detected in either slot, so unfortunately I can't use a PCIe SSD for my OS.

It was a standard SSD, I think they produce one with a SATA controller onboard, this may work but for now back to the drawing board.

Excellent teardown and very helpful in making my choice for my first HTPC.

Can anyone tell me if it's definitely possible to add a mini PCI-e SSD in the empty slot and use it as a bootable drive?

I'm fairly new to SSD but from some bits I've read I understand the slot would need a SATA controller as opposed to a slot that was just designed for wireless cards etc.

My aim is to have a decent sized internal HDD for data etc and a smaller PCI-e SSD with the OS and apps.

Any guidance on this matter would be most appreciated

 

[cocjh1]

For people that have replaced the hard drive in these, how did you recreate the EFI partition??

Whilst installing Ubuntu I selected 'use entire disk' and lost the EFI partition. Machine wouldn't boot (oops!), so had to re-installed Ubuntu and manually add EFI partition back in. Whilst machine boots it appears to hang for ~20 secs before starting Ubuntu. Wondering if I've lost any specific drivers in EFI partition,

Can't find any info on the Acer RL70 EFI partition. Any links to support documentation??

 

[tomw92]

I'm looking into buying one of these (they look great) however I'm torn between this and the RL100 model which features a bluray drive and remote control. Also claims to have 3d capabilities. Can someone point me in the right direction as to which will be better?

I will only use it for streaming on xbmc however the bluray drive and the tv tuner in the RL100 look like good things too!

Cheers,

Tom

 

[Electroshadow]

Funny enough, someone just bought me a revo rl100 and i must say that it makes a great little 3d blue ray player and tv tuner. I have also upgraded to 4gb of ram but it is a lot harder to upgrade than the rl70. A you have to take out the motherboard and heat sink. When i get around to it i will try 8gb.

Mind you though the rl100 has a weaker cpu than the rl70 .
But it is silent and makes a great media centre & if you have atouch screen phpne the key board is easy to use.

 

[RetroFan]

Hello im new here, been a 'watcher' for a while and decided to finally sign up.

To the people with this system, i'm in need of a little help...

Id like to change the hard drive in mine but unsure of how to remove the top cover. I can see the screw on the back but not sure of what to do next?

I have previously owned an Acer Revo 3610 and had quite a horrifying experience taking the lid off to upgrade it - resulting in broken clips on a 1 week old system I don't really want to repeat that episode again and im looking for some tips from experienced people!

I also bought the Revo(s) to use as a retro arcade machine, here is a video i made of my 3610 when it was all set up

www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLCe8IzB_s

I can provide information to configure something like this if anyone needs it

Any possibility you could create a folder called emu and zip it up with everything configured so that I could literally unzip it, and run it and it would be already to roll, configured etc as this looks amazing!

I registered just to see if you would help me, As I have a 3610 and I can barely get my snes tuff to run lol

This would awesome for my revo, any advice, help etc is massively appreciated. Hope you can help,
Mark

 

[RetroFan]

Anyone?

 

[Flanders]

Can anyone confirm that 8Gb plays nice in this machine?

 

[Electroshadow]

i might see if my RL100 will work with 8gb today but it is a major pain to get the case off as you have to remove the board and cpu heat sink to get to the ram.

i would say its like taking a plasma tv apart its all a little backwards assembled in the wrong order lol. If i do i will take some photos.

does anyone know how to update the graphics driver? as i just get uncompatible hardware....

 

[Electroshadow]

Its offical the Acer Revo RL100 will run with 8gb of Ram


pics to follow

 

[Richeh]

Does anyone know if the motherboard in the RL70 is standard Mini-ITX? My friend has so many external hard drives it would be easy for us to move the board to a mini-ITX case with several hard drive bays.

And also any links to a SATA PCI-E card with at least 4 ports that is good value if the above is possible?

 

[MADMAN]

really compact design I like it

 

[Flanders]

Its offical the Acer Revo RL100 will run with 8gb of Ram

Thanks a lot.

 

[Electroshadow]

Check my link in the RL100 thread.

Ive uploaded some photos of the strip down.

 

[feck199]

the emu part looks great! Not seen that interface before.

 

[swain90]

Looking at getting one of these mainly for just watching stuff on lovefilm. From what I can gather it should be ok for this.

My main question is, does the HDMI port at the back also carry sound? I've been told depending on the GFX card it depended on whether it carried sound I was wondering if anyone could clear this little query up for me?

Thanks

Swain90

 

[Electroshadow]

Yes the hdmi port does cary sound. At least on the RL100

 

[fiacha]

Looking at getting one of these mainly for just watching stuff on lovefilm. From what I can gather it should be ok for this.

My main question is, does the HDMI port at the back also carry sound? I've been told depending on the GFX card it depended on whether it carried sound I was wondering if anyone could clear this little query up for me?

Thanks

Swain90

Picked up an rl70 this week. I am running audio over the HDMI with no issues (using Openelec)

 

[swain90]

Cheers guys!

 

[gingerbeardman]

Thanks for this summary, I've ordered one from ****** for around £190.

I want to do what slm101 has done and make it into an emulation box.

Hello im new here, been a 'watcher' for a while and decided to finally sign up.

To the people with this system, i'm in need of a little help...

Id like to change the hard drive in mine but unsure of how to remove the top cover. I can see the screw on the back but not sure of what to do next?

I have previously owned an Acer Revo 3610 and had quite a horrifying experience taking the lid off to upgrade it - resulting in broken clips on a 1 week old system I don't really want to repeat that episode again and im looking for some tips from experienced people!

I also bought the Revo(s) to use as a retro arcade machine, here is a video i made of my 3610 when it was all set up

www.youtube.com/watch?v=szLCe8IzB_s

I can provide information to configure something like this if anyone needs it

 

[stefz9]

just got the 4gb 500gb hdd + dvdrw version . apu temp ranged from 58-88°C. after changing the thermal pad for aluminum thermal grease.. that is now 48-80°C !!!

WIN